A disturbing large percentage of citations of some of my best work say "Written in 2012 but still relevant", which a) is a direct artifact of the blogging form factor, b) is an unforced error, and c) I should just fix forever when I achieve activation energy.
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"But how will I know if the world has changed and one should now not charge more and/or not negotiate salary and/or assume everyone has exactly two names and/or get rolled by credit reporting agencies after talking to them on the phone", go people who will not read to end anyway.
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As a public service to other people who write for a living, here are five representative examples. I've removed identifying information because this is not about shaming people who share a common heuristic about valuing professional output, it is about adapting to that:
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Notice: The social purpose of mentioning the age is *to apologize to one's own audience* that you are telling them Old News. These users are explicitly not not trusting the article, they model people dear to them as not trusting the article solely based on the age.
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Also notice: These folks often state that they are *surprised* that something as old as ten years old (with exclamation points!) could still be relevant.
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I only had to go back 2 weeks to dig up these examples. How many more thousands of people said it! How many more tens of thousands merely thought it, and either read the advice but didn't share, read the advice but didn't apply to their lives, or stopped reading at date!
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Don't date your work!
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Replying to @patio11
Do you mean “don’t put a date on your work” or “create work that doesn’t age”? If the latter, do you have practical advice? Feels like it would preclude people from writing timely pieces.
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I mean both of those things, for most writers. Most people shouldn't write pieces which depreciate. Timeliness is overrated if your publication doesn't structurally *have* to publish on a defined cadence. The NYT can throw out great writing daily. Most writers shouldn't.
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Replying to @patio11 @dylanatsmith
100% agree that investing your time in work that rapidly depreciates is probably bad. But omitting a date is simply doing readers a disservice.
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Replying to @patio11 @dylanatsmith
The hard part, though, is writing something that is truly timeless. Not many people "pay homage only to eternal laws".
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