Writing is Thinking

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Useful writing tells people (including, possibly most importantly you) something true and important that they didn’t already know in a way that leaves no doubt. Most writing is bad. Not due to spelling, punctuation or grammer, but due to lack of critical thinking. Critical thinking like analysis, synthesis, simplification, and presentation. To quote someone smart “If you’re thinking without writing, you’re only thinking about thinking”.

Why

Writing to understand, writing to be understood

You write to understand a topic, and to help others understand.

Writing to understand is capturing and categorizing lots of information. You don’t know what you’re looking for as your trying to build your own coherent, complete, mental models.

Writing to be understood is figuring out what a reader (sometimes you!) needs to understand, and focusing and simplifying your understanding to optimize presentation.

When you’re in the writing to provide understanding, you start by understanding what it is the reader want to understand, and you build them a mental model of the content optimized to match their needs.

TODO: XREF - Mental models. TODO: XREF - Stages of writing

Amazon’s Writing Culture

My favorite thing about Amazon is the writing culture. Every 60 minute meeting starts with the presenter handing out a 6 page document, and asking if anyone needs a pen. The next 30 minutes is spent reading, with the silence barely puncuated with the sound of a pen underlining a key figure. At around the 30 minute mark, the presenter will ask, does anyone need more time? Which signals to the stragglers to start skimming as the discussion will start.

On my second day at Amazon I had my first meeting. After we went around the room introducing the new guy (me), a stapled 6 page printout was handed out and silence descended on the room. I went throught the document in 5 minutes. I didn’t understand much of it, after all I was new and didn’t know what these guys worked on. I then had to sit in silence fidgetting for the next 25 minutes. At the 30 minute mark, people started discussion. “I understand your reasoning, but did you consider the new market trends?”, “How do you imagine things will change if we don’t complete this within a month?” I was really surprised. I didn’t notice any of these things in the document. How did these folks get this deep understanding of the document? They must have had a deep knowledge of the domain I thought. Nope.

Turns out, to build a clear writing muscle, you must build a critical thinking muscle, which requires a critical reading muscle. After 3 years at Amazon, my skills had increased drastically, but I was still weak at these by Amazon standards.

To get a sense for Amazon documents, check out Jeff Bezos’s Shareholder letter for (2020) or a a root cause analysis for the Kennis Service.

These documents are “easy” compared to Amazon internal documents, but even still a few things to notice:

  • Are well written and clear. Amazonians pride themselves in being readable.
  • Are context free, e.g. They don’t require a lot of external knowledge.
  • Are dense. You need to be a good reader to grind through the details.
  • Are number heavy, having few adverbs and adjectives (weasel words in Amazon lingo)

Sucking till you don’t

You’re going to suck till you don’t. I could never explain it as well as Ira Glass (the host of this america life), so watch his video:

Building Knowledge - Evergreen notes

Evergreen notes, are a concept brilliantly articulated by Andy Matuschak. Worth a read in its entirety, but I’ll inline his definiton:

Evergreen notes are written and organized to evolve, contribute, and accumulate over time, across projects. This is an unusual way to think about writing notes: Most people take only transient notes. That’s because these practices aren’t about writing notes; they’re about effectively developing insight: “Better note-taking” misses the point; what matters is “better thinking”. When done well, these notes can be quite valuable: Evergreen note-writing as fundamental unit of knowledge work.

It’s hard to write notes that are worth developing over time. These principles help.

Evergreen notes should be:

  • atomic
  • concept-oriented
  • densely linked
  • interlinked (like the web), as opposed to hierarchal (like file folders).

You’ll note, this blog is my implementaiton of evergreen notes.

Writing to understand

All Mental models are wrong

See 7 habits concepts Maps vs Terrain

Using your eyes you can look at the road outside your house. It has a color, a specific width, perhaps some potholes. This the terrain, the physical reality, but you won’t see any of this google maps. Your eyes won’t let you see the networks of sewers underneath your street. Fort that, there are maps that show the sewers, but those maps lack houses.

Maps are required as the world is infinitly complex, and we need simpler models to understand what is going on. A similar thing happens at the restaurant, your order of the menu which is a simplification of the food. And to understand the world, we need mental models, like the ones presented in most non-fiction books.

While maps are useful, they are not the terrain, in some dimensiosn the map is always wrong, and classifying the edges is hard.

There will be several maps to understand the terrain. Like the street map and the sewer map. These maps will often disagree, or be non-overlapping, and that’s completely fine each map has its own purpose.

