The world is changing and the Antiplanner needs to change with it. I started the Antiplanner more than twelve years ago as a way to both advertise and regularly update my then soon-to-be-published book, The Best-Laid Plans. Now, three more books, dozens of policy papers, and more than 3,000 Antiplanner posts later, this format no longer seems to serve a vital purpose.
One symptom is that I accidentally turned the commenting option off a couple of weeks ago and none of the people who regularly comment thought to send me an email telling me about it. Commenting is back on now, but I’ve been feeling for some time that the Antiplanner has been repetitive and reactionary rather than proactive.
At the same time, my other favored medium, the policy paper, is too long for most readers. Attention spans today are shorter, so I want to stop writing policy papers of 10,000 words and start writing chart-heavy briefing papers of 1,000 to 2,000 words. Blog posts of 600 words are too short to capture the interest of those who are seriously concerned about the issues, yet too long to get broad public attention in this Twitter-dominated world. Continue reading
