[Internal] Style Guide

• who our target user is
• write to be concise and valuable
• why we should use personal anecdotes
• how to make introductions VALUABLE to users
• how to keep exercises VALUABLE to users
• which jargon is ok
• what tone to write with
• templates for pages
• how to use diagrams and visuals
• citations

who our target user is

• Eager to mentally explore their discontent with lack of fulfillment
• No need to immediately make a consequential decision that fully adheres to their Inner Compass
• Willing to apply small life changes to incrementally adhere to their Inner Compass
• Willing to dedicate XXX time and effort to exploration
• Willing to apply structure to their approach of exploration
• Inexperienced with [introspection, mindfulness, psychotherapy]
• Ambitious/Hardworking Individuals with in-demand capabilities that provide optionality
• Not constrained to just Tech people → Use Layman’s wording
• High executive function – specifically emotional control

write to be concise and valuable

• Catchy is more precise than precise. Cut complexity and nuance. Don’t distract from the key passages.
• Be engaging. We have the first 10 seconds to earn the next 30 seconds of their attention, and those 30 to earn the next 2 minutes.
• Trim away 70% of our first-pass. (First pass writing is to organize our thoughts. Edit it to be valuable).
• UChicago Leadership Lab – How to Write Valuable Writing
• Minimize need for users to scroll while reading a text block. We prefer many small text blocks that are incremental and bite-sized.

why we should use personal anecdotes

Show > Tell.

Users want to see more tangible stories and examples from our lives, followed by our friends’ lives.

• Stories are more compelling than quotes.
• Personal stories are more compelling/gripping than general statements “People do XYZ, ”because they’re authentic.

Examples of personal stories being compelling:

• The author of The Artist's Way bares herself to her audience by openly discussion her recovery from being an alcoholic, her struggles with loneliness and depression, her relapses, etc.
• Jenny Wang (Permission to Come Home) talks about her tumultuous relationships with her parents and extended family, her own triggers, the process of giving up a lucrative career to get a PhD in Psychology.

how to make introductions VALUABLE to users

As you rebuild introductions, keep the following in mind:

Prior to writing out the chapters, really deep for the 2-3 sentences that are really the core of the chapter, and then ask... how do we most effectively convey the core while and satisfy the following goals? Everything should tie together.

For “Past Shame,” the core of the chapter is:

• What it’s like to feel judged, triggered, and ashamed.

e.g. “When I’m around them, I can’t help but feel like I’m being judged as my past self, even when there’s no indication of it.”

• This is bad because we lose sides of ourselves we’ve lost.

e.g. “By avoiding past shame, you’re blocking access to related parts of your psyche, rendering those associated core tenets unreachable via introspection.”

• Unfortunately, people don’t seek help until they’ve “spoken their shame”/”articulated their shame.”

e.g. “The first step to being in AA is admitting that ‘Hello my name is X and I am an alcoholic.’”

• This exercise helps you speak/articulate your shame as Tenets, enabling us to heal and recover those lost sides in a later chapter.

e.g. “By learning to love yourself in spite of the shame.”

1. Be engaging and catchy
1. Start off with a tagline in the form of a quote. Give a taste of what’s to come, instead of merely summarizing the chapter. “An amuse-bouche to the chapter. NOT a summary. Needs to be spicy.”
2. Within the intro, get the user to feel “oh that's really cool, I want that for myself too.”
3. Make it very clear why this exercise is important.
1. One way is to use visuals that illustrate a metaphor, IF the metaphor makes it very clear why this exercise is important. A reader may forget a lot of the words in the chapter, but the image of an obscure mass blocking a door is going to be a lot stickier in their mind.
2. Make sure this reason comes through in our anecdotes too.
2. Give people an aligned understanding of the exercise
1. Show, don’t tell, via anecdote format.

Stories are better to learn from compared to lectures because a) humans learn through stories b) they just have sooo much more depth and c) you don't need to cover all the edge cases with overarching statements. You just need to make the story relatable. Every time you make an overarching statement, you risk that statement being unreliable and turning the reading off.

2. Clearly set the standard of the intensity we expect.
🔗
As a self-serve resource, we want to go deep and be honest, but not so deep that we lose the ability to intellectually engage with our emotions at an arm’s length. Going beyond this line should be with the support of a trained therapist.

For example, in Past Shame:

1. Full emotional processing + catharsis of deeply painful and repressed shame may be out of scope for most of our target users (inexperienced with introspection), and beyond the capabilities of a self-serve handbook (may need a disclaimer or upsell to therapy).
2. Versus intellectual exploration of uncomfortable and repressed shame within a relevant domain (e.g. career decisions) is more in tune with our target users, and fits the capabilities of a self-serve handbook.
3. List out 5-10 different anecdotes and pick the one most able to get the point across.
1. Be extremely vulnerable in the contents. It's hard to open up to someone with things about yourself that are deeply painful and ugly (I would say that they are sometimes unclear not because they are in the background, but because they are so painful that they are repressed) when you feel like the things that are setting the standard are much more normal.
4. Be very specific in the important details of the anecdote. The purpose of the anecdote is to give the audience color / an example of the type of thing that they are meant to be working through in the section. Capture all the core ideas of the chapter.
5. After a first pass, highlight the key sentences that explain why this exercise is important, and expound upon it with details until it’s valuable to the reader. Everything else is context to trim down.
3. Reduce intimidation
1. Use warm-up exercises/questions.

