I've given significant thought to the writing problem, and I firmly believe the lack of writing is dramatically slowing the pace of innovation in the world. Writing is really Amazon's superpower. It's why they get big things done quickly.<p>Both the author and the audience greatly benefit from the writing. Writing clarifies and structures thinking – helping the reader understand the points the author is making.<p>As a bit more context, I used to work at McKinsey and much of my job fit into two roles: (1) translating what employees were thinking into something executives could understand, and (2) making PowerPoint slides. In other words, I was often there because employees couldn't write well. But, I also found PowerPoint lacking – it's hard to get some of the more important points across (creating some confusion) because it doesn't allow for longer-form thought.<p>I've put a bunch of thoughts together on why writing is important and how we fix our education system to make people better writers. It's based on my experiences supporting tens of thousands of students on improving writing skills – <a href="https://bradsblog.com/2020/05/15/1-writing-is-the-most-important-skill-for-the-future-2/" rel="nofollow">https://bradsblog.com/2020/05/15/1-writing-is-the-most-impor...</a>.
This aligns well with a lecture from the University of Chicago I watched recently[0], which explores how many academics use writing as a tool for thinking (What the article describes) and don’t think about the reader. Writing is an incredibly powerful tool to form thoughts.<p>However, as the lecturer in the video details, don’t expect the writing done for thinking to be useful to readers! When we think, there is usually a certain incrementalism, whereas when we read we’re trying to resolve dissonances in a current mental model. That’s a key distinction, it means you need to make people care or understand why their mental model is broken when writing to informs reader. When we write for our own thinking, we usually understand the general problem already and are just traversing the problem space to better understand different components.<p>[0] <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM" rel="nofollow">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM</a>
One thing that often gets missed with PowerPoint is that it’s a fundamentally different mode of communication than writing, but people don’t treat it that way. One of the reasons it’s so hated is because people are trained to write essays and emails, and they try to build ppts in the same way.<p>Done well, slides can be incredibly informative (link below). Because it’s visual, you can present the shape of an argument well before having to articulate the details, a tremendously powerful tool for communicating complex ideas. Because it’s nonlinear, you can include a level of detail that would be tedious in a document.<p>Yes, these benefits often enable people to spout half-understood BS. But the medium itself is sticky for good reason - it’s powerful.<p>Edit: link <a href="https://medium.com/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-ive-ever-seen-4f4ef3391ba0" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-ive-e...</a>
100% agree<p>I started writing investment thoughts last year, and the more I write, the more I realize it is a superpower.<p>It creates clarity of thought, accountability, and enforces longterm thinking.<p>AND, if you do it publicly, it can lead to unexpected conversations & opportunities.<p>Link below in case anyone's interested - always appreciate any feedback :)
<a href="https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/" rel="nofollow">https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/</a>
This is great. I've written previously about why I write as a researcher [1], but none of my reasons were this author's reason: that narrative structure clarifies understanding. This resonates with me because I've noticed that I remember blog posts better, that I understand the topic deeper, if I really flesh it out with narrative writing: why this model, who developed it, what are the alternatives, etc. It often feels like a waste of time initially, but I almost always find that the process makes me realize there are details I initially missed.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033792" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033792</a>
Writing helps me to "codify" things.<p>I've been developing software so long, that my process has become "instinctual." I actually have a hard time explaining it to people on demand.<p>So I started to write about it[0].<p>Turns out, there's a heck of a lot of detail in my personal process, and, when I write it out, that detail (and the structure), reveals itself.<p>Basically, I don't particularly care whether or not anyone actually reads what I write, but the act of writing has helped me to "name" my structure.<p>Once I can find its name, I control it.<p>[0] <a href="https://medium.com/chrismarshallny" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/chrismarshallny</a>
This is why you see design doc culture at Google as well. At my startup I pushed for an RFC culture to flesh out ideas and break stalemates just as the author describes. I called them RFCs because we don't have a tool that versions documents, so if we need to make amendments we mark older RFCs with newer RFC extensions or supersede them.<p>There is also a large benefit to other engineers getting up to date on a system, why things were done a specific way, why a technology was chosen, what tradeoffs were considered and why.
