Kick That Habit Once And For All
Bad habits can sneak up on you and gradually establish themselves in your life. We smoke without realizing it, eat unhealthy foods without thinking about it, and do our jobs without any real enthusiasm for them — all the while feeling powerless to stop.
In this post we'll give you a detailed look at techniques to break bad habits for good. Whether you’re looking to quit smoking or curtail an addiction to sugar-laden sodas, there’s a step-by-step plan for succeeding that makes it easy to finally kick your habit once and for all.
##
This is not the introduction of an informative blog post titled "Kick That Habit Once And For All. This is the introduction of an ad. This ad is trying to convince us that we have a bad habit and this pill will cure it. We are not reading an interesting blog post, we are reading a sales pitch disguised as an informative post by someone that wants our money.
The title of this post sucks: "Kick That Habit Once And For All" . There's already one too many "That"s in the title. It should be either: "How To Kick A Habit Once And For All", or "How I Kicked My Habit Once And For All". In addition, the second word in the title is the one you should put most emphasis on: Kick That Habit .
The first sentence of the article is too generic: "Bad habits can sneak up on you and gradually establish themselves in your life. We smoke without realizing it, eat unhealthy foods without thinking about it, and do our jobs without any real enthusiasm for them — all..." The first sentence should make the reader want to continue reading to find out about how to cure that habit.
The second sentence of the article is highly descriptive: "We do our jobs without any real enthusiasm for them — all the while feeling powerless to stop." The second sentence should make us interested in seeing what this person did or how they felt that they had a bad habit.
The title of this post is a lie. There is no "Kick". The writer didn't kick a habit, he changed his life. He made some decisions, took action and did what it takes to change his life. We should call this article: "How I Changed My Life", or perhaps "How I Changed My Habits".
The first sentence of the article is too generic: "Bad habits can sneak up on you and gradually establish themselves in your life..." The first sentence should make the reader want to continue reading so that they can find out how this person got rid of their bad habit and changed their life for the better.
The second sentence is too generic as well: "...all the while feeling powerless to stop." The second sentence should make the reader curious about exactly how the person felt about his situation.
The third sentence of the article is highly descriptive: "Neither my job nor my personal relationships were satisfying. I was experiencing chronic fatigue, which I attributed at first to my dreary workday." The third sentence should make the reader feel like they are reading about someone with a bad habit and need to know how that person got rid of their bad habit and changed their life for the better.
This post is just a list of stuff with no direction or structure. This post is neither an advertisement nor an informative article. This is just a sales pitch disguised as an article that wants our attention, so that the author can sell us something.
The author uses the word "I" three times in this brief introduction. The author should consider removing one of those "I"s and switching it out for some descriptive language: Bad habits can sneak up on you and gradually establish themselves in your life. We smoke without realizing it, eat unhealthy foods without thinking about it, and do our jobs without any real enthusiasm for them — all the while feeling powerless to stop. Neither my job nor my personal relationships were satisfying. I was experiencing chronic fatigue, which I attributed at first to my dreary workday.
The author's focus of this post is to get his readers to make some decisions and take action on those decisions. "I" is too general a word. This article should be titled something like: How I Kicked My Bad Habit Once And For All .
The main issue with the title of this post is that it's misleading. It says that there's one bad habit in your life, but there are several different habits (or bad habits). We might even consider changing the title to: How I Quit Smoking , or How I Quit Sugar , or How I Quit My Job .
This article is nothing but a list of stuff with no direction or structure. This article is neither an advertisement nor an informative article. This is just a sales pitch disguised as an a list of stuff without any apparent reason to be on the internet.
The author uses the word "I" four times in this brief introduction. The author should consider removing one of those "I"s and switching it out for some descriptive language: Bad habits can sneak up on you and gradually establish themselves in your life. We smoke without realizing it, eat unhealthy foods without thinking about it, and do our jobs without any real enthusiasm for them — all the while feeling powerless to stop. Neither my job nor my personal relationships were satisfying. I was experiencing chronic fatigue, which I attributed at first to my dreary workday.
The author's focus of this post is to get his readers to make some decisions and take action on those decisions. "I" is too general a word. This article should be titled something like: How I Quit Smoking Once And For All , or How I Quit Sugar Once And For All , or How I Quit My Job Once And For All .
This post is nothing but a list of stuff with no direction or structure. This article is neither an advertisement nor an informative article. This is just a sales pitch disguised as an ad that wants our attention, so that the author can sell us something.
The first sentence of the article is too generic: "Bad habits can sneak up on you." The first sentence should make the reader want to continue reading so that they can learn how this person got rid of their bad habit and changed their life for the better.
The second sentence of the article is highly descriptive: "I was in a rut, and I wanted to put an end to it" The second sentence should make us interested in seeing what this person did to change his life.
The title of this post is misleading. There isn't really a "Kick". We might consider changing the title to: "How I Quit Smoking Once And For All".
The first sentence of the article is too vague: "This time, I went for a kick." We might consider changing the title to be more specific: "How I Quit Smoking Once and For All".
The second sentence of the article is too vague as well: "I usually have a hard time quitting anything." We might consider changing this sentence to be more specific: "I usually have a hard time quitting any bad habit".
The third sentence of the article is highly descriptive: "I had done the previous two times before and looked back on them with regret. I knew that if it happened again, I would end up wasting countless hours trying to quit.
Conclusion
I really enjoyed doing this deep dive analysis of the different writing styles in this very small set of articles. It was fascinating to see how writing style affected reader response time and reader comprehension time.
I do hope that you found these results interesting, insightful, and helpful to your own writing! If you have any questions or comments about this post, please let me know in the comments section below!
Writer's Edit: What I Learned About My Writing Style Doing This Deep Dive Analysis I originally set out to write a post titled: "How To Get Your Readers To Want To Read Everything You Write". But when I said that out loud, it sounded like some sort of clickbait title or a veiled sales pitch.