If our directions are specific enough (see next bullet) and our stories/anecdotes are detailed enough in the HOW (see next goal), we won’t need any Context or Examples – just the steps.

Right after the anecdote, it should immediately be obvious what the person is supposed to do, and how that should be helpful.

2. Make all exercises extremely specific in HOW to answer the questions.

e.g. "Imagine a moment in the last month when you felt deeply triggered and ashamed. Describe using at least 10 handwritten sentences. What triggered the shame? What did it feel like? Is this a recurring shame? Where does it come from?” vs. "Recall a deeply shameful childhood memory that still haunts you to this day.”

3. For introspective exercises, the user’s hand should be HELD but not LED.

Start with a non-leading introspective question

e.g., “Imagine a moment in the last month when you felt deeply triggered and ashamed. Describe using at least 10 handwritten sentences.”

Then, include very specific and actionable follow-up questions

e.g., “What triggered the shame? What did it feel like? Is this a recurring shame? Where does it come from?”

4. Add Pitfalls and Tips if related to the Core of the Chapter.
4. Win trust as compassionate + vulnerable + intentional people
1. When lecturing/telling, lean on “We as humans,” “Our,” and “Us” pronouns instead of “You” when possible.
2. When showing/telling stories, avoid the “We as humans” pronouns and focus on the subject in the story.
3. For the other 4-9 different anecdotes you listed out (e.g. other big shames that your audience might secretly harbor), go through each section and ask “is this content going to be helpful/relatable?”

e.g. Check language like "your past shame is a beautiful part of you” against a test set of examples (e.g., porn addiction seems to not fit the bill for that word). Some shame is ugly and needs to be called out for what it is - it's probably more about loving yourself in spite of the shame - "celebrating" might take it too far in some cases.

how to keep exercises VALUABLE to users

As you rebuild exercises, keep the following in mind:

1. Make exercises as standalone as possible by minimizing callbacks to previous exercises. Layering can be hard to keep track of.
2. Is each step in our exercises valuable?

Step titles are the MECE, Engaging/Catchy WHAT

MECE

• You should be able to skim the titles and get a clear sense of what to do within each step.
• The flow between steps should be clear from the titles.
• The Step names should clearly be MECE, with no extra Steps.
• Make sure the Steps tie back to the CORE of the Chapter.

Engaging/Catchy

• The Step names should be short and memorable.
• Each Step name should be the same format (e.g., Questions, rather than Statements, Phrases, or Gerunds).
• The scope of each Step should be small and approachable. We prefer multiple small steps to few large steps.

Paragraphs are the Engaging, Supportive, and Extremely Specific, Hand Held > Led HOW

Engaging

• The paragraph within each step should be earn the user’s attention.
• Context should be short and intentional. Each additional sentence makes things less catchy.
• Each sentence should progress linearly so it’s clear how the Title is being elaborated upon.

Supportive

• The paragraph should be supportive – introspective work is tough.
• Speak to relatable feelings and experiences relevant to this exercise.
• When lecturing/telling, lean on “We as humans,” “Our,” and “Us” pronouns instead of “You” when possible.

Extremely Specific, Held > Led

• Instructions/Prompts should be extremely specific in HOW to follow
‣
Good Examples
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Bad Examples
• For introspective exercises, the user’s hand should be HELD but not LED.
1. Start with a non-leading introspective question. (Be extremely specific in HOW to answer it).

e.g., “Imagine a moment in the last month when you felt deeply triggered and ashamed. Describe using at least 10 handwritten sentences.”

2. Then, include leading, specific, and actionable follow-up questions.

e.g., “What triggered the shame? What did it feel like? Is this a recurring shame? Where does it come from?”

3. At the end of most exercises, we ask users to converge their insights into Tenets. So we should have a standalone step where we reiterate what makes a good/useful Tenet. The other steps are introspective and divergent, so help the user switch back to convergent thinking.

which jargon is ok

• Incorporate the following into an Appendix or Glossary of Terms later
• Keep total Jargon/Lingo to a minimum – only use for key, repeating ideas that are hard to explain in laymen.

what tone to write with

Our users want a non-patronizing peer tone.

Build up our (Logan + Jeffrey) credibility as compassionate + vulnerable + intentional people

templates for pages

Chapter/Exercise Intro template coming!

Feedback on Chapter Intro Contents (Responses)

how to use diagrams and visuals

• Standardize vibe (e.g. RPG vibe vs Casual Sketch vibe)
• [TBD] Focus on Visualizing Metaphors >> Literal System Diagrams

citations

Users want to see citations to help them buy into exercises.

• Bill Burnett and Cal Newport use casual and loose references to “studies” or “bodies of research.” We can take a similar approach.