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The Brutal Truth You Must Accept to Write Well, According to Jeff Bezos
You might be a tech genius, a gifted salesperson, or analytic whiz kid, but if you truly want to be successful in your career, you still need to learn how to write well. That’s the word from a ton of experts, and it’s also clearly the belief of Jeff Bezos. The Amazon founder famously banned PowerPoint at the company in favor of narrative six-page memos.
Writing well means being able not only to communicate clearly, but also to think through complex problems. Writing, in short, makes you both more persuasive and smarter. No wonder Bezos is a fan.
So how do you master this difficult but important skill? As a professional writer, I am always on the lookout for style tips and hacks to improve my writing. Many of these are useful. But according to Bezos himself, these sorts of quick fixes will take you only so far. It might not be what a lot of busy professionals want to hear, but if you really want to write well, what you need is lots and lots of unbroken time to concentrate.
The secret ingredient for great writing: Lots and lots of time
As part of an ambitious project to read through all of Bezos’s past shareholder letters, Medium writer Sumit Grrg recently highlighted a section of Bezos’s 2007 letter that…
