正在加载视频...

视频加载失败

返回首页

Sam Parr credits a practice called "copywork" for helping him build an 8-figure media business. He learned it from Benjamin Franklin, and it's the way we used to teach kids how to write. The method is simple: have people copy others' writing by hand. Simple as that — and...

david_perell's profile picture

David Perell

477,510 subscribers

761,707 次观看 • 2 年前 •via X (Twitter)

LIVE

Anya Rossi• Live Now

Private livecam show

10 条评论

David Perell 的头像
David Perell2 年前

If you want to jump in and listen to the full episode, I posted it on Twitter below.

Matt Schnuck 的头像
Matt Schnuck2 年前

“Imitation precedes creation” - Stephen King

Vinchenso Kendall 的头像
Vinchenso Kendall2 年前

I am a huge believer in copy work. I also think it is a great technique to learn anything. UI Design - Copy 30 great designs 3D Modeling - Copy 30 great 3D Assets Architecture - Copy 30 house plans The best part of it is that it's free and cost nothing but time.

Jake Baumann 的头像
Jake Baumann2 年前

@thesamparr Great interview. Sam is the best. 👏🏼 Stephen King says this in “On Writing” as well. Imitation precedes creation.

Jack 的头像
Jack2 年前

Hunter S. Thompson rewrote The Great Gatsby because "wanted to know what it felt like to write a masterpiece".

Stefan Bodnarescu 的头像
Stefan Bodnarescu2 年前

I’m working my way through Paul Graham’s essays

Dave Villalva 的头像
Dave Villalva2 年前

In my early 20's, I copied Anne Rice's The Vampire Lestat when learning to write fiction. She was my favorite author and taught me so much without having to hire her.

Michael Girdley 的头像
Michael Girdley2 年前

It's genius.

Ross Simmonds 的头像
Ross Simmonds2 年前

This is nostalgic for me. I rewrote all of Gary Halbert's sales letters back when I was in University. Such a powerful approach to learning.

Bobby Fijan 的头像
Bobby Fijan2 年前

This is why children should read a Great Books program. Fill your mind with excellent classical writing and stories

相关视频

Here are all the techniques Sam Parr used to teach himself the delicate art of copywriting. In many ways, marketing hasn’t really changed all that much since the 1940s and ‘50s. By mastering a few simple tricks and principles, and working diligently at your style, ANYONE can become a great and compelling writer who can sell their audience on their ideas and proposals. But HOW? In this essential TWiST episode, Sam and @jason provide a complete guide to leveling up your marketing and copywriting abilities, including… 👉 Why longer-form text is ALWAYS better than short sentences 👉 Mastering CopyWork, the technique Ben Franklin used to improve his writing 👉 Why stories make the biggest emotional impact 👉 When to use AI and when to rely on your own brain 👉 Why your goal should be writing at a 4th grade reading level 👉 Taking inspiration from Ted Turner And MORE! 🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇
1:06:13

Here are all the techniques Sam Parr used to teach himself the delicate art of copywriting. In many ways, marketing hasn’t really changed all that much since the 1940s and ‘50s. By mastering a few simple tricks and principles, and working diligently at your style, ANYONE can become a great and compelling writer who can sell their audience on their ideas and proposals. But HOW? In this essential TWiST episode, Sam and @jason provide a complete guide to leveling up your marketing and copywriting abilities, including… 👉 Why longer-form text is ALWAYS better than short sentences 👉 Mastering CopyWork, the technique Ben Franklin used to improve his writing 👉 Why stories make the biggest emotional impact 👉 When to use AI and when to rely on your own brain 👉 Why your goal should be writing at a 4th grade reading level 👉 Taking inspiration from Ted Turner And MORE! 🎥 Watch the full episode here 👇

This Week in Startups

13,180 次观看 • 6 个月前

Announcing: Writing Examples Today is launch day! We built this website to celebrate great writing. It’s 100% free. Each article deconstructs a piece of writing from an iconic writer. The goal is to give you X-Ray vision into what makes sentences and paragraphs come alive (so that you can improve at your craft). Every example has an analysis of why the writing works. Analytical often means dry. But instead of going technical, we’ve gone technicolor. There are text-explainers, summary graphics, and videos that come together to make the writing instruction lively and multi-dimensional. It’s a place where you can discover how great writing comes together. Where we lift up the hood and see the mechanics in action. It isn’t about giving you a set of rules to follow. It’s about showing the diversity of ways writers approach their craft, so you can develop your own style. What are some of the articles about? You’ll learn how to describe a party like F. Scott Fitzgerald, how to tell a story like George Orwell, how to write a speech like John F. Kennedy. There are other articles inspired by the likes of John Steinbeck, James Clear, Winston Churchill, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, Steven Pressfield, and Jerry Seinfeld. Writing Examples is a crusade against the sterility of contemporary writing. So much of the advice you read says the same thing: “Be direct. Cut the fluff. Get to the point. Stick to short sentences.” And yeah, sure, this advice has merit. It’s useful in certain cases, but the problem is writers take these rules to be universal, which has homogenized writing styles. Even in my own writing, there’ve been so many times where I’ve stripped away my own voice in the name of “correctness.” I regret that. The truth is, there is no one way to write well, just as there is no one way to speak well. The way you speak in a boardroom is different from the way you speak on a first date, which is different from the way you speak with your childhood best friends. Writing is similar. Writing Examples is the opposite of Grammarly. It celebrates the wild, wacky, and the weird because it’s the bedrock of personality. The site’s explicit purpose is to inject some High Noon Chutzpah back into the world of writing. To teach you how to write with distinctly human fingerprints in a world that’s about to be flooded with AI-generated content. Forget playing it safe. That’s the most dangerous thing you can do in a world of instant writing. I want you to write with personality. I want you to play with punctuation. I want you to ditch the corporatized hogwash. I want to expand your sense of what great writing can be. And I want you to have fun doing it. But there’s more to the mission. Writing Examples is a protest against today’s Internet, where people spend the majority of their time reading ad-polluted articles and doom-scrolling the same few social media sites. Remember when we used to surf the Internet? When every site was its own wave to ride? Now, we’re like phone-addicted zombies, we mindlessly scroll Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram until we feel bad about ourselves — only to repeat the cycle a few hours later. Writing Examples is different. Heartfelt writing deserves a heartfelt presentation, so every element of the site has been designed from scratch. Energetically, we wanted to honor the gravitas of classic writing without the sleepiness of a drab old library shelf. We said no to ads. We said no to pop-ups. No hijacking your attention. None of the flat white backgrounds that make the Internet feel so homogenous. And we said no to anything that feels like your 5th-grade English class. Writing Examples isn’t about what’s trending. It’s about learning from the great writers of times past, most of whom you know, many of whom you probably haven’t taken the time to read. The ultimate goal is to make Writing Examples a one-stop shop to learn about any kind of writing you can think of. Now, I dare you to dive into the site and get to work.
0:38

Announcing: Writing Examples Today is launch day! We built this website to celebrate great writing. It’s 100% free. Each article deconstructs a piece of writing from an iconic writer. The goal is to give you X-Ray vision into what makes sentences and paragraphs come alive (so that you can improve at your craft). Every example has an analysis of why the writing works. Analytical often means dry. But instead of going technical, we’ve gone technicolor. There are text-explainers, summary graphics, and videos that come together to make the writing instruction lively and multi-dimensional. It’s a place where you can discover how great writing comes together. Where we lift up the hood and see the mechanics in action. It isn’t about giving you a set of rules to follow. It’s about showing the diversity of ways writers approach their craft, so you can develop your own style. What are some of the articles about? You’ll learn how to describe a party like F. Scott Fitzgerald, how to tell a story like George Orwell, how to write a speech like John F. Kennedy. There are other articles inspired by the likes of John Steinbeck, James Clear, Winston Churchill, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, Steven Pressfield, and Jerry Seinfeld. Writing Examples is a crusade against the sterility of contemporary writing. So much of the advice you read says the same thing: “Be direct. Cut the fluff. Get to the point. Stick to short sentences.” And yeah, sure, this advice has merit. It’s useful in certain cases, but the problem is writers take these rules to be universal, which has homogenized writing styles. Even in my own writing, there’ve been so many times where I’ve stripped away my own voice in the name of “correctness.” I regret that. The truth is, there is no one way to write well, just as there is no one way to speak well. The way you speak in a boardroom is different from the way you speak on a first date, which is different from the way you speak with your childhood best friends. Writing is similar. Writing Examples is the opposite of Grammarly. It celebrates the wild, wacky, and the weird because it’s the bedrock of personality. The site’s explicit purpose is to inject some High Noon Chutzpah back into the world of writing. To teach you how to write with distinctly human fingerprints in a world that’s about to be flooded with AI-generated content. Forget playing it safe. That’s the most dangerous thing you can do in a world of instant writing. I want you to write with personality. I want you to play with punctuation. I want you to ditch the corporatized hogwash. I want to expand your sense of what great writing can be. And I want you to have fun doing it. But there’s more to the mission. Writing Examples is a protest against today’s Internet, where people spend the majority of their time reading ad-polluted articles and doom-scrolling the same few social media sites. Remember when we used to surf the Internet? When every site was its own wave to ride? Now, we’re like phone-addicted zombies, we mindlessly scroll Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram until we feel bad about ourselves — only to repeat the cycle a few hours later. Writing Examples is different. Heartfelt writing deserves a heartfelt presentation, so every element of the site has been designed from scratch. Energetically, we wanted to honor the gravitas of classic writing without the sleepiness of a drab old library shelf. We said no to ads. We said no to pop-ups. No hijacking your attention. None of the flat white backgrounds that make the Internet feel so homogenous. And we said no to anything that feels like your 5th-grade English class. Writing Examples isn’t about what’s trending. It’s about learning from the great writers of times past, most of whom you know, many of whom you probably haven’t taken the time to read. The ultimate goal is to make Writing Examples a one-stop shop to learn about any kind of writing you can think of. Now, I dare you to dive into the site and get to work.