SWOT and SOAR - Exploring the space

SWOT:

Axis Tailwinds Headwinds
Internal Strength Weakeness
External Opportunity Threats

SOAR:

Axis Value Proposition Goal
Today Strength Opportunity
Tomorrow Aspiration Results

MECE - How you know you’re done

Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhausted (MECE), is two distint ideas.

“Mutually exclusive” is a concept from probability theory that says two events cannot occur at the same time. For example, if you roll a six-sided die, the outcomes of a six or a three are mutually exclusive. When applied to information, mutually exclusive ideas would be distinctly separate and not overlapping.

“Collectively exhaustive” means that the set of ideas is inclusive of all possible options. Going back to the six-sided dice example, the set {1,2,3,4,5,6} is mutually exclusive AND collectively exhaustive.

More details: https://strategyu.co/wtf-is-mece-mutually-exclusive-collectively-exhaustive/

Minto’s Pyramid Principle

A rare book on how to write well. Sadly long out of print, but worth picking up a copy

Elon’s First Principles

Five Whys

TODO: Move to COE post

Ask why 5 times till you get to a root understanding. Exactly 5 why’s doesn’t matter, getting no deep then why does. Also forks in the answers usually happen. Lets dig in…

1 - Why am I bad shape?

Because I stopped exercising

2 - Why did I stop exercising?

Because it’s a lot of effort.

3 - Why is a lot of effort?

Because the gym closed Because I’m not prioritizing it enough

3.1 Why is the gym closed?

Because of Corona Virus

3.2 Why aren’t you prioritizing exercise enough

Because it doesn’t feel urgent in the moment.

You know you have your Five Why’s right when you can reverse the answers joined by “therefore”, and it’s coherent

  • Because of Corona Virus
    • Therefore the gym is closed
  • Because it doesn’t feel urgent in the moment
    • therefore I’m not prioritizing exercise enough
  • Therefore I stopped going to the gym
  • Therefore it’s a lot of effort.
  • Therefore I stopped exercising

Diagrams

Diagrams are a vocabulary until themselves. My notes on visual vocubulary. But a few notable links:

Stories and actions not just data

A fantastic diagram to explain the idea

And a great primer on what to convery to graph

Writing to be Understood

Know your audience

You’re writing for someone, as yourself:

  • Who is the audience?
  • What do they already know?
  • What do I want them to learn?
  • What do I want them to do?

The journey or the recommendation

Sometimes you want to share your journey, the twists and turns and helping readers empathize or be trained. By contrast there are times you want to provide a recommendation and reasoning. The time element, and your experiences are noise in this case.

The Journey

Consider using the Hero’s formula, or the pixar formula below.

The Recommendation

  • Here’s what we should do
  • Here’s why
  • Here’s the tradeoffs and what we considered
  • Here’s our assumptions and supporting data

The detective formula: Situation, Complication, Resolution

The Pixar Formula

https://startuppitch.substack.com/p/nail-your-startup-pitch-use-pixars

  • Situation/Context:
    • Once upon a time there was [details]
    • Every day, [details]
  • Complication/Problem:
    • One day [details]
    • Because of that, [details]
  • Resolution/Solution
    • Because of that, [details]
    • Until finally [details]

The feedback formula: Situation, Behavior, Impact

Very useful in giving feedback and coaching

  • When [details] happened
  • I experienced [details]
  • As a result [details]

The crappy modern business book

The modern business/self-help book formula is:

  • Long Introduction
    • A few stories and personal engagmenet
  • Introduce 3 point model, with sub points
    • Includes a picture or acronym
  • 1 section per point model
    • 1 chapter per sub point
      • Several stories per sub point
  • Weak summary

Generally, these books can be summarized in a short 5 page essay. In fact they often have an HBR (Harvard Business Review) article from the auther which does exactly that.

Business book don’t have to be crappy by laws of physics, some are excellent like the first 90 days. I highly recommend reading both for the content, and the structure. The structure is awesome because

The Hero’s Journey - For very long form

You’ll see this in a lot of movies, and it can be fun to map a movie to this story. From here

  • THE ORDINARY WORLD - This is the original world of the hero, which “suffers from a symbolic deficiency.” The hero is lacking something, or something is taken from him.

  • THE CALL TO ADVENTURE - The hero is given a challenge, problem, or adventure. Often it appears as a blunder, or chance. This stage establishes the goal of the hero.

