The shape of a page
How a page here is built
Forty pages, one shape. The shape is fixed so that you can learn it once and then read only the part of any page you actually came for.
A fixed shape is a promise about where things are. Once you know that the mechanism is always in the third section, you never have to read the first two on a page you already understand. Once you know that the last box always says what the page is not claiming, you know where to check whether the page is overselling itself. Reference material earns its keep by being predictable, not by being surprising.
The two panels at the very top are the site in miniature. On the left, what the habit does everywhere else, written as the genuine benefit it is. On the right, the same habit here. If the two panels read the same to you, that page has nothing for you.
The six parts
- The habit
- One sentence. No build up and no hedging. If the sentence does not describe something you do, close the page. The site is not trying to persuade anybody that they have a habit they do not have.
- Why it is automatic
- Where the habit was learned and why it is correct in the place it was learned. This is the longest section on most pages, and it is not politeness. A reflex you think of as stupid is a reflex you will keep, because nobody guards against something they have already dismissed.
- What it actually does here
- The mechanism, in concrete terms. A file written to a folder. A request sent to a service. A record created under an account with a name on it. This section avoids adjectives on purpose, because the plain description is always worse than the ominous one.
- What to do instead
- Numbered, specific, and doable this evening. Principles are useless against reflexes because a principle needs you to be thinking and a reflex fires before you are. What beats a reflex is an arrangement made in advance, so these are arrangements.
- How to notice you did it anyway
- You will do it anyway. Everybody does. This section says where to look afterwards, which is a different and much easier skill than not doing it. The whole set of these checks is gathered on the check afterwards.
- Where the page stops
- One line naming what the page is not claiming. A page that quietly claims to cover everything is a page you cannot calibrate against, and this site would rather be narrow and honest than broad and vague.
Why the sections are in that order
The order runs from the least to the most demanding. Naming a habit costs the reader nothing. Understanding why it is automatic costs a little attention. The mechanism costs real attention. Changing something costs effort, and setting up a check afterwards costs the most, because it has to happen on a day when nothing is wrong.
Putting the mechanism before the advice is the important part. Advice that arrives before you understand what it is for gets followed for about a week. Advice that arrives after you can picture the file being written tends to stick, because at that point it is not advice, it is just the obvious thing to do.
What is not in the shape
- No severity rating. There is no honest way to grade these without knowing everything else about a reader.
- No checklist to complete. Nothing here is scored and nothing congratulates you.
- No walkthrough of the market itself, no advice about goods, no advice about vendors and no instructions for anything illegal.
- No claim about what any address is doing right now. Nothing on this site opens one, which is covered on the addresses page.
The site also has no comment section, no ratings and no reviews. Those exist to create the impression of a crowd agreeing with a page, and there is no crowd here. There is a set of mechanisms, described as plainly as they can be described, and you are welcome to disagree with any of them.
What readers ask about this group
Why does every page spend so long saying the habit is reasonable?
Because that is the finding, not the framing. A habit you have decided is stupid is one you stop watching for, and stopping watching is how it survives. The pages that convince a reader the habit is sensible are the ones that get read to the end.
Can I skip to the advice?
You can, and the shape is fixed precisely so that you can. The section is always called what to do instead, and it is always a numbered list. Readers who skip to it tend to come back to the mechanism later anyway, once they wonder why the advice is shaped the way it is.
Why is there a section saying what the page does not cover?
Because narrow claims can be checked and broad ones cannot. If a page tells you exactly where it stops, you know what it is worth. If it never stops, you have no way of knowing whether it was ever right about anything.