A great hook grabs readers in the first 2–3 sentences by doing one of these:
1. **Bold claim:** "Most productivity advice is wrong — and it's making you worse." 2. **Surprising statistic:** "93% of startups fail within 5 years. The 7% all share one habit." 3. **Story/scene:** "At 2am on a Tuesday, our database was down and 10,000 users were locked out." 4. **Question that creates tension:** "What if the way you're learning to code is wasting 80% of your time?" 5. **Contrarian take:** "I deleted all my productivity apps. Here's why my output tripled."
**What to avoid:** Starting with background context, definitions, or "In this blog post I will...". Jump straight to the tension or insight. Readers decide in 5 seconds whether to keep reading.