# 50 Days of Writing, David Perell 50-day email series from David Perell about creating habits and generating good content. ## Day 1: Write for Yourself - [Lesson #1: Write About Small Topics](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Define your audience: it can be for you, or for *one* other person (a proxy for your reader) - What would You have liked to have known about six months ago? Write about it. - If writing for *one* other person, put their name at the top of the page to focus yourself. Describe them in detail to help create clarity. - If you write for everyone, you write for no one. ## Day 2: Why You Should Write - [Daily Writing #2: Why You Should Write](message:%[email protected]%3E) - “Words are the atomic unit of the internet.” - Building a personal platform - Build your network - Improve your thinking - Create opportunities for yourself - Reframe the use: Writing as a way of connecting you with people in your future, instead of looking at social media as a way of your past - There is an overlap of successful people in other disciplines who also write. - Each moment, no matter how mundane, is filled with inspiration to write about. You just need to practice observing it and translating it into words. - Writing and self-publishing online is like having company over: you observe your environment (writing) with a more critical eye to see how it represents you. - Good writing is rare; cheap clickbait articles are everywhere. ## Day 3: The Serendipity of Note-Taking - [Daily Writing #3: The Serendipity of Note-Taking](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Note-taking isn’t about just capturing ideas, but help to create new ones too. - Order and structure can help you find what you’re looking for, but it can also reduce the opportunities for random chance, or serendipity. ## Day 4: Writing is More than Typing - [Daily Writing #4: Writing is More than Typing](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Just as there is more process in a restaurant than just setting a plate in front of a customer, there is more to writing than just spelling, grammar and structure. Restaurants must source ingredients and prep food in advance for dinner service and create full menu plans, just as writers source ideas and research for their writing process. ## Day 5: Writing Makes You a Better Speaker - [Daily Writing #5: Writing Makes You a Better Speaker](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Neil deGrasse Tyson views pop culture as a structure to support talking about the universe. Everything he publicly speaks about, he has written down in advance. Not only is he familiar with the content, but he is able to find flow and cadence within the words. - Writing allows you to refine your thoughts until they’re clear and concise. Words can be written and rewritten, where speaking off-the-cuff doesn’t afford the same experience. ## Day 6: Note-Taking is Time Travel - [Daily Writing #6 Note-Taking is Time Travel](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Revisiting old memories unlocks a cascade of memories. - Notes don’t need to be robust, but they do benefit when they unlock the emotional resonance that inspired you to write it down in the first place. - This reminds me a lot of [[Autonoetic consciousness]]. ## Day 7: Learn to Write Fast - [Daily Writing #7: Learn to Write Fast](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Deadlines are motivators. - Note-taking means that you aren’t starting from scratch when you write. - Consider recording yourself in short bursts as a first draft, and talk through conversationally as though you were explaining to a friend. Rinse, and repeat until you’ve been able to re-explain your ideas. This allows you to organically see a structure for your ideas. ## Day 8: Writing Can Save You Time - [Daily Writing #8: Writing Can Save You Time](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Published ideas are intellectual capital. - Writing makes your ideas permanent. - Writing it down allows you to be able access it and remix your thoughts in the future. ## Day 9: Learn Like an Athlete - [Daily Writing #9: Learn Like an Athlete](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Knowledge workers need to train their writing muscles as much as athletes need to train their muscles. - A structured and disciplined training regimen will help with writing. - Adopt a quarterly sprint model, allowing you to focus on four different topics or areas a year. - Share your learning (aka write in public). - Writing in public allows a quicker feedback loop about your learning. - The more you do it, the easier it becomes. ## Day 10: The Three B's of Creativity - [Daily Writing #10: The Three B's of Creativity](message:%[email protected]%3E) - “Creativity” can be harnessed by a period of relaxation after a long period of focused thinking. - Bed: sleep and subconscious. Both important for reframing thinking and imagination. - Bath: leisure time. Context switching between work and breaks helps to shake things loose. A bath may be an opportunity to stop, relax, and hear yourself thing. - Bus: movement. Get out and see new things. Get inspired. Get moving. A change is as good as a rest. Go for a walk. ## Day 11: You Already Have a Voice - [Daily Writing #11: You Already Have a Voice](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Your writing voice is your personality on the page. - Don’t write as someone else; write as yourself. - Your readers will be drawn to your voice (…because, I mean… otherwise, they probably wouldn’t want to read you!) - Nurture your unique experiences and obscure influences. - Your voice doesn’t come out until you write; it doesn’t develop through thinking alone. - When the data and feedback align with what you want to write about, double down on that thing. That thing is *your* thing. ## Day 12: Look for Things that