David Perell

688,092 次观看 • 1 年前

Paul Harding spent 15 years writing a novel that dozens of publishers rejected, only to finally get it published and win the Pulitzer Prize. Some highlights from our conversation: 1. Your writing can only be as good as the best stuff you’ve read. 2. Don't write for bad readers. Don't write for readers who won't like what you're doing. 3. Get allergic to pre-fabricated phrases: So much language is spoken unconsciously. It’s riddled with cliches. It’s fine to use it in your day-to-day life but bringing it to the page is a recipe for terrible writing. 4 How can you break free from pre-fabricated language? Try the counterpoint technique: If something is liquid, describe it as a solid; if something is white, describe it as black; if something is quiet, describe it as loud. You get the idea. This simple exercise will break you out of the linguistic autopilot that so many people are stuck in. 5. Want to observe the world more carefully? Slow down. 6. Paul’s mantra for good writing: Maximum density, maximum readability. It means packing as much meaning into every sentence without making it feel like a mountain. 7. Get intimate with your favorite books. Literature is the only art where people say 'I read that once.' Nobody says that about their favorite album. 8. Paul Harding tried writing political novels because he thought that’s what he was supposed to do, only to realize that they were awful. Then he surrendered to his artistic grain and started writing what he actually cared about (and only then could he have won the Pulitzer Prize). 9. The biggest barrier to quality writing is the idea that you already know what you’re looking at. Drop that presumption. Drop all use of received, acculturated, or habituated language. Writing is a fight against the brain’s tendency to categorize the world and move on. 10. Good writing shouldn’t feel cluttered, but it’s fine to have a very cluttered first draft because it’s so much easier to remove things than add things over time. 11. The problem with answers, as opposed to questions, is that they can close off thinking as opposed to opening it up. Paul says: "If somebody reads my book and gets what the point is, they never have to think about it again." 12. Give yourself permission to be ridiculously ambitious. Melville was just trying to write a book as good as Hamlet. Shakespeare is just trying to write a book that was as good as the Joseph story in Genesis. Paul says: "You're not trying to write a crappy book, are you? Wouldn't you like to write a book that's as good as your favorite book?" I've shared the full conversation with Paul Harding below, and the links for YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts in the reply tweets.
1:28:52

Paul Harding spent 15 years writing a novel that dozens of publishers rejected, only to finally get it published and win the Pulitzer Prize. Some highlights from our conversation: 1. Your writing can only be as good as the best stuff you’ve read. 2. Don't write for bad readers. Don't write for readers who won't like what you're doing. 3. Get allergic to pre-fabricated phrases: So much language is spoken unconsciously. It’s riddled with cliches. It’s fine to use it in your day-to-day life but bringing it to the page is a recipe for terrible writing. 4 How can you break free from pre-fabricated language? Try the counterpoint technique: If something is liquid, describe it as a solid; if something is white, describe it as black; if something is quiet, describe it as loud. You get the idea. This simple exercise will break you out of the linguistic autopilot that so many people are stuck in. 5. Want to observe the world more carefully? Slow down. 6. Paul’s mantra for good writing: Maximum density, maximum readability. It means packing as much meaning into every sentence without making it feel like a mountain. 7. Get intimate with your favorite books. Literature is the only art where people say 'I read that once.' Nobody says that about their favorite album. 8. Paul Harding tried writing political novels because he thought that’s what he was supposed to do, only to realize that they were awful. Then he surrendered to his artistic grain and started writing what he actually cared about (and only then could he have won the Pulitzer Prize). 9. The biggest barrier to quality writing is the idea that you already know what you’re looking at. Drop that presumption. Drop all use of received, acculturated, or habituated language. Writing is a fight against the brain’s tendency to categorize the world and move on. 10. Good writing shouldn’t feel cluttered, but it’s fine to have a very cluttered first draft because it’s so much easier to remove things than add things over time. 11. The problem with answers, as opposed to questions, is that they can close off thinking as opposed to opening it up. Paul says: "If somebody reads my book and gets what the point is, they never have to think about it again." 12. Give yourself permission to be ridiculously ambitious. Melville was just trying to write a book as good as Hamlet. Shakespeare is just trying to write a book that was as good as the Joseph story in Genesis. Paul says: "You're not trying to write a crappy book, are you? Wouldn't you like to write a book that's as good as your favorite book?" I've shared the full conversation with Paul Harding below, and the links for YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts in the reply tweets.

David Perell

158,574 次观看 • 1 年前

Conor Neill: "If you can't write it clearly, the thinking was weak, not the writing" "To believe that something that feels clear in your head is thinking that's a very dangerous thing. When you try to put it down on a page, when you try to lay out your ideas in a structured order that someone else can digest, and you realize that you can't, I suggest the thinking was weak, not the writing." Neill explains his philosophy: "Writing is thinking. The process of taking a notepad, capturing thoughts, laying out the things that I'm thinking about, that is thinking. Sitting and staring out a window, maybe with a cigarette, whatever it is that you think is philosophizing that is not structured thinking. It's only when you're writing down and structuring, getting order into your thoughts on a page so that another person is able to get into the context, the perspective, the different things that you are pulling in to have your worldview." He shares a simple technique: "No matter what you are writing, whether it's an email, a Word document, when you've got a blank sheet of paper, start with the word 'This.' T-H-I-S. Starting with the word 'This' forces you to explain what the document is. It forces you to articulate to the reader what it is that they are holding. It forces you to describe why this document exists, what the objective is. And if you begin with the objective, it helps the reader, and it helps you articulate clearly why you are taking the time to write." Neill shares the most-read post on his blog: "The one post that has got far more views than any other is a post I wrote called 'Why Amazon Banned PowerPoint.' In Amazon, if a presenter wishes to ask people to agree to a budget, to agree to give them resources, they don't use PowerPoint. They write a six-page Word document that states why they are asking for the money and the resources." He explains Jeff Bezos's reasoning: "PowerPoint is easy for the presenter, but it's hard for the people who listen. Writing a six-page essay is hard for the presenter, but it's a lot easier for the people that get to read the document." And there's a second part to the Amazon method: "In the management meeting, the first 20 minutes is reading time. If you have gone to the effort to write six pages explaining your proposal, you deserve to see your work read. You deserve to sit there and see people reading through your work. People will not read before the meeting. The only way you get people to fully digest the six pages is by holding them there for 20 minutes, reading through, noting down their questions. No debate, no discussion until everyone in the room has read all six pages, has taken in the context, has time to think about what they would like to question. After 20 minutes of silent reading, they can have a discussion but an informed discussion." Neill shares a second insight about writing: "Divide writing from editing. Writing is producing words. Editing is improving words. These two processes — you cannot run at the same time." He explains his approach: "Most writers just vomit out a bad first draft. I personally have learned to produce 500 words in one straight blast. If something's wrong, if I need to check a fact, if I want to go back and fix something, I don't. I go 500 words of just getting it out onto the page. When I've got 500 words, then I'll stop and begin the process of editing." Neill shares what great writers understand: "All great writing is rewriting. It's editing. It's the crafting of taking a bad, crappy first draft and slowly iterating it, improving it 1% each time through. But if you haven't got that first draft, there's nothing to improve." He explains how separating these processes changed everything: "Learning to separate these two was one of the most powerful things to get rid of writer's block, to get rid of getting stuck, to get rid of procrastination. My mission when I sit down to write is: decide, am I writing or editing? If it's writing, get 500 bad words down on the page in the next 20 minutes. If it's editing, take the time to go through, improve sentences, change the order, change the structure. But these are two separate processes." Neill reveals the truth about good writing: "Some of my best articles started out as a bad blog post. Then I rewrote it as an article to give out to students. Then I rewrote it to share on another blog. Then I rewrote it to provide to a magazine. It's the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth time of rewriting where it starts to be something that other people read and say, 'Wow, you're quite good at writing.' And the answer is I'm not good at writing. I vomit out a bad first draft and then go through this iterative process. One time, two times, three times, four times through slowly improving. But if you have no first draft, there's nothing to improve."
7:40

