How to Submit an Article to Better Humans
Note: this information has been updated and you’ll find the current version here: Write for Better Humans.
The goal here is to produce the world’s most trusted advice in personal development.
Our fundamental rule is that we only want advice that the author has personal experience with. For that reason, our authors are either academics, coaches, or aggressive self-experimenters.
To submit an article please fill out our article submission form. In general, we pay for most articles here. If you are just looking for an audience to publish to and don’t need to get paid, please note that in your submission.
What types of articles are we looking for?
The first fundamental rule is personal expertise. That’s the root of making a trustworthy article.
The second is that the goal of the article is to change the reader’s life for the better. We don’t care about curiosities or philosophy. We want inspiration followed by clear, direct instructions that anyone could follow.
If you can follow those two fundamental rules, then we’re interested in almost any personal development topic. This field doesn’t have one-size fits-all advice, so we love diversity of viewpoints.
Do we have a style guide?
Yes. It’s here. You should read it twice, once before submitting a proposal and a second time before submitting a draft.
Suggested Types of Articles
We mainly publish tutorials that have a dose of motivation. If the reader is inspired, we want them to be able to apply the steps in your tutorial in order to improve their own life.
Along those lines, I want to call out some article types.
Personal accomplishment turned tutorial
This article type is for authors that only have experience trying the advice on themselves. For personal success stories, we want to cover famous topics and systems, not your own personal system. Example: I lost 50lbs from 5:2 Intermittent Fasting.
Promising personal experiment turned tutorial
You tried something radical and tracked the results. We’re looking for something that would work as a Quantified Self talk, but written instead with a goal in mind and a tutorial to get there. Example: How to use fasting to increase your energy level.
How to do X to achieve Y
First, these articles need to be based on the idea that a lot of people want to achieve X. The best version of these articles come from someone who knows the subtleties of how and where the reader will struggle. You can write the tutorial you would give your client — but please make sure to back up your own advice with expert citations. Example: How to Configure Your iPhone for Productivity
Complete guide to the science of…
Are you an academic? Help us understand what science is saying about how to improve our lives. We like academics because they know the breadth and the subtleties of current research. The challenge for an academic writing for us is that you have to then frame that research for goal oriented people. Example: Complete Guide to the Science of Procrastination
Complete guide to achieving…
Do you have deep experience with a topic and love doing research. Often there are many ways to achieve the same thing. Use your experience to help people understand their options. These articles require a lot of research. Example: Complete Guide to Developing Grit
Suggested Topics
We used to list suggested topics here, but then we only got submissions on those topics. The point of everything above is that we want to unlock your expertise — you know where you have had success, so use that success as the basis of your article submission.
The only guidance I would give you is to not be afraid of covering fundamental or standard topics. What’s “New” about Better Humans is the style of writing (tested advice from applied practitioners written with behavior design in mind). That means the topics don’t have to be new.