Don't Make Sense - [Daily Writing #12: Look for Things that Don't Make Sense](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Most people run from complexity, but that’s often where the interesting story is. - The best learning opportunities come from finding the things that don’t add up. ## Day 13: Lateral Thinking with Withered Ideas - [Daily Writing #13 Lateral Thinking with Withered Ideas](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Based off a Nintendo product-development philosophy: “Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology” - Nintendo uses old technology to innovate. When they developed the Gameboy, they didn’t have the capital for the latest and greatest. - The important thing is to make the gameplay engaging; players won’t care about the technical limitations if they’re fully engaged in the content. - You don’t need to write about current media to have content. Just because it’s new and trendy now, doesn’t mean that there isn’t value in classics. ## Day 14: The Go-For-It-Window - [Daily Writing #14: The Go For It Window](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Main thesis: “Technology advances faster than social norms.” - Opportunity for writing between the gaps of technology and social norms. - There is a difference between the real state of the world, and the social perceptions of it. - Risky and unpopular, so be prepared to be jeered and criticized. - It’s recognizing the right opportunity at the right time, and going for it. ## Day 15: Find Your Shiny Dime - [Daily Writing #15: Find Your Shiny Dime](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Perell using a metaphor from his own childhood where he would use a shiny dime in the place of a control tower when building model airports to play with. In his metaphor, the control tower operates as the central and critical component of the airport as it serves as the operational point for all air traffic, and thus the centre of the airport. - He suggests extending the metaphor to writing, where every article should start with that one small centerpiece point. - An article doesn’t have to be a magnum opus with cramming everything possible about behemoth topics. That can be overwhelming (and on a personal note, that’s totally fodder for writer’s block!) - This centerpiece should be atomic: it should be the smallest you can make, and still be a viable topic. Atomicity provides restraint, and restraint provides freedom. ## Day 16: POP Writing - [Daily Writing #16: POP Writing](message:%[email protected]%3E) - POP writing is more approachable than business writing. - The balance of POP depends on what tone you’re trying to convey in your writing. - Personal - Centres around storytelling and emotions, based on your own lived experiences. - Can be warm and emotional, or too much like a diary without balance. - Observational - Centres around noticed patterns. - Can be cold and dry without personalization or playfulness. - Playful - Fun and enjoyment through analogies, thought experiments and pop culture. - Can be too jokey and come across unprofessionally without balance. ## Day 17: Write While You Read - [Daily Writing #17: Write While You Read](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Engage in active reading. - Descartes: “The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.” - Keep notes lightweight so to be consistent. - Keep notes evergreen to stay relevant. - Write notes in your own words. - Don’t just highlight blindly; write a note for every highlight about why it resonated or how it relates to what you’re working on. ## Day 18: Write While You Walk - [Daily Writing #18: Write While You Walk](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Writing doesn’t have to be done in front of the computer, and it doesn’t have to be done in stasis. - Take notes while you walk, as thoughts occur. ## Day 19: Create a Physical Structure - [Daily Writing #19: Create a Physical Structure](message:%[email protected]%3E) - #followup Spiders use their webs as a form of sensory processing, or a second brain. They externalize their cognitive tasks. - RAM (random-access memory) is like [[Memory, short-term|short-term memory]]. ROM (read-only memory) is like [[Memory, long-term|long-term memory]]. - Albert Einstein: “My pencil and I are smarter than I am.” - Perell atomizes his outlines into sticky notes on his wall, with one note per idea. It allows him to visualize the overall structure, and quickly make changes because sticky notes are malleable. When he goes to write a section, he grabs the single idea note for focus. By putting them on the wall, the outline is visible, so his subconscious can process ideas when not actively working. He argues hanging sticky notes on the wall activates [[Memory, spatial|spatial memory]]. ## Day 20: Talking Can Cure Writer's Block - [Daily Writing #20: Talking Can Cure Writer's Block](message:%[email protected]%3E) - It’s easy to have ideas away from the computer, but for the mind to grow silent the moment you sit down to write. - Winston Churchill used to dictate his ideas to a secretary who would type up his first draft. He would then revise them once they were down on page. This can now be done with transcription software. - If you hit a wall, try recording your thoughts on your phone, and transcribe your ideas. ## Day 21: Assume You're Not Original - [Daily Writing #21: Assume You're Not Original](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Inspired by Derek Sivers article, [Assume You’re Below Average](https://sive.rs/below-average) - Most people assume they’re better than average. - Sivers takes the opposite approach by assuming he’s below average, so he asks questions and listens more to learn more. "To assume you’re below average is to admit you’re still learning. You focus on what you need to improve, not your past accomplishments.” - For online