Conor Neill: "If you can't write it clearly, the thinking was weak, not the writing" "To believe that something that feels clear in your head is thinking that's a very dangerous thing. When you try to put it down on a page, when you try to lay out your ideas in a structured order that someone else can digest, and you realize that you can't, I suggest the thinking was weak, not the writing." Neill explains his philosophy: "Writing is thinking. The process of taking a notepad, capturing thoughts, laying out the things that I'm thinking about, that is thinking. Sitting and staring out a window, maybe with a cigarette, whatever it is that you think is philosophizing that is not structured thinking. It's only when you're writing down and structuring, getting order into your thoughts on a page so that another person is able to get into the context, the perspective, the different things that you are pulling in to have your worldview." He shares a simple technique: "No matter what you are writing, whether it's an email, a Word document, when you've got a blank sheet of paper, start with the word 'This.' T-H-I-S. Starting with the word 'This' forces you to explain what the document is. It forces you to articulate to the reader what it is that they are holding. It forces you to describe why this document exists, what the objective is. And if you begin with the objective, it helps the reader, and it helps you articulate clearly why you are taking the time to write." Neill shares the most-read post on his blog: "The one post that has got far more views than any other is a post I wrote called 'Why Amazon Banned PowerPoint.' In Amazon, if a presenter wishes to ask people to agree to a budget, to agree to give them resources, they don't use PowerPoint. They write a six-page Word document that states why they are asking for the money and the resources." He explains Jeff Bezos's reasoning: "PowerPoint is easy for the presenter, but it's hard for the people who listen. Writing a six-page essay is hard for the presenter, but it's a lot easier for the people that get to read the document." And there's a second part to the Amazon method: "In the management meeting, the first 20 minutes is reading time. If you have gone to the effort to write six pages explaining your proposal, you deserve to see your work read. You deserve to sit there and see people reading through your work. People will not read before the meeting. The only way you get people to fully digest the six pages is by holding them there for 20 minutes, reading through, noting down their questions. No debate, no discussion until everyone in the room has read all six pages, has taken in the context, has time to think about what they would like to question. After 20 minutes of silent reading, they can have a discussion but an informed discussion." Neill shares a second insight about writing: "Divide writing from editing. Writing is producing words. Editing is improving words. These two processes — you cannot run at the same time." He explains his approach: "Most writers just vomit out a bad first draft. I personally have learned to produce 500 words in one straight blast. If something's wrong, if I need to check a fact, if I want to go back and fix something, I don't. I go 500 words of just getting it out onto the page. When I've got 500 words, then I'll stop and begin the process of editing." Neill shares what great writers understand: "All great writing is rewriting. It's editing. It's the crafting of taking a bad, crappy first draft and slowly iterating it, improving it 1% each time through. But if you haven't got that first draft, there's nothing to improve." He explains how separating these processes changed everything: "Learning to separate these two was one of the most powerful things to get rid of writer's block, to get rid of getting stuck, to get rid of procrastination. My mission when I sit down to write is: decide, am I writing or editing? If it's writing, get 500 bad words down on the page in the next 20 minutes. If it's editing, take the time to go through, improve sentences, change the order, change the structure. But these are two separate processes." Neill reveals the truth about good writing: "Some of my best articles started out as a bad blog post. Then I rewrote it as an article to give out to students. Then I rewrote it to share on another blog. Then I rewrote it to provide to a magazine. It's the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth time of rewriting where it starts to be something that other people read and say, 'Wow, you're quite good at writing.' And the answer is I'm not good at writing. I vomit out a bad first draft and then go through this iterative process. One time, two times, three times, four times through slowly improving. But if you have no first draft, there's nothing to improve."

Jaynit

18,165 次观看 • 3 个月前

Watch this game-changing dissertation on "expert writing." Expert writers write to "think" about the world. 99% of experts write and think at the same time. They use the writing process to help themselves think. This is how they do their best thinking. Write to think about the world. Do this because you care, because you want to be part of progress, because you want to make a dent in the universe. Write to inspire and influence. And when you are finished writing, and you click publish, think about your work this way... the intent of your text is to cause readers to change the way they think about the world. Engagement metrics don't really matter in comparison. Whether or not your text is valuable, depends on whether or not your readers perceive that you have valuably changed what they think, or what they do, or how they decide. One of the reasons it's so hard for smart people to write well is because they don't write to change the way people think about the world. They write to complete a project, to earn a grade, to be assessed. Or they write to publish *their* thoughts without going through a mental and soulful exercise of writing to think about the world, without writing to change how people think about the world. Write to think about the world. Change how people think about the world. In an era of #GenerativeAI, content isn't the end game. Your goal isn't just to get someone's attention, generate reactions, or show up in search. Your mission is to change how people think about the world. Change How People Think About the World. Thank you, Larry McEnerney (now-retired former Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program).
3:44

Watch this game-changing dissertation on "expert writing." Expert writers write to "think" about the world. 99% of experts write and think at the same time. They use the writing process to help themselves think. This is how they do their best thinking. Write to think about the world. Do this because you care, because you want to be part of progress, because you want to make a dent in the universe. Write to inspire and influence. And when you are finished writing, and you click publish, think about your work this way... the intent of your text is to cause readers to change the way they think about the world. Engagement metrics don't really matter in comparison. Whether or not your text is valuable, depends on whether or not your readers perceive that you have valuably changed what they think, or what they do, or how they decide. One of the reasons it's so hard for smart people to write well is because they don't write to change the way people think about the world. They write to complete a project, to earn a grade, to be assessed. Or they write to publish *their* thoughts without going through a mental and soulful exercise of writing to think about the world, without writing to change how people think about the world. Write to think about the world. Change how people think about the world. In an era of #GenerativeAI, content isn't the end game. Your goal isn't just to get someone's attention, generate reactions, or show up in search. Your mission is to change how people think about the world. Change How People Think About the World. Thank you, Larry McEnerney (now-retired former Director of the University of Chicago's Writing Program).

Brian Solis

113,698 次观看 • 3 年前

What if you built a company to maximize deep work? That's what Sam Corcos did. He hasn't regularly checked the news since 2013 and his business is worth $300 million. 12 lessons on writing from the founder and CEO of Levels: 1. The average tech worker can't go more than six minutes without checking Slack. No wonder people struggle to write. 2. Evergreen tip for getting people to actually read your work: add value to the internet. 3. Collaboration is overrated. Smart people thinking deeply about something for a long time, and recording the conclusions via writing, is underrated. 4. Sam did an experiment where he stopped reading the news for a month. He took the time he used to spend reading the news and started reading books instead — he finished eight books that month. 5. Writing solves disagreements. If you don’t pin down your thoughts on paper, you can “discuss” forever without ever reaching clarity. But the conversation becomes much more productive once the goals, methods, and main assumptions are written down. 6. Just about everybody could benefit from more intentional, deep, strategic thought. Writing is how you unlock this mode. 7. Remote work fails without a few great writers on the team. Internal company communication will spiral into a game of telephone without good communicators. 8. Specific feedback is better delivered via writing while general comments are best shared over Loom (because the recipient can feel your vibe.) Pick the right medium; the wrong one will botch your message. 9. A writing culture is protection against the tyranny of the loudest voice. It gives space for quieter people with insight to speak up. 10. You’ll never be able to reflect and write, unless you intentionally carve out the time. “Things” will always turn up. Create non-negotiable writing hours and protect them. 11. Sam does one Think Week every quarter where he disconnects from his work to write deep strategy memos. 12. You need to detach from the hive mind before creative ideas turn up (and it is often via writing that the flimsy premises of the hive mind become obvious.) I've shared the full conversation with Sam Corcos below. This one's a little different from most How I Write episodes because we went so deep on a single topic: business writing. If you'd rather listen on Apple or Spotify, check out the reply tweets.
1:38:55

What if you built a company to maximize deep work? That's what Sam Corcos did. He hasn't regularly checked the news since 2013 and his business is worth $300 million. 12 lessons on writing from the founder and CEO of Levels: 1. The average tech worker can't go more than six minutes without checking Slack. No wonder people struggle to write. 2. Evergreen tip for getting people to actually read your work: add value to the internet. 3. Collaboration is overrated. Smart people thinking deeply about something for a long time, and recording the conclusions via writing, is underrated. 4. Sam did an experiment where he stopped reading the news for a month. He took the time he used to spend reading the news and started reading books instead — he finished eight books that month. 5. Writing solves disagreements. If you don’t pin down your thoughts on paper, you can “discuss” forever without ever reaching clarity. But the conversation becomes much more productive once the goals, methods, and main assumptions are written down. 6. Just about everybody could benefit from more intentional, deep, strategic thought. Writing is how you unlock this mode. 7. Remote work fails without a few great writers on the team. Internal company communication will spiral into a game of telephone without good communicators. 8. Specific feedback is better delivered via writing while general comments are best shared over Loom (because the recipient can feel your vibe.) Pick the right medium; the wrong one will botch your message. 9. A writing culture is protection against the tyranny of the loudest voice. It gives space for quieter people with insight to speak up. 10. You’ll never be able to reflect and write, unless you intentionally carve out the time. “Things” will always turn up. Create non-negotiable writing hours and protect them. 11. Sam does one Think Week every quarter where he disconnects from his work to write deep strategy memos. 12. You need to detach from the hive mind before creative ideas turn up (and it is often via writing that the flimsy premises of the hive mind become obvious.) I've shared the full conversation with Sam Corcos below. This one's a little different from most How I Write episodes because we went so deep on a single topic: business writing. If you'd rather listen on Apple or Spotify, check out the reply tweets.

