Hello, friends. This month, I'm excited to share with you a great way to improve the flow of your content, whether you're giving a talk, writing a chapter, or conducting a workshop. I'll also share how your company evaluates you.

Let's get right into it.

Guide Learners with Intentional Transitions

At some point, you learned about the importance of introductions and conclusions when delivering content, whether it's in a written form or as a presentation. A good introduction motivates people. It engages them and lets them know what they will get into and why it matters. A strong conclusion wraps everything up.

However, effective content needs more than just bookends. You'll improve the experience if you carefully and thoughtfully place transitions throughout that guide your audience from one concept to the next. These transitions act like tour guides, helping people understand where they've been and where they're going.

When you're deep in the process of creating content, it's easy to focus on the content and concept itself. You want to get right to the point. But jumping directly into topics without first preparing the reader or participant will leave them feeling disoriented. Imagine walking into a movie theater halfway through a movie - even if each scene is well-crafted, you'll struggle to understand the context and significance of what you're watching. Each section of your content benefits from having its own mini-introduction and conclusion.

Here's how to do it so it doesn't feel forced.

Create "signposts" with transitions

Have you ever reached the end of a section that just... stops? Maybe it ends with a code block or a diagram, leaving you wondering if something got cut off. To fix that, end each section with a brief wrap-up that signals it's time to move on.

For example, if you're writing a tutorial about API authentication and you just covered HTTP requests, add this to the end of the section to set them up for the next step:

"Now that you understand how HTTP requests work, you'll explore basic API authentication to protect your applications from unauthorized access."

Transitions act as signposts on a learning journey. You can clearly see what's coming next. These don't need to be lengthy or forced. Good transitions:

• Create a sense of progress and accomplishment.
• Orient the learner to what's coming next.
• Provide natural stopping points for reflection.
• Connect new information to what they just learned.

A transition connects sections and makes things flow, but you improve things even more by ensuring each section starts with its own introduction.

Prepare the learner in each section

Instead of jumping right into the content, tell the audience what's about to happen with a short introduction that explains what the section covers and why it's important.

For example, Instead of jumping straight into API authentication, introduce the section and state what the learner will do:

"If your API handles sensitive information, you'll want to restrict access. You can authenticate API requests in several ways, but you can start with API keys you send in the request headers. To implement this, you'll create a way for users to generate their API token, and then you'll modify the code so that it returns a 403 error code if the token is invalid. Once that's in place, you'll have a basic level of security and a solid foundation you can use to build on."

That short introduction tells your learners exactly what they'll do in the section. It's also more specific than the transition that set it up. It stands on its own but also connects to the previous section.

Plan your path

Good content starts with an outline. A good outline includes your introduction, content sections, and conclusion. Add your section introductions and transitions to your outline as you build out each section using these questions to guide you:

• What does the learner need to know before this section?
• What's the key takeaway from this section?
• How does this section connect to the next one?

This will help you create natural bridges between topics rather than forcing connections later.

Good transitions shouldn't feel formulaic. They should flow naturally with your content. Here are some approaches:

• Use questions to bridge topics: "Now that you can deploy your application, how do you monitor its health?"
• Reference real-world scenarios: "This debugging technique becomes especially valuable when you're working with large codebases..."
• Build on previous examples: "Remember that user authentication system? Let's add role-based permissions to make it more secure."

Build these transitions and introductions into your outline, and you'll have a stronger roadmap for your content. The resulting content will flow better, and your learners will have natural stopping points where they can reflect, take a break, and get back up to speed later.

My Latest Book

I'm excited to announce that my latest book, tmux 3: Productive Mouse-Free Development is available now in beta.

Take control of your environment with tmux, a keyboard-driven terminal multiplexer that you can tailor to your workflow. With this updated third edition for tmux 3, you’ll customize, script, and leverage tmux’s unique abilities to craft a productive terminal environment that lets you keep your fingers on your keyboard’s home row.

If you order now you'll support my work, and you'll get an updated copy once the beta is over.

