
It's Time to Start Writing (2019) - dhotson
https://alexnixon.github.io/2019/12/10/writing.html
======
bradwschiller
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.

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.

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.

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 – [https://bradsblog.com/2020/05/15/1-writing-is-the-most-
impor...](https://bradsblog.com/2020/05/15/1-writing-is-the-most-important-
skill-for-the-future-2/).

~~~
baix777
Amazon has a few superpowers. One is writing, but the other is so many
metrics. I worked at AWS and saw how the weekly metrics meeting was ran, with
execs questioning why some metric, out of 10s of thousands, was behaving in a
certain way. A good product manager had a good reason, an acceptable one found
a reason quickly after the meeting. Without an understanding of the business
writing is worthless, and one of the ways Amazon creates this understanding is
comprehensive metrics gathering.

It is the combination of business understanding and writing that is Amazon's
superpower.

~~~
bradwschiller
Agreed that understanding the business is critical. Writing is one of the best
ways for someone to develop a better understanding of the business - e.g.,
what metric are we tracking and why?

Overall, I'm not saying that there aren't a bunch of other important things to
running a business, just that great writing makes running a business far
easier.

On a side note – implementing performance management gets crazy gains without
requiring process changes. I used to get an immediate 30%+ productivity bump
when I'd implement performance management (e.g., metrics, daily huddles) in a
place that had little of it.

------
alextheparrot
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.

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.

[0]
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM)

~~~
hanoz
_> "many academics use writing as a tool for thinking... and don’t think about
the reader"_

That would explain an awful lot about my university reading experience.

~~~
alextheparrot
Don't believe me, watch the talk! If this resonates with you, the talk will
both resonate and leave you better equipped to fix the problem moving forward.
His role is to help academics write in ways readers want to read.

------
curiousllama
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.

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.

Yes, these benefits often enable people to spout half-understood BS. But the
medium itself is sticky for good reason - it’s powerful.

Edit: link [https://medium.com/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-
ive-e...](https://medium.com/the-mission/the-greatest-sales-deck-ive-ever-
seen-4f4ef3391ba0)

~~~
MengerSponge
People spend far more time learning to put together "reports" in powerpoint. A
slide deck is a sales tool. If you're selling a product, sure, make a deck. If
you're communicating _any_ nuance or subtlety, you will be hampered if you
attempt to make it out of powerpoint.

Bad powerpoints lead to bad decisions, and Edward Tufte addressed this years
ago. [https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=...](https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-
msg?msg_id=0001yB)

You could probably find an even worse ppt that justified the Iraq invasion,
but nobody thinks they're dumber than the DoD. What about NASA though?
Incredibly smart, hardworking, technically savvy engineers saw their
recommendations get ground to dust by powerpoint. They couldn't write a good
technical powerpoint. You can't either. Write the whitepaper instead. Use
powerpoint for pretty pictures and graphs.

~~~
bumby
> _What about NASA though? Incredibly smart, hardworking, technically savvy
> engineers saw their recommendations get ground to dust by powerpoint._

The problem this didn’t address though is when in-depth white papers are often
written, they may not be read (or only read in a cursory fashion) because the
audience may be stretched too thin on time.

PowerPoints abbreviated style is both a strength and weakness.

~~~
MengerSponge
If making the document faster to read is all it took, we'd see 140 character
technical reports.

The difficult thing is _understanding_. Powerpoint masks this, so readers
don't go looking for extra time to comprehend. Powerpoint also encourages poor
communication (eg auto-resizing text blocks as you add more/longer entries) so
the writer doesn't think deeply about the document they're making. It's a
strength in some fields, and a weakness in others.

Your boss asks for a deck? Sure, make the best damn deck you can. We've all
got to earn a living. But one day, when you get to set the meeting agenda, be
better to your reports than your boss was to you.