David Perell

42,974 次观看 • 2 年前

I’m sharing this beautiful and powerful song from Bruce Springsteen, that he wrote in dedication to the people of Minneapolis and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Take a listen. The art of resistance, the voice of artists, well known and every day people all over the world singing, writing, speaking up and out is so inspiring. We the people are alive, empowered, and making a difference with our voices. My friends: use your voice in whatever way makes sense to you! Poetry, singing, writing, speaking, loving, cooking, painting. Show up in the way that you can. We are all creative beings with a voice. We the united people, of these United States, are rising above. We are showing that we care about our neighbors, our fellow human beings. Have no doubt the people are rising. It’s a beautful thing.
4:35

I’m sharing this beautiful and powerful song from Bruce Springsteen, that he wrote in dedication to the people of Minneapolis and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Take a listen. The art of resistance, the voice of artists, well known and every day people all over the world singing, writing, speaking up and out is so inspiring. We the people are alive, empowered, and making a difference with our voices. My friends: use your voice in whatever way makes sense to you! Poetry, singing, writing, speaking, loving, cooking, painting. Show up in the way that you can. We are all creative beings with a voice. We the united people, of these United States, are rising above. We are showing that we care about our neighbors, our fellow human beings. Have no doubt the people are rising. It’s a beautful thing.

Maria Shriver

266,343 次观看 • 5 个月前

Why is Warren Buffett's writing so popular? He's built a career out of writing annual letters that are read by millions of people every year. Here's how his writing differs from other investors: 1. You can stand out in the business world by writing like an actual human being. 2. Don't just write about ideas. Joke around. So goes Buffett's famous line: "It's only when the tide goes out that you find out who's been swimming naked." 3. Write to a specific person, not a faceless group of masses. Legend has it that Buffett addresses the early drafts of his annual letters to his sister (Dorothy) and replaces her name with 'Shareholders' once he's done with it. 4. You can differentiate yourself simply by writing with a different voice. Buffett tries to come across as a folky, hokey, aw-shucks kind of guy who's nothing like the kind of Suit Guy you'd find in Midtown Manhattan. 5. Read things that other people aren't willing to read. Historically, part of Buffett's edge is that he was obsessively reading 10-K filings before they were as accessible as they are now. 6. What's another example of Buffett doing things that others weren't willing to do? Friends tell me he used to call managers at various companies and get them to disclose their business plans, back when this was legal. 7. Deadlines are your nemesis in the moment, but your friend in retrospect. Buffett has no choice but to produce an annual letter every year, and those annual deadlines have made him a prolific writer. 8. Share your wisdom freely. You don't need to share all of it, but it can help to share some of it. 9. Don't just share ideas. Name them. 10. What's an example of naming your ideas? In business, it's common knowledge that a company's success can compound. For example, it'll take 12 years for a company to reach $1 billion in revenue but only one more to reach $2 billion. Scale leads to more scale. Buffett calls this "The Snowball Effect." 11. You don’t need to write much to have outsized success. Warren Buffett (and Jeff Bezos) have built their reputations by writing one excellent letter to shareholders every year. 12. If you're early in your career and don't know where to begin, start writing. Buffett attracted some of his early investors by publishing his ideas. His mentor, Ben Graham, did the same thing. He wrote two best-selling books on his way to getting rich by investing in Geico early. 13. Writing is a BS detector for your ideas. Buffett once said: "Some of the things I think I think, I find don’t make any sense when I start trying to write them down." 14. Oh, and one more thing: Maybe you should drink more Diet Coke?!? These lessons are only a slice of the talk I've shared below about Warren Buffett's writing style. It centers around a framework called POP Writing, which you'll immediately be able to bring into your own writing. If you'd rather watch the full thing on YouTube, I've shared a link in the reply tweet.
12:27

Why is Warren Buffett's writing so popular? He's built a career out of writing annual letters that are read by millions of people every year. Here's how his writing differs from other investors: 1. You can stand out in the business world by writing like an actual human being. 2. Don't just write about ideas. Joke around. So goes Buffett's famous line: "It's only when the tide goes out that you find out who's been swimming naked." 3. Write to a specific person, not a faceless group of masses. Legend has it that Buffett addresses the early drafts of his annual letters to his sister (Dorothy) and replaces her name with 'Shareholders' once he's done with it. 4. You can differentiate yourself simply by writing with a different voice. Buffett tries to come across as a folky, hokey, aw-shucks kind of guy who's nothing like the kind of Suit Guy you'd find in Midtown Manhattan. 5. Read things that other people aren't willing to read. Historically, part of Buffett's edge is that he was obsessively reading 10-K filings before they were as accessible as they are now. 6. What's another example of Buffett doing things that others weren't willing to do? Friends tell me he used to call managers at various companies and get them to disclose their business plans, back when this was legal. 7. Deadlines are your nemesis in the moment, but your friend in retrospect. Buffett has no choice but to produce an annual letter every year, and those annual deadlines have made him a prolific writer. 8. Share your wisdom freely. You don't need to share all of it, but it can help to share some of it. 9. Don't just share ideas. Name them. 10. What's an example of naming your ideas? In business, it's common knowledge that a company's success can compound. For example, it'll take 12 years for a company to reach $1 billion in revenue but only one more to reach $2 billion. Scale leads to more scale. Buffett calls this "The Snowball Effect." 11. You don’t need to write much to have outsized success. Warren Buffett (and Jeff Bezos) have built their reputations by writing one excellent letter to shareholders every year. 12. If you're early in your career and don't know where to begin, start writing. Buffett attracted some of his early investors by publishing his ideas. His mentor, Ben Graham, did the same thing. He wrote two best-selling books on his way to getting rich by investing in Geico early. 13. Writing is a BS detector for your ideas. Buffett once said: "Some of the things I think I think, I find don’t make any sense when I start trying to write them down." 14. Oh, and one more thing: Maybe you should drink more Diet Coke?!? These lessons are only a slice of the talk I've shared below about Warren Buffett's writing style. It centers around a framework called POP Writing, which you'll immediately be able to bring into your own writing. If you'd rather watch the full thing on YouTube, I've shared a link in the reply tweet.

David Perell

27,191 次观看 • 1 年前

Sam Altman on his method for clear thinking: "I'm a huge notetaker. I go through one of these notebooks every two or three weeks." Sam has a very specific system for thinking clearly through writing. As he puts it: "You definitely want a spiral notebook because one thing that's important is you can rip pages out frequently. I take a bunch of notes and then I clearly rip them out so I can look at multiple pages at the same time, and I can crumple them up and throw them on the floor when I'm done." On why writing matters, even with AGI: "Writing is a tool for thinking, most importantly, and I don't think that's going anywhere. It's really important that people still learn to write for this reason. In the same way that even if there's going to be less traditional coding jobs, coding is a great way to learn to think too; you should still learn to code." His perfect writing environment? "I used to think like, oh, I got to get in the perfect place, and I got to set a time. Now I will take any 11 minutes uninterrupted that I can get sitting in the back of a car, laying in bed, whatever it is." He continues: “If I had a perfect thing it would be Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and nothing scheduled. But most of it happens in short chunks in the back of a car." On his rhythm for deep work: "I'm in the office kind of non-stop all week. I have no time to think, it's just crazy packed. And then on the weekends, I have long, quiet blocks and I'm not really around people. That cycle is very important to me."
4:45

Sam Altman on his method for clear thinking: "I'm a huge notetaker. I go through one of these notebooks every two or three weeks." Sam has a very specific system for thinking clearly through writing. As he puts it: "You definitely want a spiral notebook because one thing that's important is you can rip pages out frequently. I take a bunch of notes and then I clearly rip them out so I can look at multiple pages at the same time, and I can crumple them up and throw them on the floor when I'm done." On why writing matters, even with AGI: "Writing is a tool for thinking, most importantly, and I don't think that's going anywhere. It's really important that people still learn to write for this reason. In the same way that even if there's going to be less traditional coding jobs, coding is a great way to learn to think too; you should still learn to code." His perfect writing environment? "I used to think like, oh, I got to get in the perfect place, and I got to set a time. Now I will take any 11 minutes uninterrupted that I can get sitting in the back of a car, laying in bed, whatever it is." He continues: “If I had a perfect thing it would be Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and nothing scheduled. But most of it happens in short chunks in the back of a car." On his rhythm for deep work: "I'm in the office kind of non-stop all week. I have no time to think, it's just crazy packed. And then on the weekends, I have long, quiet blocks and I'm not really around people. That cycle is very important to me."

