Learn to write
I used to think writing was just a communication skill.
Something useful for blogs, marketing, or explaining ideas to other people.
I was wrong.
Everything is writing.
- When you delegate tasks to your team.
- When you negotiate deals with people
- When you send an onboarding document to prospective employees
- When you write instruction for how a marketing video you're planning to shoot will look
- When you write the product requirement documentations for your web app
It's all writing. The ability to write great copy puts you miles ahead of everyone
I've been inspired by Hire Great Writers by Jason Fried & DHH.
I used to give instructions to my team and discuss with them through conversations and calls.
Half the time, they "forget" or "miss out" key things I need them to know.
Most of the time, when you solve a problem during a discussion, their thoughts are everywhere. They start thinking for the first time in front of me. And that's usually quite unproductive and the results are usually somewhat shallow, nothing of real depth.
I used to brute force this by following up like a mad man, reminding people again and again, recording our calls, etc.
But at some point I started writing my thoughts before a meet. Every meet. Not because I like writing, but because:
Writing is thinking.
It helps me break a problem down so I see it infront of me. It helps me document my thought process to different problem and show how I ended up with the solution I have.
And once I have it I can just pass it to my team they get to read how I think, understand the full context, catch my blindspots, understand/challenge my assumptions and they go on and execute.
It takes zero extra time for me to discuss and run through with them.
The best part - I can share this one document with 5 other team members and there will be little-to-no information missing in translation or "forgotten" or "missed out"
I’ve realized that unclear writing usually comes from unclear thinking.
Sometimes, certain ideas sound freaking good in my head. But when I try to write it down, it becomes messy. That's not because I'm a bad writer. That's because I have a reasoning problem.
When you write your thoughts down, you're essentially putting yourself on a stress test. Do you really understand what your talking about?
Weak ideas collapse. You can't go far. You can't back it up. Your assumptions get exposed. And the gaps in your points become visible.
Which is a good thing too! Because then you know where to double down on. And you know thats where people would poke holes in your assumptions.
You poke those holes first and fill them up first, before others do.
Writing forces structure where the mind prefers shortcuts.
Today, In a world full of AI tools that can generate text instantly, this matters more, not less.
AI can produce sentences. It cannot guarantee understanding. If I cannot explain something clearly in my own words, what it is, why it matters, what tradeoffs exists, then I probably don’t understand it deeply enough to build on it.
I'm probably just copy pasting the output from a prompt barely understanding it.
A 5 year old can do that. There's no value in that. I get so turned off whenever job applicants or C players do this in my team.
Strong writing is an evergreen asset.
They make for great permanent artifacts, worthy to be invested in.
Conversations disappear. Chats and discussions? No one remembers it after a few days.
Writing compounds. Future teammates 3 years from now can read it.
Future me can challenge it.
I get to see my thought process in the past and know how I got to whatever conclusion I had, and whether or not to adapt to any new information present in the world today.
We may have made certain decisions due to 1 winning factor that was true at that point in time.
In the future, when that factor is no longer present, we can safely re-evaluate our decisions and make changes wherever we see fit.
We get to unlearn and relearn.