In college, there are three kinds of classes.
First, there’s the blow-off classes, where 80 percent of your grade comes from fill-in-the-blank worksheets. To pass, all you really have to do is show up.
Then, there are the classes taught by “real hardasses.” These classes kept you up well past midnight, flipping frenetically through flashcards, chugging coffee and energy drinks.
Though one class is incredibly easy, and the other is mind-numbingly difficult, they are actually two sides of the same coin. They both rely on worksheets, textbooks, lectures, essay questions, and culminate in the undergraduate cycle of doom: cram, regurgitate, forget, repeat.
The third kind of class, however, sidesteps the whole messy system.
I was lucky to have a few classes like that, but one stands out in particular: Honors Shakespeare. The professor was intelligent, and very well-read. Beyond her academic credentials, though, she was an inspiring teacher.
In her classroom, I never felt lectured to, or really even “taught.” But her teaching left me passionate, fired-up, and with a new appreciation for the classic plays and the world they came from.
Instead of forcing the information down our throats, or spoon-feeding it to us, this professor handed us the utensils and let us eat for ourselves.
The difference between “easy” and “engaging”
Many writers fear becoming the “hardass” professor. I know I do. We want our writing to be digestible, not abstruse.
But, in purging our content of any whiff of pedantry, many of us fall too hard on the other side of the spectrum.
We confuse “easy to read” with “easy ideas,” and instead of prompting a stimulating, engaging discussion, our words fall flat … and fall out of our readers’ heads as quickly as Statistics 101.
In marketing, there’s an idea that you shouldn’t make your potential customers work for anything. And that’s true in many ways. Your website should be fast, secure, and intuitive.
The mistake is believing that you shouldn’t make any of your potential customers work for anything … ever. Sometimes, people need to be challenged. In fact, sometimes people like being challenged.
Helping your readers “flow”
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi knows this; it’s the foundation of his revolutionary 1990 book, Flow.
You’ve likely heard of “flow.” It’s the state of deep concentration we feel when we are engaged in a purposeful and enjoyable task.
Rock climbers feel flow when they climb a challenging peak, chess masters feel flow when they play a worthy opponent, motorcyclists feel flow when they’re following the lines on a graceful curve.
You know who else feels flow? Readers.
Csikszentmihalyi even cites it as a quintessential example of a flow activity.
“… one of the most frequently mentioned enjoyable activities the world over is reading. Reading is [a flow] activity because it requires the concentration of attention and has a…