Jaynit

640,697 次观看 • 6 个月前

Kevin Kelly is one of the most influential tech writers of the last half-century. He's published 14 books, founded Wired magazine, and maybe even traveled to more places in Asia than anybody in human history. Here are 28 of his best maxims for writing: 1. Don't aim to be the best. Be the only. 2. Don’t create things to make money; make money so you can create things. 3. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. 4. Always demand a deadline. Doing so weeds out the superfluous and prevents you from insisting on perfection (which will limit you as a writer). 5. To write about something hard to explain, write a detailed letter to a friend about why it is so hard to explain, and then remove the initial “Dear Friend” part and you’ll have a great first draft. 6. The work on any worthy piece of writing is endless and infinite. Since you cannot limit the work, you must limit your hours. 7. Books are never finished, only abandoned. 8. When you are stuck, sleep on it. Give your subconscious an assignment while you sleep. You’ll have an answer in the morning or by the next time you sit down to write. 9. A multitude of bad ideas is necessary for one good idea. 10. The greatest teacher is called “doing.” 11. Efficiency is highly overrated; goofing off is highly underrated. 12. If you have a good idea, write it down. Don't assume you'll remember it. 13. Writing is not selfish; it's for the rest of us. If you don't do your thing and share your writing, you are cheating us. 14. Most articles and stories are improved significantly if you delete the first page of the manuscript. Start with the action. 15. The best way to learn anything is to teach what you know (and you can do it at scale by writing). 16. Productivity is often a distraction. Don't aim for better ways to get through your tasks as quickly as possible. Instead, look for writing projects that you never want to stop doing. 17. Occasionally your first idea is best, but usually it’s the fifth idea. You need to get all the obvious ideas out of the way. Try to surprise yourself. 18. Pay attention to what you pay attention to. 19. To be interesting just tell your own story with uncommon honesty. 20. Ironically, the best time to write a book is once you're done with the speaking tour for the book. 21. Read the books that your favorite authors once read. 22. When you find something you really enjoy, do it slowly. 23. The main reason to write something every day is that you must throw away a lot of good work to reach the great stuff. To let it all go easily you need to be convinced that there is “more where that came from.” You get that in steady production, which comes from a steady writing habit. 24. Habits are far more dependable than inspiration. Make progress by making habits. Don't focus on becoming a better writer. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a writing session. 25. The quality of a piece of writing hinges on its structure. Nail the structure and the ideas will fall into place. You'll know the structure is good when the reader doesn't even notice it. 26. To write something good, just do it. To write something great, just redo it, redo it, redo it. The secret to publishing great writing is to spend a lot of time rewriting. 27. When in doubt, retreat to honesty. Say more of what you really think and feel instead of trying to sound smart. 28. Principles like what you see here are not laws. They're like a hat. If one doesn't fit, try another. Many of these maxims are directly from Kevin Kelly's book: Excellent Advice for Living, while others are from the interview I just published with him about his approach to writing. I've linked to our full conversation in the tweet below.
0:34

Kevin Kelly is one of the most influential tech writers of the last half-century. He's published 14 books, founded Wired magazine, and maybe even traveled to more places in Asia than anybody in human history. Here are 28 of his best maxims for writing: 1. Don't aim to be the best. Be the only. 2. Don’t create things to make money; make money so you can create things. 3. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. 4. Always demand a deadline. Doing so weeds out the superfluous and prevents you from insisting on perfection (which will limit you as a writer). 5. To write about something hard to explain, write a detailed letter to a friend about why it is so hard to explain, and then remove the initial “Dear Friend” part and you’ll have a great first draft. 6. The work on any worthy piece of writing is endless and infinite. Since you cannot limit the work, you must limit your hours. 7. Books are never finished, only abandoned. 8. When you are stuck, sleep on it. Give your subconscious an assignment while you sleep. You’ll have an answer in the morning or by the next time you sit down to write. 9. A multitude of bad ideas is necessary for one good idea. 10. The greatest teacher is called “doing.” 11. Efficiency is highly overrated; goofing off is highly underrated. 12. If you have a good idea, write it down. Don't assume you'll remember it. 13. Writing is not selfish; it's for the rest of us. If you don't do your thing and share your writing, you are cheating us. 14. Most articles and stories are improved significantly if you delete the first page of the manuscript. Start with the action. 15. The best way to learn anything is to teach what you know (and you can do it at scale by writing). 16. Productivity is often a distraction. Don't aim for better ways to get through your tasks as quickly as possible. Instead, look for writing projects that you never want to stop doing. 17. Occasionally your first idea is best, but usually it’s the fifth idea. You need to get all the obvious ideas out of the way. Try to surprise yourself. 18. Pay attention to what you pay attention to. 19. To be interesting just tell your own story with uncommon honesty. 20. Ironically, the best time to write a book is once you're done with the speaking tour for the book. 21. Read the books that your favorite authors once read. 22. When you find something you really enjoy, do it slowly. 23. The main reason to write something every day is that you must throw away a lot of good work to reach the great stuff. To let it all go easily you need to be convinced that there is “more where that came from.” You get that in steady production, which comes from a steady writing habit. 24. Habits are far more dependable than inspiration. Make progress by making habits. Don't focus on becoming a better writer. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a writing session. 25. The quality of a piece of writing hinges on its structure. Nail the structure and the ideas will fall into place. You'll know the structure is good when the reader doesn't even notice it. 26. To write something good, just do it. To write something great, just redo it, redo it, redo it. The secret to publishing great writing is to spend a lot of time rewriting. 27. When in doubt, retreat to honesty. Say more of what you really think and feel instead of trying to sound smart. 28. Principles like what you see here are not laws. They're like a hat. If one doesn't fit, try another. Many of these maxims are directly from Kevin Kelly's book: Excellent Advice for Living, while others are from the interview I just published with him about his approach to writing. I've linked to our full conversation in the tweet below.

David Perell

370,509 次观看 • 2 年前

Is writing quality subjective or objective? Of course, taste is personal and writers hate rules, but the more you read, the more you see the same patterns everywhere. Michael Dean has scored 100s of essays on 27 different metrics. He says we can use AI not to automate writing, but to elevate it. Here’s what we talked about: 1) You can’t develop good taste without knowing the fundamentals of your genre. These 27 patterns across all essays are not rules, but questions. Once you understand the constraints, you can break them creatively. 2) The best way to get good at writing is to change how you read. Don’t just read for content. Highlight the parts that resonate, and then deconstruct the voice and structure. 3) Storytelling is about stretching the unknown across time. 4) Great titles do triple duty: they create mystery, distill your thesis, and use phonetics that roll off the tongue. 'Pride and Prejudice' succeeds on all counts, while 'English Aristocracy' falls flat. 5) Get feedback by asking readers what they love and hate. Everyone knows to rework the parts people hate, but don't forget about the other invisible enemy: boredom. Beware of the parts people are indifferent to. Forgettable sections are the enemy of good writing, and no reaction is a bad reaction. 6) The ultimate goal of writing advice is to forget it. Good practice brings you fluency. People romanticize the Grateful Dead as an emblem of free-spirited intuition, but nobody talks about their insane work ethic. Young Jerry Garcia practiced banjo scales for 10 hours a day. Phil Lesh studied classical music theory for trumpet. They kicked out Bob Weir for not being rigorous enough and he had to work his way back into the band. By going into your head, you can get out of your head. 7) A good hook is a fractal. A hook isn’t just a clever way to intrigue a reader, it should capture the core dilemma of your essay. Understand the questions your writing answers, and then bake those questions into the subtext of your opening. 8) Personal writing involves the biographical details of your life. Could somebody put their name on your essay and get away with it? If so, you’re not on the page. 9) Personal writing has 3 criteria: biography (what happened), interiority (what you thought), and outlook (what you believe). It’s not about pushing these to their extremes, but having them work together to support your main idea. 10) To find your voice, change your arena. The way we shape language is linked to our environment. You’ll speak differently to a 5,000-person audience than to your five best friends. You’re more likely to experiment when the stakes and visibility are low. Consider an unlisted page on your website. Or consider a pseudonym (Fernando Pessoa had 75 of them). 11) Write about less: A student once asked Umberto Eco for advice about how to write a thesis. He wanted to write about all the volcanoes in the world. Eco told him to narrow it down. How about all the active volcanoes in the world? Nope, there are 48 of them. Get more specific. “Okay, how about the Popocatépetl Volcano in Mexico?” Okay, that works. Pick one volcano and focus on that. 12) We should prepare for AI to get better than we can imagine. If AI gets “extraterrestrially good,” becomes hyper relevant, and can replicate us to uncanny degrees—will you still write your own sentences? If the answer is yes, you don’t need to panic every time a new model comes out. By imagining the extremes, it helps you understand the timeless parts of the practice. 13) AI's ability to help you write is constrained by how much information you give it. Michael says: “The more you write, the more personal and aligned the replica can be.” 14) Write your first draft for yourself, and write your second draft for your reader. 15) Paragraphs are the atomic unit of composition. We are traumatized by The Five Paragraph Essay and need better heuristics. Each paragraph can start with a frame to hook the reader and end with a reward. Do it over and over again, and you'll get a Reader's Trance. 16) By learning to write essays, you become a Writing Generalist. Most genres specialize, but the essay is a medium of fusion. It combines the soul of a memoirist, the rigor of a philosopher, the pen of a poet, the persuasion of a marketer, the research of a journalist, and the creativity of a novelist. I've shared the full conversation with Michael Dean below. Of course, you can watch it here, but if you'd like to watch it on YouTube or listen on Apple or Spotify, I've shared those links below.
1:51:30

