Use the last paragraph for something fun

Watching the video is more fun, but here’s he transcript you can’t be bothered:

The way you learn to write a conclusion to an essay or a paper or whatever kind of text you're writing in school: just totally forget that.

What you want to do when you write a conclusion is not summarize what you've done, return to your argument, and say how you've proven it out or whatever. You do that before the conclusion.

What you want to do in a conclusion is introduce a new idea, a new insight. I think of this as a treat that you're adding at the end. You don't have to discuss it that much. You don't have to prove it out. You're just throwing something out there that kind of intuitively connects and makes sense, or that you're just gonna say and possit.

For example, let's say you just wrote some text arguing that the croissant is the superior pastry. What you might do is spell that out, reach the conclusion, summarize why it's done, state that therefore the croissant is the best.

But in your conclusion paragraph, you can say, Oh, and one last thing, if you're really in a hard spot and you don't have tacos available, you can also slice up a croissant, smash it on a griddle and make a makeshift quesadilla out of it.

This creates a memorable thing at the end, something that's fun, instead of just being kind of like an obligatory summing up of stuff. It makes your essay more memorable and also more enjoyable to write.

So next time you're writing some chunk of text, do your conclusion in the middle of the essay, kind of summarizing things, and add an interesting note, a little dessert item, a snack at the end.

Stay in the sandbox - Software Defined Talk #493

This week’s episode: “we cover OpenCost’s big incubation milestone, CNCF's graduation rules, and a flurry of tech acquisitions. Plus, some thoughts on teaching kids about passwords.”

You can listen to it, or watch the unedited video version if you prefer.

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SREday Amsterdam, speaking, Nov 21st, 2024. Discounts! SREDay Amsterdam: 20% off with the code SRE20DAY. CfgMgmtCamp, February 3rd to 5th in Ghent. SCaLE 22x/DevOpsDays LA, March 6th to 9th in Pasadena, California.

Logoff

I haven’t actually had that croissant taco, I just made it up as I was walking. Maybe I’ll try this weekend and report back.