  • THE REFUSAL OF THE CALL - The (often) reluctant hero has to be set along the correct path. He must weigh the consequences and be excited by a stronger motivation to proceed further.

  • MEETING WITH THE MENTOR - The hero encounters a wise figure who prepares him for the journey. This figure (or item) gives advice, guidance, or an item, but cannot go with the hero.

  • CROSSING THE THRESHOLD - The hero has committed to his task, and enters the special world. Often he is met by a threshold guardian.

  • TESTS, ALLIES, AND ENEMIES - In the special world, the hero learns the new rules by meeting people and obtaining new information. There is often a “local watering hole” component. This is where the true characteristics of the hero are revealed.

  • APPROACH TO THE INNERMOST CAVE - Now our hero, and often his allies, have come to the edge of the dangerous place where the “object of the quest” is hidden. This stage often is the land of the dead.

  • THE SUPREME ORDEAL - The hero faces danger, often a life-or-death moment that is either physical or psychological.

  • REWARD, OR SEIZING THE SWORD - After surviving, our hero takes possession of the object, typically a treasure, weapon, knowledge, token, or reconciliation.

  • THE ROAD BACK - The hero must now deal with the consequences of their actions. They may be pursued by remaining forces. They now face the decision to return to the ordinary world.

  • RESURRECTION - One final test is required for the purification and rebirth of the hero. Alternatively, it may be a miraculous transformation.

  • RETURN WITH THE ELIXIR - The triumphant hero returns to the ordinary world bearing the elixir. Common elixirs are treasure, love, freedom, wisdom, or knowledge. A defeated hero is doomed to repeat the lesson.

Pen to paper

Madman, Architect, Carpenter, Judge

From my full post Writing breaks down into 4 distinct phases: brainstorming, organization, writing and editing. To reinforce the distinctness of these phases, think of writing as four distinct jobs: Madman, Architect, Carpenter and Judge. Maximize your efficiency by doing each job, distinctly, deliberately and serially.

Each job has a specific goal, and that goal should be your sole focus during while doing that job. Do not do the next job, and do not go back to previous jobs. To reinforce the distinctness of each job, consider using a different tool, and physical reminders of each job.

On essay’s and writing

Paul Graham

http://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html

I’ve never tried to count how many times I proofread essays, but I’m sure there are sentences I’ve read 100 times before publishing them. When I proofread an essay, there are usually passages that stick out in an annoying way, sometimes because they’re clumsily written, and sometimes because I’m not sure they’re true. The annoyance starts out unconscious, but after the tenth reading or so I’m saying “Ugh, that part” each time I hit it. They become like briars that catch your sleeve as you walk past. Usually I won’t publish an essay till they’re all gone — till I can read through the whole thing without the feeling of anything catching.

Jeff Bezos:

Read Jeff’s letters to shareholders, imagine how long he spends writing them.

How to write effectively

Haven’t watched this one yet …

How to tell a great story

Doesn’t really fit, but I do enjoy this story

Writers head to readers head, like an army through a choke point

My 80 hours on an outage document

When something goes wrong at amazon you write a correction of errors(COE) document. In my last few months of Amazon I wrote a COE on an Alexa outage which was a result of poor interaction between the system that turns “speech into text”(ASR) and the system that turns “text into meaning” (NLU).

This was some deeply technical stuff, but needed to be clear so non-domain experts could understand what happened. I ended up spending over 80 hours on this, and even enlisted the help of a marketing person who had no idea how Alexa worked to ensure my writing was crystal clear.

Some people might be appled. 80 hours is 2 strait weeks of work, (which I stretched out over 4 weeks). I think it was time well spent for two reasons.

First, I was muscle building. I’m pretty sure if my writing muscle was fully matured, and I had already understood the ASR and NLU space, I could have written this document in 20 hours, meaning 60 hours was just training, which is always worth it.

Second, outage is expensive, as is incorrect action,

Writing in the age of AI

Fascinating idea from Paul Graham that AI will make writing easy. That part is easy, the novel idea is that the consequence of this will be critical thought (the real value prop of writing) will atrophy. He notes this has a a historical precidence, we used to all have to be physically strong, there are currently people who are physically strong, but they are rare and have to work out to maintain that strength, as in our society it’s mostly optional.

This begs the question how to use AI to help you think, not help you write.

Writing Software and Tools

I need to minimize distractions, so I try to write distraction free on my iPad

Writing is better with an enabling environment

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Other resources