Deep Dive #1 - Andrew Askins

Andrew Askins

What it does well

  • Tells an engaging story
  • Reveals vulnerability

What it does well

  • Teaches practical lessons

What it does well

  • Establishes credibility

What it does well

  • Breaks up text with illustrations and photos
  • Structures the post with descriptive headings
  • Second look

Insights from Andrew

What motivated the post?

Destigmatizing mental health is definitely an overarching goal in all of my personal content. But I don’t know that I had a really concrete goal in mind for this post.

Become a stronger writer

  • Explore intrinsic motivation
  • Improve content marketing
  • Grow the Startup Watching newsletter

Fears about posting it to HN?

I think I was much less afraid of publishing the story in general than I was posting it to Hacker News.

The community can be vicious, and so I was expecting to get a bunch ridicule and people telling me ADHD wasn’t a real thing.

Fears about being vulnerable online?

I have a lot of fear and self doubt in general when it comes to publishing, but most of it isn’t about being vulnerable.

My fears are more, “does anyone really want to hear what I have to say? Do I have anything to add to this conversation? Am I going to come across as a self-absorbed twat for posting this?”

Writing with storytelling

The biggest challenge first is just to get something onto paper that I feel like I can work with. I do think a lot about storytelling as I write.

For major ideas, I try to think back about my personal experiences and find a story that illustrates my point.

Results

The results were incredible.

The story reached a ton of people on HN and twitter, and I got flooded with DMs from people with ADHD thanking me for sharing my story.

Results

Results

One cool unexpected benefit, the owner of krit.com reached out to me to ask if I wanted to buy the domain and ended up giving me a great deal.

More from Andrew