Is writing quality subjective or objective? Of course, taste is personal and writers hate rules, but the more you read, the more you see the same patterns everywhere. Michael Dean has scored 100s of essays on 27 different metrics. He says we can use AI not to automate writing, but to elevate it. Here’s what we talked about: 1) You can’t develop good taste without knowing the fundamentals of your genre. These 27 patterns across all essays are not rules, but questions. Once you understand the constraints, you can break them creatively. 2) The best way to get good at writing is to change how you read. Don’t just read for content. Highlight the parts that resonate, and then deconstruct the voice and structure. 3) Storytelling is about stretching the unknown across time. 4) Great titles do triple duty: they create mystery, distill your thesis, and use phonetics that roll off the tongue. 'Pride and Prejudice' succeeds on all counts, while 'English Aristocracy' falls flat. 5) Get feedback by asking readers what they love and hate. Everyone knows to rework the parts people hate, but don't forget about the other invisible enemy: boredom. Beware of the parts people are indifferent to. Forgettable sections are the enemy of good writing, and no reaction is a bad reaction. 6) The ultimate goal of writing advice is to forget it. Good practice brings you fluency. People romanticize the Grateful Dead as an emblem of free-spirited intuition, but nobody talks about their insane work ethic. Young Jerry Garcia practiced banjo scales for 10 hours a day. Phil Lesh studied classical music theory for trumpet. They kicked out Bob Weir for not being rigorous enough and he had to work his way back into the band. By going into your head, you can get out of your head. 7) A good hook is a fractal. A hook isn’t just a clever way to intrigue a reader, it should capture the core dilemma of your essay. Understand the questions your writing answers, and then bake those questions into the subtext of your opening. 8) Personal writing involves the biographical details of your life. Could somebody put their name on your essay and get away with it? If so, you’re not on the page. 9) Personal writing has 3 criteria: biography (what happened), interiority (what you thought), and outlook (what you believe). It’s not about pushing these to their extremes, but having them work together to support your main idea. 10) To find your voice, change your arena. The way we shape language is linked to our environment. You’ll speak differently to a 5,000-person audience than to your five best friends. You’re more likely to experiment when the stakes and visibility are low. Consider an unlisted page on your website. Or consider a pseudonym (Fernando Pessoa had 75 of them). 11) Write about less: A student once asked Umberto Eco for advice about how to write a thesis. He wanted to write about all the volcanoes in the world. Eco told him to narrow it down. How about all the active volcanoes in the world? Nope, there are 48 of them. Get more specific. “Okay, how about the Popocatépetl Volcano in Mexico?” Okay, that works. Pick one volcano and focus on that. 12) We should prepare for AI to get better than we can imagine. If AI gets “extraterrestrially good,” becomes hyper relevant, and can replicate us to uncanny degrees—will you still write your own sentences? If the answer is yes, you don’t need to panic every time a new model comes out. By imagining the extremes, it helps you understand the timeless parts of the practice. 13) AI's ability to help you write is constrained by how much information you give it. Michael says: “The more you write, the more personal and aligned the replica can be.” 14) Write your first draft for yourself, and write your second draft for your reader. 15) Paragraphs are the atomic unit of composition. We are traumatized by The Five Paragraph Essay and need better heuristics. Each paragraph can start with a frame to hook the reader and end with a reward. Do it over and over again, and you'll get a Reader's Trance. 16) By learning to write essays, you become a Writing Generalist. Most genres specialize, but the essay is a medium of fusion. It combines the soul of a memoirist, the rigor of a philosopher, the pen of a poet, the persuasion of a marketer, the research of a journalist, and the creativity of a novelist. I've shared the full conversation with Michael Dean below. Of course, you can watch it here, but if you'd like to watch it on YouTube or listen on Apple or Spotify, I've shared those links below.

David Perell

90,841 次观看 • 1 年前

Jayne Anne Phillips just won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel called "Night Watch." She’s written six books and founded the Rutgers-Newark MFA Program and this episode is all about her approach to writing. Some lessons below: 1. It's strange what you don't forget. Those things are a key to who you are and what really matters to you. 2. “When I’m writing, nothing is going through my head.” 3. Your job as a writer is to listen to the work itself because it'll tell you what to write next. 4. Every novel teaches its reader how to read it. It’s a unique world with its own rules, rhythm, relationships, and way of perceiving reality. 5. Writing is fundamentally about perception, and it's the author's job to show the reader how they perceive the world. 6. What's unique about children is the way they formulate their own conclusions by looking for truths that are truer than the ones they've been given. 7. We are creatures of narrative. We think in terms of words and in terms of images. 8. Small towns are webs of secrets beneath the surface: There's always a world underneath the world, and children hearing adult conversations know this better than anyone. 9. Jayne tells a story: “Someone said to me once: 'When I read your work, I don't feel as though I'm reading about something. I feel as though I'm inside it.' That is exactly what I want the reader to feel." 10. Find your writing allies. Some will be living writers, others will be dead ones, but no matter what, it’s worth reading all their work. 11. Language is like music. Every word is a different note, and the best way to find the flat notes is to read your writing out loud. 12. It's all intensely meaningful, no matter how terrible life can sometimes be. I've shared the full interview with Jayne Anne Phillips below. If you'd rather watch it on YouTube or listen on Apple or Spotify, check out the reply tweets. Enjoy!
51:15

Jayne Anne Phillips just won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel called "Night Watch." She’s written six books and founded the Rutgers-Newark MFA Program and this episode is all about her approach to writing. Some lessons below: 1. It's strange what you don't forget. Those things are a key to who you are and what really matters to you. 2. “When I’m writing, nothing is going through my head.” 3. Your job as a writer is to listen to the work itself because it'll tell you what to write next. 4. Every novel teaches its reader how to read it. It’s a unique world with its own rules, rhythm, relationships, and way of perceiving reality. 5. Writing is fundamentally about perception, and it's the author's job to show the reader how they perceive the world. 6. What's unique about children is the way they formulate their own conclusions by looking for truths that are truer than the ones they've been given. 7. We are creatures of narrative. We think in terms of words and in terms of images. 8. Small towns are webs of secrets beneath the surface: There's always a world underneath the world, and children hearing adult conversations know this better than anyone. 9. Jayne tells a story: “Someone said to me once: 'When I read your work, I don't feel as though I'm reading about something. I feel as though I'm inside it.' That is exactly what I want the reader to feel." 10. Find your writing allies. Some will be living writers, others will be dead ones, but no matter what, it’s worth reading all their work. 11. Language is like music. Every word is a different note, and the best way to find the flat notes is to read your writing out loud. 12. It's all intensely meaningful, no matter how terrible life can sometimes be. I've shared the full interview with Jayne Anne Phillips below. If you'd rather watch it on YouTube or listen on Apple or Spotify, check out the reply tweets. Enjoy!

David Perell

48,550 次观看 • 11 个月前

Morgan Housel is one of the world's best storytellers. He's sold almost 10 million books, and this episode is chock full of lessons he's learned about how to write well. Some highlights: 1. Get to the point. Just get to the point. 2. The person with the best story wins. Simple as that. 3. Nobody likes a lecture. Nobody likes to be shamed about their mistakes. But if you give them enough stories about psychology, they'll figure it out for themselves. 4. Storytelling was a survival strategy for Morgan. Telling people what the Dow Jones did this morning isn't a viable career strategy. If you're not telling stories, you're out. You're gone. 5. Whenever you're telling a story, any time you can show the reader how they're reading about themselves (as much as somebody else), you have a much higher chance of hooking them in. 6. It's rare to find a great writer who works for a publication because creativity can't be scheduled. It's hard to write well when you have to go to an office, sit in a cubicle, dress up in corporate attire, and listen to your editor say: "Now, be creative." 7. Good ideas come from independent and unstructured writing time because that's when you actually get good thinking done. 8. A mantra for reading: "Wide funnel, tight filter." Start a lot of books, but don't force yourself to finish them. 9. Delete the parts that a reader would skip. 10. It's important to write concisely — but concise does not mean short. 11. You don't need to write something new. You just need to write it better. 12. One of the interesting things about reading is that you never know which chapters flowed out of the author's brain and which sentences took a month of agony to get right. 13. Your best ideas tend to be the easiest ones to write. 14. Good writers spend a fraction of their time writing, and most of their time reading and thinking. I've shared the full conversation with Morgan Housel below. If you'd rather watch on YouTube, or listen on Apple or Spotify, check out the reply tweets.
1:08:58

Morgan Housel is one of the world's best storytellers. He's sold almost 10 million books, and this episode is chock full of lessons he's learned about how to write well. Some highlights: 1. Get to the point. Just get to the point. 2. The person with the best story wins. Simple as that. 3. Nobody likes a lecture. Nobody likes to be shamed about their mistakes. But if you give them enough stories about psychology, they'll figure it out for themselves. 4. Storytelling was a survival strategy for Morgan. Telling people what the Dow Jones did this morning isn't a viable career strategy. If you're not telling stories, you're out. You're gone. 5. Whenever you're telling a story, any time you can show the reader how they're reading about themselves (as much as somebody else), you have a much higher chance of hooking them in. 6. It's rare to find a great writer who works for a publication because creativity can't be scheduled. It's hard to write well when you have to go to an office, sit in a cubicle, dress up in corporate attire, and listen to your editor say: "Now, be creative." 7. Good ideas come from independent and unstructured writing time because that's when you actually get good thinking done. 8. A mantra for reading: "Wide funnel, tight filter." Start a lot of books, but don't force yourself to finish them. 9. Delete the parts that a reader would skip. 10. It's important to write concisely — but concise does not mean short. 11. You don't need to write something new. You just need to write it better. 12. One of the interesting things about reading is that you never know which chapters flowed out of the author's brain and which sentences took a month of agony to get right. 13. Your best ideas tend to be the easiest ones to write. 14. Good writers spend a fraction of their time writing, and most of their time reading and thinking. I've shared the full conversation with Morgan Housel below. If you'd rather watch on YouTube, or listen on Apple or Spotify, check out the reply tweets.