~~~
bumby
> _If making the document faster to read is all it took, we 'd see 140
> character technical reports._

I suspect we’d then see the same hate talking about how all these executive
summaries hamper understanding by glossing over nuanced details.

Granted, PowerPoint is often misused. But just because I try to hunt with a
shotgun at 300 meters doesn’t make the shotgun a piece of shyte. I just
misapplied the tool.

I can say, if you have a busy boss and constantly give them heaps of white
papers as your communication tool, it’s a good way to ensure your concerns are
rarely heard let alone addressed.

I think there’s a natural dichotomy between limited bandwidth and
understanding complex topics. I personally don’t think white papers solve that
problem.

~~~
MengerSponge
White papers don't have to be 10 pages each. Some things are two pagers, some
need 5, and some really beefy topics need more.

The problem is that in addition to the clay thrower, the shotgun comes
equipped with a scope and a 300 meter paper target. Yes people are fools for
misapplying the tool, but the manufacturer is to blame for misleading their
customers to the tool's capabilities.

The problem is that bad writing is immediately obvious to fluent speakers, but
bad powerpoints are not. Powerpoints are also susceptible to institutional
styling (look up the face-melters that the American DoD designs).

I would wager that a busy boss will pay more attention to your ideas if
they're presented as a tight page or two. Good writing is hard to do, and
takes time for almost everyone. Presenting topics in a way that makes their
complexity evident helps people allocate their attention correctly.

White papers don't solve the problem, but at least they don't make it worse.

~~~
bumby
If I had to guess, I think the difference in the way you and I are looking at
this issue is that I do not think Powerpoint should be used to replace
reports, as they both have a distinct purpose. Rather than display report-like
information, I think their best use is to supplement discussion, where the
discussion is intended to portray more nuanced information.

~~~
MengerSponge
We're really of the same mind here, but the problem is that people read
"powerpoint is best used to supplement discussion" and think "I'm using
powerpoint in a discussion, so I'm ok"

I should have probably started with a disclaimer: I'm a PhD scientist at a
major American R1 university. I collaborate with researchers and business
partners around the world. I regularly write/share powerpoint decks, because
it's the right tool for the job when I have figures and pictures of my work to
share. When I post design documents, calculations, etc, I always write long-
form, typically using the Tufte-handout class.

------
mrjivraj
100% agree

I started writing investment thoughts last year, and the more I write, the
more I realize it is a superpower.

It creates clarity of thought, accountability, and enforces longterm thinking.

AND, if you do it publicly, it can lead to unexpected conversations &
opportunities.

Link below in case anyone's interested - always appreciate any feedback :)
[https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/](https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/)

~~~
bumby
I like what you've done, so don't take this the wrong way. I'm playing devils
advocate here because I think it helps strengthen our understanding.

One thing I've noticed is that 1) your stock picks are almost exclusively in
the tech sector and 2) your initial pick was in April in 2019 so there isn't a
lot of data to drawn conclusions from.

As an example, simply buying XLK (technology ETF) on the same start date gives
an absolute return of roughly 43% and gives potentially less systemic risk (I
haven't calculated the exact risk numbers for your portfolio, but it's
probably a safe bet given it's diversification).

Instead of measuring strictly on % return, I would suggest measuring
performance in a way that factors in volatility as well.

------
gwgundersen
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.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033792](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033792)

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
There are different kinds of narratives. What you're describing isn't really
narrative, it's active critical investigation, which is a different process.
It is indeed very useful for problem solving - not least because you can read
your notes a year later, remind yourself see why you made specific decisions,
and see options you considered and eliminated.

But there's also rhetorical narrative, which is used for persuasion, not
clarification. Create a story with a good person and a bad person, or at least
good actions and bad actions, append a heavyweight emotional hit of some kind,
keep the language as simple as possible, and you'll have no trouble selling
your point to at least some people - no matter how nonsensical it is to
others.

This is how advertising, political spin, social media influence campaigns, and
troll farms work.

It's also how thought leaders try to work, but luckily not many are experts in
rhetoric.

