The #1 Way To Write Better Is So Stupidly Easy Most People Won’t Bother
Almost all good writing teachers say the exact same thing…
Let me tell you about the craziest experiment.
Ever heard of the complexity bias? It’s the brain’s tendency to over complicate. We look at something that’s simple and think it can’t possibly be that simple, so we overcomplicate.
B.F. Skinner was an American psychologist, behaviorist, author, and a professor of psychology at Harvard from 1958 to 1974.
He did a whole bunch of tests on the complexity bias with humans and pigeons. Why pigeons? Because they’re the most intelligent bird on the planet, right up there with humans and apes.
Bobbing and thumping…
He took a bunch of hungry pigeons and put them in cages. Each cage was set up to dispense food at random intervals.
Then he watched. Over time, each bird “figured out” that a certain action “made” the food appear.
One bird spun in counterclockwise circles. Another rhythmically thumped its head against a corner of the cage. Other birds bobbed their heads in specific patterns that they repeated to “make” the food arrive.