How Your Employer Evaluates You

Your employer is constantly forming opinions about you. They're getting feedback from their peers, your team, and through their own assessment. While formal performance reviews happen once or twice a year, your manager is looking at you in terms of your performance and your behavior. They're typically looking at three things:

• Do you deliver value?
• Are you well-liked within the company?
• Do you make them look good?

Before I dive into each of these areas, I'll preface this by saying that all of this assumes your company leadership is somewhat experienced and your direct manager isn't insecure.

Do you deliver value?

You were hired to do a job and provide the company value. Your value comes from both the work you deliver and the decisions you make about what to prioritize. Strong technical skills matter, but consistently choosing high-impact work over comfortable tasks demonstrates real business value.

I've worked with lots of busy people, but busy doesn't always mean productive. And I've found myself too emotionally attached to things that felt right but weren't providing value and weren't aligned.

Your day-to-day decisions shape your impact more than you might realize. Whether you tackle technical debt that slows down the team, automate a process that saves hours each week, or build features that directly improve user metrics, these choices compound over time. Even small decisions like thoroughly documenting your code or proactively sharing knowledge with teammates contribute to the team's overall effectiveness.

Don't assume your impact is obvious. Take ownership of measuring and communicating your value by tracking relevant metrics for your work and sharing these results with others widely. If these metrics don't exist, create them. I've had to set up my own metrics at my last two jobs to make sure I could clearly communicate what I do and what impact I deliver. Document improvements you've made, time saved, problems solved, and revenue generated from your work if you can.

If you drive value, you're setting yourself up for success.

Are you well-liked within the company?

You're evaluated on your behavior as well as your performance. You could be a top performer, but you can hurt yourself through action and inaction.

Like many, you might cringe at the term "office politics" because you associate it with self-serving behavior. But at its core, office politics is about building relationships with stakeholders to get things done effectively. Everyone wants to advance their career; the key is doing it while creating value for others.

You become well-liked by building relationships, building trust, and delivering impact. You don't have to agree to everything; you can set boundaries. But it's how you set them and how you interact that determines how things go for you. Have opinions that you're willing to change. Seek to understand. Ask for help rather than be the one with all the answers. Build coalitions. Support others' work and efforts. And be consistent.

Being well-liked won't be enough on its own for very long. You still need to consistently deliver results. The most successful people I know combine strong performance with positive relationships.

Do you make your manager look good?

People look out for their best interests, and that includes your manager. If you do work that makes your boss look good, they will want to keep you around. If your manager doesn't like you, the only place you're going is out the door. Assuming your manager is stable, secure, and experienced, they'll want to see you succeed because your success is their success. They can't accomplish any of their goals without their team doing excellent work. If you consistently deliver value and help them get wins, they'll rely on you and even defer to you even more.

Everything you do reflects back on your manager. When you miss deadlines, mess up work, or clash with people, your manager has to answer for it. Good managers deal with problems quickly because if they don't, their own boss will start asking questions about their performance. Everyone is accountable to someone else.

Some insecure or less experienced managers feel threatened when their people do too well. But that eventually backfires. Smart companies notice when good managers drive away talented people who get things done, especially ones who are well-liked.

Do good work, get along with people, and help your manager win, and you'll be someone they can't afford to lose, especially when things get rough.

Things to Explore

I'm always looking for free APIs to use when building courses or workshops, and this list of free APIS is a great resource. They test these daily to ensure they work.

Parting Thoughts

Here are a few things to think about until next month's issue:

• Look at your most recent content piece. Did you include clear transitions between sections? How might you improve them?
• Think about the last time you felt lost while learning something new. Were there missing transitions that could have helped you stay oriented?
• When you're planning your next piece of content, try writing the transitions first. How does this affect your content structure?
• How do you build relationships at work? Who do you need to build a stronger relationship with that you haven't talked to in a while? Schedule a catch-up call with them right now.

Have a great month!

I'd love to talk with you about this newsletter on Mastodon, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Let's connect!

Please support this newsletter and my work by encouraging others to subscribe or by buying a friend a copy of Exercises for Programmers, Small, Sharp Software Tools, or any of my other books.