It's incredibly powerful because the human brain uses narrative as a kind of
alias for information transfer. As soon as an idea is packaged as a narrative
- a story, parable, something about people - it immediately becomes much more
persuasive than a plain statement of fact.

If you look at company culture it's almost invariably based on a narrative
about the goals of the company and the kinds of people that fit in. Some
founders deliberately engineer an appealing narrative and use it as a cover
story for their own personal interests.

Point being not all narratives are benign, and story telling - not just
writing - really can be a superpower. But that doesn't mean it's inherently
positive.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
Writing helps me to "codify" things.

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.

So I started to write about it[0].

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.

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.

Once I can find its name, I control it.

[0] [https://medium.com/chrismarshallny](https://medium.com/chrismarshallny)

------
ryanar
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.

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.

~~~
adam_ellsworth
Could you elaborate on what an "RFC Culture" means to you in a broader sense?
I feel like there's a train of thought here that I'm missing and am keen on
further elucidation.

What would a documentation or comment-chain ideally be constituted of? How
would you change existing docs in a practical way which would reflect both
deprecated and replacement functionality?

When you originally considered "RFC Culture" what system did you have in mind?

------
fogetti
The author is proposing writing as a tool for self-improvement and to find
clarity.

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.

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.

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.

Of course, you can use your authority to force people to read, but people will
simply hate the experience even more.

~~~
shimon
This is true for most organizations. Note though that the practice the author
describes at Amazon is that everyone gets the document to read at the
beginning of the meeting. The structure of the meeting means that (1) someone
is forced to produce the narrative ahead of time and (2) everyone has to read
it alone together.

That's an odd setup, but it's probably what makes this system work -- an
organizational admission that this meeting setup is actually better than
walking people through slides. One advantage the author doesn't mention is
that this "alone together" mode gives each participant more time to think
before having to fit their thoughts into a group discussion, which likely
promotes divergent thinking and gives people room to ask important, difficult
questions.

------
blueyes
I recently read this book, recommended in another of the infinite posts about
writing well, and it is truly good:

[https://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-
Publish...](https://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-
Publishing/dp/0226899152)

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.

For those who like Williams, he also wrote books on how to build arguments and
conduct research!

------
nevster
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.

------
throwwwwww
Totally agree.

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.

------
anacleto
> Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly.

This idea of writing as a proxy for thinking is the essence of many
misconceptions.

I know many 1st-class thinkers who have such hard time in writing.

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.

Most people can't write well because they don't know how to control the
logical sequence in which they present their ideas.

And that is the single most important act necessary to clear writing.

I shared more on what that means here in a recent essay [0].

[0] [https://pulseasync.com/operators/share-written-
ideas/](https://pulseasync.com/operators/share-written-ideas/)

------
legendofbrando
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.

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.

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.

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.

------
ccktlmazeltov
imo slides are much more effective if you're a good presenter AND you are
recording your presentation.

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.

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.

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.

------
Tempest1981
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."

Is Bezos referring to cases where the "why" is not clear, and not explained?

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.

Note that the article uses 3 bullet-lists, which were easy to read/scan
quickly.

~~~
dasil003
Bullet points are fine as a summary, however there is often a reductive
quality to them that gets in the way of understanding. In many cases where you
both the responsibility, the authority and the trust of management this may be
sufficient. However if what you are saying could be controversial—especially
in a large-company setting where you won't necessarily have much face time
with all the people who might have opinions—there is no substitute for a well-
crafted narrative to bring people along.

------
carterklein13
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.

I wholeheartedly agree with this premise, but without some guardrails I feel
like this advice leads to dumpster fires like Medium.

------
engine_jim
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.

------
_emacsomancer_
Bezos's comments here seem to echo things that Edward Tufte has said.

I do think presentations ('powerpoints', though Powerpoint itself is pretty
horrible) have their place, if done well — but they very rarely are.