David Perell

67,692 次观看 • 9 个月前

Kobe Bryant spent 15 years writing every day because he wanted to become the next Walt Disney. Now, Jimmy Soni is telling that story. The first part of our conversation is Kobe’s secret obsession with writing. Then we got into why Michael Lewis once wrote under a pen name, why the publishing industry is broken, and why Jimmy loves writing with AI. Highlights: 1. The world is a conspiracy designed to prevent you from writing. 2. Jimmy sees himself in a battle against that world to find four hours per day to do focused writing. 3. “I’m researching” is often an excuse not to write. People spend decades researching books they never write, and it’s a writers' job to come up with ways to get research done without falling down a black hole. 4. Using AI to write is like using a very sharp knife to cook. The tool might make it easier, but you still have to cook the meal. 5. If you can’t out-write the AI, what are you doing writing in the first-place? 6. Find a Model Book to serve as the "plaster cast" for the book you’re writing and study it obsessively. Jimmy wanted his book, “The Founders” to be like “The Everything Store” by Brad Stone, and read it more than 20 times to understand what made it so good. 7. People think that being a professional writer means going to a lot of cocktail parties. Nope... the reality is that the craft of writing involves showing up to work every day, putting away the distractions, and focusing for many, many hours. You go to bed early, you wake up early, you get your work done. Do it every day for months in a row and you’ll have a book. 8. A problem with traditional publishing is that the entire system is predicated on your book being a hit within the first two weeks. If it’s not, publishers largely give up and move onto something else. 9. What looks like a talent gap is often just a focus gap. Amateur writers severely underestimate just how much time and effort goes into great books. 10. A/B test the cover art for your book. It’s so easy, so cheap, and the saying is true: People judge a book by its cover. 11. Before Michael Lewis was “Michael Lewis,” he wrote under the pen name of Diana Bleecker because he was writing about Wall Street while working on Wall Street, and didn’t want people to know who he was. 12. Michael Lewis was an art history major at Princeton, and once recounted that a lot of Renaissance-era paintings look quite similar. But if you want to see the idiosyncrasies, look at the toenails. That’s where the artists would lose their steam or put in the most individuality, so they’re some of the most distinctive parts of the art. Many fields have an equivalent — a place where you can find hidden answers, if only you know where to look. 13. Ambition is fuel that can burn relatively clean for a little while, only to become dirty later on. Jimmy says: “For the true greats, the sustained motivation needs to come from something deeper. It needs to come from love. That’s the only sustaining force there is.” 14. Kobe built his own publishing company because he didn’t feel like the big publishing houses could deliver the level of quality he demanded. 15. Kobe once spent two weeks redesigning the barcode on one of his books because he wanted it to blend more fluidly with the back cover design (no traditional publisher would do something like this). I've shared the full conversation with Jimmy Soni below. The first ~25 minutes are about Kobe Bryant. The rest is about a hodgepodge of other topics. If you'd rather watch the full thing on YouTube or listen on Apple / Spotify, check out the links in the reply tweets.
1:30:47

Kobe Bryant spent 15 years writing every day because he wanted to become the next Walt Disney. Now, Jimmy Soni is telling that story. The first part of our conversation is Kobe’s secret obsession with writing. Then we got into why Michael Lewis once wrote under a pen name, why the publishing industry is broken, and why Jimmy loves writing with AI. Highlights: 1. The world is a conspiracy designed to prevent you from writing. 2. Jimmy sees himself in a battle against that world to find four hours per day to do focused writing. 3. “I’m researching” is often an excuse not to write. People spend decades researching books they never write, and it’s a writers' job to come up with ways to get research done without falling down a black hole. 4. Using AI to write is like using a very sharp knife to cook. The tool might make it easier, but you still have to cook the meal. 5. If you can’t out-write the AI, what are you doing writing in the first-place? 6. Find a Model Book to serve as the "plaster cast" for the book you’re writing and study it obsessively. Jimmy wanted his book, “The Founders” to be like “The Everything Store” by Brad Stone, and read it more than 20 times to understand what made it so good. 7. People think that being a professional writer means going to a lot of cocktail parties. Nope... the reality is that the craft of writing involves showing up to work every day, putting away the distractions, and focusing for many, many hours. You go to bed early, you wake up early, you get your work done. Do it every day for months in a row and you’ll have a book. 8. A problem with traditional publishing is that the entire system is predicated on your book being a hit within the first two weeks. If it’s not, publishers largely give up and move onto something else. 9. What looks like a talent gap is often just a focus gap. Amateur writers severely underestimate just how much time and effort goes into great books. 10. A/B test the cover art for your book. It’s so easy, so cheap, and the saying is true: People judge a book by its cover. 11. Before Michael Lewis was “Michael Lewis,” he wrote under the pen name of Diana Bleecker because he was writing about Wall Street while working on Wall Street, and didn’t want people to know who he was. 12. Michael Lewis was an art history major at Princeton, and once recounted that a lot of Renaissance-era paintings look quite similar. But if you want to see the idiosyncrasies, look at the toenails. That’s where the artists would lose their steam or put in the most individuality, so they’re some of the most distinctive parts of the art. Many fields have an equivalent — a place where you can find hidden answers, if only you know where to look. 13. Ambition is fuel that can burn relatively clean for a little while, only to become dirty later on. Jimmy says: “For the true greats, the sustained motivation needs to come from something deeper. It needs to come from love. That’s the only sustaining force there is.” 14. Kobe built his own publishing company because he didn’t feel like the big publishing houses could deliver the level of quality he demanded. 15. Kobe once spent two weeks redesigning the barcode on one of his books because he wanted it to blend more fluidly with the back cover design (no traditional publisher would do something like this). I've shared the full conversation with Jimmy Soni below. The first ~25 minutes are about Kobe Bryant. The rest is about a hodgepodge of other topics. If you'd rather watch the full thing on YouTube or listen on Apple / Spotify, check out the links in the reply tweets.

David Perell

195,076 次观看 • 10 个月前

After almost two years, Julian Lehr is BACK to writing. He wrote a piece called The case against conversational interfaces, arguing that we're not going to be talking to our computers instead of using graphical user interfaces. GUIs work pretty well! Instead, he thinks that conversational interfaces are going to be a complement to existing workflows. We'll talk to our AI while doing what we do now, to do things like tell other apps to start doing things while we stay in flow. Julian shares his writing process -- chat through a draft with AI, write a bunch of it by hand, and then pull it together in Figma to finish it off. Or sometimes Google Docs. He said that like some people need a change of scenery to write, he needs a change of tools. He also talks about how and why he uses graphics; the goal isn't "writing," it's "communicating an idea," so he uses whatever helps him do that best. So why did Julian come back after two years in the wilderness? Simply: too many people were too consistently wrong on the internet. After seeing one too many "we're all going to be chatting with our computers" takes, he had to write the other side. And he delivered. We cover a lot, from why he keeps coming back to Kevin Kwok's Arc of Collaboration to how he uses his "thanks to" section to status signal. For this essay, he thanked Blake Robbins Chris Paik Jackson Dahl Johannes Schickling Jordan Singer and signüll -- an absurdly high flex roster. Conversations like this one - where I get to nerd out with the people I've read for so long - is exactly why I'm doing Hyperlegible. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
39:07

After almost two years, Julian Lehr is BACK to writing. He wrote a piece called The case against conversational interfaces, arguing that we're not going to be talking to our computers instead of using graphical user interfaces. GUIs work pretty well! Instead, he thinks that conversational interfaces are going to be a complement to existing workflows. We'll talk to our AI while doing what we do now, to do things like tell other apps to start doing things while we stay in flow. Julian shares his writing process -- chat through a draft with AI, write a bunch of it by hand, and then pull it together in Figma to finish it off. Or sometimes Google Docs. He said that like some people need a change of scenery to write, he needs a change of tools. He also talks about how and why he uses graphics; the goal isn't "writing," it's "communicating an idea," so he uses whatever helps him do that best. So why did Julian come back after two years in the wilderness? Simply: too many people were too consistently wrong on the internet. After seeing one too many "we're all going to be chatting with our computers" takes, he had to write the other side. And he delivered. We cover a lot, from why he keeps coming back to Kevin Kwok's Arc of Collaboration to how he uses his "thanks to" section to status signal. For this essay, he thanked Blake Robbins Chris Paik Jackson Dahl Johannes Schickling Jordan Singer and signüll -- an absurdly high flex roster. Conversations like this one - where I get to nerd out with the people I've read for so long - is exactly why I'm doing Hyperlegible. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Packy McCormick

60,698 次观看 • 1 年前

BREAKING: We're launching an AI writing partner infused with our taste Every 📧. Spiral will help you write great short-form content in your style that sounds like you—not a model. We’ve loaded it with everything we know about writing—writing that feels alive and honest, and that spreads—and put it at your fingertips. Spiral v3 is a multi-agent system that takes you from idea to post in a few simple steps: 1. Collaborative interviews. When you ask Spiral to write a piece of content, it won’t start writing immediately. Instead, it will chat with you to figure out what you’re really trying to say and what’s most interesting to you. 2. Many drafts at once. Once Spiral begins to draft, it will write three different versions that you can see and interact with simultaneously. You can explore the space of possibilities and mix and match between different drafts easily. 3. Principled and taste-driven. We’ve spent hundreds of hours baking everything we know about writing into Spiral’s thought -process. It has a library of principles that it draws from—like always using the active voice, and always putting the most interesting idea in the hook—that make Spiral feel like a great ghostwriter, not an AI. 4. Collaborative and team-ready. Spiral has Workspaces that allow you to share product and company information and styles between members of your team—so all of your writing is on brand, all the time. You can buy Spiral standalone or if you're an Every 📧 subscriber you get it for free as part of your subscription along with access to all of our writing, our live AI-coding workshops like Claude Code Camp, Cora, Monologue, Sparkle, and our subscriber-only Discord. Try Spiral v3 now:
1:25

