š x 5 Award-Winning Social Entrepreneur. Sold my first one-person business at 28. Currently traveling Southeast Asia.
When I started going to the gym, I always dreamed of doing a muscle-up. Thatās where you do a regular pull-up, But you pull to your belly button and then do a chest dip at the top. Sounds complicated, I know. Itās an even harder movement to execute. One of my gym mentors taught me the concept of ātime under tensionā. Itās where you want to build up time for your muscles to contract under movement. He told me to do a regular pull-up, but do it very slowly. Explode during the pull. Pause at the top. And slowly lower myself, counting to 5 seconds. After 3 months, I got my first muscle-up. I was stoked. I couldnāt believe it. I spent those 12 weeks slowly building the time under tension. Iād held the pull-up contraction for over 45 seconds. Now, you might be asking: Michael, what the fck does this have to do with long-form writing?* Thatās a great question. When you write, you are training your audienceās brain muscle. But instead of time under TENSION, you are using time under ATTENTION. Long-form writing generates the best time under attention. Why? Well, when someone reads your long-form writing, they canāt do anything else. Unlike listening to a podcast or YouTube video, when someone is reading, they canāt do anything else. You canāt read and drive. You canāt read and clean your house. You have 100% of their attention for those 4-6 minutes. The quality of attention is high. While people spend a lot of time doomscrolling on TikTok or Instagram, their attention suffers from a form of digital amnesia. I know after I scroll for too long, I feel stupider. And I forget 90% of what Iāve just watched. But a good piece of long-form writing lives rent-free in my head. The ideas from the article enter my mind and stay there. Iāve had articles that've changed the course of my life.
Because long-form writing commands time under attention. And time under attention changes peopleās brains. Stay Limitless, Michael āloves a good gym analogyā Lim. |
š x 5 Award-Winning Social Entrepreneur. Sold my first one-person business at 28. Currently traveling Southeast Asia.