Welcoem to posts!!
in the future - u will be able to do some more stuff here,,,!! like pat catgirl- i mean um yeah... for now u can only see others's posts :c
Most people aren't professional communicators, but there's barely a person who wouldn't benefit from improving their communication skills. Writing, listening, speaking, all of it. Good communication isn't the holy grail, but it makes getting there so much easier.
150 - 2
Almost every time I meet somebody who I'd consider to be a genius, I discover that they have some debilitating inhibition like severe insomnia, addiction, mania, or paranoia. Nature trades in fine balances. Rare is the one who gets the gift but not the curse.
219 - 5
The Internet is moving from an Age of Distribution to an Age of Engagement.
In the age of distribution, followers were the key metric. Audience growth was slow but sticky, and consistency was everything. So long as you published regularly, your audience grew predictably and you could reliably turn a following into cash.
But now we're moving to an age of engagement where followers matter much less. Just look at your "For You" feed. My bet is that most of what's there wasn't written by people you follow. That's a huge shift from the way Twitter used to be â and the entire Internet works like this now.
If you publish something that pops, your work can spread, regardless of whether you have 100 followers or 10,000. The reach of what you share is less and less about how many followers you have and more and more about how many people are engaging with what you've shared (which is why it's never been easier for tiny accounts to go viral).
What inspired this shift? TikTok.
It was the first major social media algorithm focused on individual pieces of content instead of the follower graph. Once they succeeded, everybody followed suit: Instagram, YouTube, and now... Twitter.
This shift impacts just about every piece of content you see on social media these days. Its impact is made even stronger by the way all these platforms have banned link posts, but that's a story for another time.
230 - 5
Saw an Instagram story from a friend in New Delhi. She was walking through a shopping mall that looked like something you'd see in Dallas.
Got me thinking... One reason the modern world feels uninspiring is that so much is prefabricated. We live in the drudge of sameness. It's cheaper and faster to buy stuff from Amazon or Home Depot, but the cost of this is that the mass-manufactured aesthetic gets shipped around the globe.
On an individual basis, it may be the rational thing to do. But on a collective basis, it strips the world of the very character that gives life vitality. I much prefer a world where India looks totally different from Texas.
182 - 13
Years ago, a mentor said to me: âItâs your job to have the highest quality standards of anybody you work with. Youâll face pressure to lower them every day. Donât do it. If you can set a high standard and simply maintain it, youâll do very well for yourself.â
299 - 11
Have a friend whoâs an expert in the science of learning. Once, we got to talking about math. He said the lowest hanging fruit is to send every kid back to the stage of math theyâre not 100% fluent in.
For most kids, thatâs something like 3rd or 4th grade. Then they should work their way up, step-by-step, and only graduate to the next level once they have mastery of the level before. And now with learning apps, they can speed-run the catch-up process.
The research is clear. Itâs the social stigma of going back that holds kids back. Kids donât want to be made-fun of, and no parent of an 8th grader wants to send their kids back to 3rd grade math, no matter how effective it may be.
We know how to fix the problem. Weâre just afraid of the social repercussions. Many things work like this.
138 - 5
Writing on the Internet taught me that how you say something is just as important as what you say. âBest idea winsâ sounds compelling, but it ainât true. Substance needs style to pierce the culture.
167 - 5
Bezos once said: "The thing I've noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it."
Applies to so much more than business. Never let a statistic blind you from seeing the naked truth before your eyes.
The line between smarts and stupidity can be as thin as the ability to see truth, without the blinders of propaganda. That's why Orwell wrote: âThe Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.â
Reminds me of San Francisco's crime statistics after COVID. The government reported that crime was falling, but nobody with their head on straight believed the numbers. Everybody had a story about somebody's car window getting smashed, the downtown looked like a zombie apocalypse, and even the deodorant was locked behind plastic at my local Walgreens. Only a fool could've believed the official data.
93 - 2
Just walked by the Nike store. Didnât see a single iconic athlete on the walls. Nike was once the pinnacle of peak performance. A shrine to excellence. I still remember begging my Dad for a pair of Nike running shorts because I swore theyâd make me run faster.
Now the walls are filled with photos of slightly overweight people who look like they ate too much at brunch and need to burn off the calories with a weekend jog. Brands can do what they want, but itâs been ages since somebody mentioned Nike in conversation. It isnât cool anymore. What went wrong isnât a mystery.
107 - 12
Spoke to an old man recently. Heâs been feeling his age. Greying hair. Less energy. Knocking on the footsteps of retirement. He said: âDavid, I have one regret. I wish Iâd had kids sooner, so I couldâve spent more time with them.â
In a culture where people are having kids later and later, this feels like a story worth repeating.
103 - 7
Hey! I'm a writer, teacher, and podcaster. People call me "The Writing Guy." That's because my career orbits around teaching people to express their ideas in writing.
My main thing these days is a show called How I Write, where I interview top writers about their creative process. Previous guests include Sam Altman, Tim Ferriss, and Marc Andreessen.
I also run a website called Writing Examples to teach people how to write with personality. Each article dissects a piece of writing from a famous writer like Charles Dickens or Jerry Seinfeld to give people X-Ray vision into what makes the words come alive.
Before doing all this, I ran a cohort-based course called Write of Passage, where I taught more than 2,000 students from more than 70 countries how to write and develop ideas.