The author is proposing writing as a tool for self-improvement and to find clarity.<p>Sure enough, that will help to find clarity for sure. Just don't expect that it will help to find clarity for anyone else beside the author.<p>In a fast moving team setting, what most people hate the most is reading. If the context is not clearly set why reading something is utterly important, most people won't even bother to open the page, document, note or whatever.<p>The mental load is immense these days, and reading adds an enormous plus to that in a very negative way, so most people tries to escape this cognitive load.<p>Of course, you can use your authority to force people to read, but people will simply hate the experience even more.
I recently read this book, recommended in another of the infinite posts about writing well, and it is truly good:<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-Publishing/dp/0226899152" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-Publish...</a><p>The chapters from 1 through Cohesion II are better at teaching clarity of thought in writing than any I've read anywhere. Most books focus on grammar and style and ignore the good stuff in between.<p>For those who like Williams, he also wrote books on how to build arguments and conduct research!
It's one of the reasons I write reviews on goodreads of everything I read. That it may benefit someone else is a secondary consideration. It's mostly for me to think about what I've just read and also something to look back on in the future when I want to see what I thought of a particular book. I always hated English as a subject in school, so I use this for practice.
Totally agree.<p>On a slight tangent, my writing has improved tremendously since working at Amazon. I’m far from great now, but I’ve always been contrarian and saw most writing as needless fluff. Over time I’ve come to appreciate how writing forces clarity, both for the writer and the reader.
> Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly.<p>This idea of writing as a proxy for thinking is the essence of many misconceptions.<p>I know many 1st-class thinkers who have such hard time in writing.<p>What separates most people from good writing has very little to do with style, grammar, local sentences structure, word selection, or even content per se.<p>Most people can't write well because they don't know how to control the logical sequence in which they present their ideas.<p>And that is the single most important act necessary to clear writing.<p>I shared more on what that means here in a recent essay [0].<p>[0] <a href="https://pulseasync.com/operators/share-written-ideas/" rel="nofollow">https://pulseasync.com/operators/share-written-ideas/</a>
I think the document culture does really force clarity in ideas. I think the lament on slides is often conflated with poorly crafted slides though.<p>Well crafted slides force a similar degree of clarity when approached with the same level of intention. The problem is that most people are poor presenters, and presenting is a learned skill.<p>Documents gone bad encourage people to write more words than necessary which, when used for simple tasks, result in large amounts of time wasted preparing something that no one reads.<p>I think one downside of a document culture is it leaves less room for selling an idea- which may be less important in the decision to light up a new business unit, but put at a disadvantage work that is primarily visual in form.
imo slides are much more effective if you're a good presenter AND you are recording your presentation.<p>But most people are not good presenters, and so their slides are either a wall of text OR they're an absence of text that make the slides impossible to parse without a recording of the speaker.<p>So it's not necessarily that writing is the BEST format, it's just not the worse when it comes to the lowest common denominator.<p>The other upside that the post fails to notice is that it forces everyone to get used to writing, which will lead to better documentation overall.
As a big fan of bullet-lists, for concisely summarizing key points, I'm wrestling with this: "If someone builds a list of bullet points in word, that would be just as bad as powerpoint."<p>Is Bezos referring to cases where the "why" is not clear, and not explained?<p>Lots of times I'll use a bullet list, with indented subitem bullets explaining why, or going into detail. I find this format much easier to read than a wall of text. And it makes the hierarchy clear.<p>Note that the article uses 3 bullet-lists, which were easy to read/scan quickly.
I feel like it's important to emphasize the importance of writing as a way to organize your own thoughts and create your own mental maps. This may not be the best way to disseminate information to a team, or share with the world.<p>I wholeheartedly agree with this premise, but without some guardrails I feel like this advice leads to dumpster fires like Medium.
When I am designing something, I often find myself making bulleted lists when I am unsure of what to do next. I find that my more insightful sessions result in written paragraphs rather than lists. So I agree with Jeff here.
Bezos's comments here seem to echo things that Edward Tufte has said.<p>I do think presentations ('powerpoints', though Powerpoint itself is pretty horrible) have their place, if done well — but they very rarely are.