BREAKING: We're launching an AI writing partner infused with our taste Every 📧. Spiral will help you write great short-form content in your style that sounds like you—not a model. We’ve loaded it with everything we know about writing—writing that feels alive and honest, and that spreads—and put it at your fingertips. Spiral v3 is a multi-agent system that takes you from idea to post in a few simple steps: 1. Collaborative interviews. When you ask Spiral to write a piece of content, it won’t start writing immediately. Instead, it will chat with you to figure out what you’re really trying to say and what’s most interesting to you. 2. Many drafts at once. Once Spiral begins to draft, it will write three different versions that you can see and interact with simultaneously. You can explore the space of possibilities and mix and match between different drafts easily. 3. Principled and taste-driven. We’ve spent hundreds of hours baking everything we know about writing into Spiral’s thought -process. It has a library of principles that it draws from—like always using the active voice, and always putting the most interesting idea in the hook—that make Spiral feel like a great ghostwriter, not an AI. 4. Collaborative and team-ready. Spiral has Workspaces that allow you to share product and company information and styles between members of your team—so all of your writing is on brand, all the time. You can buy Spiral standalone or if you're an Every 📧 subscriber you get it for free as part of your subscription along with access to all of our writing, our live AI-coding workshops like Claude Code Camp, Cora, Monologue, Sparkle, and our subscriber-only Discord. Try Spiral v3 now:

Dan Shipper 📧

82,903 次观看 • 8 个月前

Chamath Palihapitiya took Facebook to 1 billion users, was the youngest ever Vice-President at AOL…and worked at Burger King as a 14-year-old to support his family. Here's what I've learned from him about online writing and media: 1. Start your writing in a punchy way. 2. End your writing in a useful way. 3. Why write in public? “The ability for smart, useful observations to get into the hands of people with fewer ideas but lots of capital has never been better. You can build both a reputation and balance sheet this way.” 4. Different mediums unlock different kinds of writing. Chamath turns to pen & paper when he wants to write analytically, and to Twitter and the Internet when he’s in a more fiery mood. 5. Building a culture of long-form writing is a way to depoliticize a company because prose rewards clear thinking via strong and logical arguments. 6. Give readers a definitive conclusion. Even if they disagree with it, they’ll consider it time well-spent if they walk away with something solid. The worst writing is ambiguous and wishy-washy. 7. Fame brings politician syndrome: Chamath says his writing has become more hedged and timid as his profile has grown, and his struggle as a writer now centers around regaining his early voice and spontaneity. 8. Reading is an effective way to learn, but it's much more effective when you pair it with writing. Whenever Chamath stumbles on a particularly important topic, he writes 1-2 pages about it. 9. When money gets into good ideas, they become good things in the world. The opposite happens when money gets into bad ideas. This is why people with good ideas have a moral responsibility to share them. I've shared the full conversation with Chamath Palihapitiya below. If you'd rather listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple, check out the replies.
46:55

Chamath Palihapitiya took Facebook to 1 billion users, was the youngest ever Vice-President at AOL…and worked at Burger King as a 14-year-old to support his family. Here's what I've learned from him about online writing and media: 1. Start your writing in a punchy way. 2. End your writing in a useful way. 3. Why write in public? “The ability for smart, useful observations to get into the hands of people with fewer ideas but lots of capital has never been better. You can build both a reputation and balance sheet this way.” 4. Different mediums unlock different kinds of writing. Chamath turns to pen & paper when he wants to write analytically, and to Twitter and the Internet when he’s in a more fiery mood. 5. Building a culture of long-form writing is a way to depoliticize a company because prose rewards clear thinking via strong and logical arguments. 6. Give readers a definitive conclusion. Even if they disagree with it, they’ll consider it time well-spent if they walk away with something solid. The worst writing is ambiguous and wishy-washy. 7. Fame brings politician syndrome: Chamath says his writing has become more hedged and timid as his profile has grown, and his struggle as a writer now centers around regaining his early voice and spontaneity. 8. Reading is an effective way to learn, but it's much more effective when you pair it with writing. Whenever Chamath stumbles on a particularly important topic, he writes 1-2 pages about it. 9. When money gets into good ideas, they become good things in the world. The opposite happens when money gets into bad ideas. This is why people with good ideas have a moral responsibility to share them. I've shared the full conversation with Chamath Palihapitiya below. If you'd rather listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple, check out the replies.

David Perell

1,438,735 次观看 • 2 年前

Rick Rubin reveals the three completely different creative processes used by Eminem, Jay-Z, and Anthony Kiedis "Eminem will always be writing in a book, always writing all the time. I asked him, are all these rhymes used? He's like no, 99% of what I write I'll never use, just to stay engaged in the process of writing" "Jay-Z doesn't write anything down. He listens to the beat, hums, then goes on the mic 20 minutes later and just says a whole complicated verse. No paper, no writing, nothing" "Anthony Kiedis sings along with an idea of a melody but he doesn't yet have words, just nonsense words automatically real time, then listens back and says this phrase sounds good. It's like a puzzle"
5:08

Rick Rubin reveals the three completely different creative processes used by Eminem, Jay-Z, and Anthony Kiedis "Eminem will always be writing in a book, always writing all the time. I asked him, are all these rhymes used? He's like no, 99% of what I write I'll never use, just to stay engaged in the process of writing" "Jay-Z doesn't write anything down. He listens to the beat, hums, then goes on the mic 20 minutes later and just says a whole complicated verse. No paper, no writing, nothing" "Anthony Kiedis sings along with an idea of a melody but he doesn't yet have words, just nonsense words automatically real time, then listens back and says this phrase sounds good. It's like a puzzle"

Jaynit

1,429,610 次观看 • 1 个月前

At one point, together with Naval, Nivi wrote one of the most influential startup blogs of its time. Here is his advice on how to write well: 1. People try to write their thought process. So, what's the thought process that led them to such and such conclusion? Nobody cares about your thought process. Just give the conclusion and then support it. 2. People try to sound like they're smart. You're not smart. Just give us the answer. We don't need to fluff it up. So just write it like you're writing an email to somebody. 3. People think longer is better. No, it's not. Just write something short. I don't write emails that are longer than three sentences. And that puts the burden on the writer to figure out what the reader wants and communicate it precisely and cogently and briefly in just a few sentences. 4. You're not going to be a good writer if you're not a reader, so read some good stuff. I like to read people's tweets. Those are pretty good. I like to read some fiction, like Shakespeare or Cormac McCarthy or maybe some James Clavell. Those are good writers. And I like to watch the classics on HBO like The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, which all have great writing. If you're watching Apple TV shows and being entertained by those and think those have good writing, I can't help you. 5. For business writing, you have to get into a customer service mindset. You're there to solve their problems. You also have to get into a design mindset, which is, you have to get into the reader's head, understand their problem, and sequence your ideas in the correct order, and with the right amount of extra information that they didn't ask for, that displays that you've thought through the issue for them on their behalf, looked at the other side of the argument, and presented things to them that they didn't know that they needed. 6. You have to think about what you would want to know if you were in the other person's shoes and argue against yourself either implicitly or explicitly or just go through the thought process yourself and see if there's anything there. 7. You also just have to care about words and the order of words and the ideas that they're communicating. Like I will reread an email that I sent someone the next day just for the enjoyment of rereading the great email that I wrote.
3:43

At one point, together with Naval, Nivi wrote one of the most influential startup blogs of its time. Here is his advice on how to write well: 1. People try to write their thought process. So, what's the thought process that led them to such and such conclusion? Nobody cares about your thought process. Just give the conclusion and then support it. 2. People try to sound like they're smart. You're not smart. Just give us the answer. We don't need to fluff it up. So just write it like you're writing an email to somebody. 3. People think longer is better. No, it's not. Just write something short. I don't write emails that are longer than three sentences. And that puts the burden on the writer to figure out what the reader wants and communicate it precisely and cogently and briefly in just a few sentences. 4. You're not going to be a good writer if you're not a reader, so read some good stuff. I like to read people's tweets. Those are pretty good. I like to read some fiction, like Shakespeare or Cormac McCarthy or maybe some James Clavell. Those are good writers. And I like to watch the classics on HBO like The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, which all have great writing. If you're watching Apple TV shows and being entertained by those and think those have good writing, I can't help you. 5. For business writing, you have to get into a customer service mindset. You're there to solve their problems. You also have to get into a design mindset, which is, you have to get into the reader's head, understand their problem, and sequence your ideas in the correct order, and with the right amount of extra information that they didn't ask for, that displays that you've thought through the issue for them on their behalf, looked at the other side of the argument, and presented things to them that they didn't know that they needed. 6. You have to think about what you would want to know if you were in the other person's shoes and argue against yourself either implicitly or explicitly or just go through the thought process yourself and see if there's anything there. 7. You also just have to care about words and the order of words and the ideas that they're communicating. Like I will reread an email that I sent someone the next day just for the enjoyment of rereading the great email that I wrote.

Arjun Khemani

137,018 次观看 • 1 年前