writing, just assume that your ideas aren’t new or novel. ## Day 22: Write About Earned Secrets - [Daily Writing #22: Write About Earned Secrets](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Two types of earned secrets - Access: Your unique perspective, based on information/experiences you may have access to that others do not. - Revelation: The synthesis of publicly available knowledge in new ways. That information may be scattered or decentralized, but your contribution could be bringing it together in a new way. - A byproduct of expertise is a unique eye: you can see things that others may not catch. They are able to make connections between topics based on experience. ## Day 23: Create a Story Box - [Daily Writing #23: Create a Story Box](message:%[email protected]%3E) - A story box is like Pinterest for writing. It’s a collection of materials that resonate. - Basically this is a [[Zettelkasten]] or a place where you write down what resonates. - Summarize with a series of quick points. - Organize into themes. - Keep the ideas all together so they can stew. - Include other stories that have resonated. (Basically be Malcolm Gladwell… have an illustrative story on hand.) ## Day 24: Leave a Summary for Yourself - [Daily Writing #24: Leave a Summary for Yourself](message:%[email protected]%3E) - At the end of a writing session, write down next actions for yourself so you can pick up easier the next day to get back into a flow state. - Questions you can ask yourself: - Where did you get stuck today? - What do you want to achieve next time you write? - What were you thinking about when you stopped for today? ## Day 25: The Islands and Bridges Strategy - [Daily Writing #25: The Islands and Bridges Strategy](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Two types of articles: - The ones you know what you’re going to write about before you start - The ones where you use the act of writing to know what you’re going to talk about - When you’re exploring, you can write individual sections that can be moved around and connected once you develop your thoughts and structure. - You don’t need to wait until you’ve got a clearly formed idea of what it is to begin. Just begin. ## Day 26: Hide Your Work - [Daily Writing #26: Hide Your Work](message:%[email protected]%3E) - The goal of the end product is the reader’s ease in reading your writing, not showing off all of the hard work that went into making it. - Basically aligns with my philosophy on design. ## Day 27: Imitate, Then Innovate - [Daily Writing #27: Imitate, Then Innovate](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Read, and then copy the writing style as a way of understanding the architecture of writing. - This reminds me a bit of how Stephen King suggests the act of writing is reading and writing for four to six hours a day. Though King’s thing is more about the routine and dedication to the craft, than finding the architecture in words. - Other creative processes involve the idea of copying to understand: musician’s scales, painters sketching paintings in a museum. - When we copy others, it helps to illuminate the ways in which we are different. We find our own style. ## Day 28: Bring a Unique Dessert - [Daily Writing #28: Bring a Unique Dessert](message:%[email protected]%3E) - Online writing is like bringing dessert to a party. Either invent your own recipe to share to the world, or put your unique spin on it. - Look for what’s in-demand but no one else is writing about. - You can write about something that’s already been written… but only if you bring another point of view than what has already been said. ## Day 29: - [Daily Writing #29: The Raymond Chandler Rule](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 30: #followup - [Daily Writing #30: The Right Kind of Original](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 31: - [Daily Writing #31: Intellectual Phase Transitions](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 32: - [Daily Writing #32: Summarize the Canon](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 33: - [Daily Writing #33: Avoid Cliché Ideas](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 34: - [Daily Writing #34: Write Summary Box](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 35: - [Daily Writing #35: The But & Therefore Rule](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 36: - [Daily Writing #36: Diversify Your Vernacular](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 37: - [Daily Writing #37: FAST Writing](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 38: - [Daily Writing #38: The Three Deadly Sins](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 39: - [Daily Writing #39: Expression is Compression](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 40: - [Daily Writing #40: Write CLEAR Sentences](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 41: - [Daily Writing #41: CRIBS: My Writing Feedback Formula](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 42: - [Daily Writing #42: The Public to Private Bridge](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 43: - [Daily Writing #43: The Soulja Boy Strategy](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 44: - [Daily Writing #44: Don't Find a Niche. Create One.](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 45: - [Daily Writing #45: Get Wonky](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 46: - [Daily Writing #46: Find Your Scenius](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 47: - [Daily Writing #47: One Big Idea](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 48: - [Daily Writing #48: Audience-First Products](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 49: - [Daily Writing #49: Build a Personal Monopoly](message:%[email protected]%3E) ## Day 50: - [Daily Writing #50: Be a Personal Monopoly Investor](message:%[email protected]%3E)