Zarrella's Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas

Your ideas are a product of the information you consume. Improving your outputs requires actively directing your attention to high-quality information streams and diverting attention from low-quality ones.

The tricky thing is that our information ecosystem is full of talented marketers who masquerade as experts with convincing copywri

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Angles that spread usually check the following boxes:

1. Surprising — presents unexpected new information or theories


2. True — we actually believe it


3. Important — has an impact on our behavior


4. Relevant — related to domains we care about


5. Cool — we think we’ll look impressive for sharing it

Many of us are wired to look at work as something that should produce monetary rewards. Or at least with writing, some amount of attention, or new followers. But on the internet, sustained attention may take years to materialize, if at all. And too many people are focused on short-term followers instead of the genuine credibility that can come from... See more