From YouTube.

Notes

Write of Passage Method:
1. Write from Abundance
  - Collect ideas regularly so you don’t have to start writing from scratch.
  - Have a note-taking system – the Capture Habit.
    - Notes:
      - Obsidian
    - Books and PDFs:
      - Kindle
    - Webpages:
      - -
    - Social Media:
      - -
    - Articles:
      - Pocket
      - Instapaper
  - Ideas to Save:
    - Useful
      - Links and references.
    - Inspiring
      - Inspiration – for David, when he went to London he saw the world’s largest collection of original Beatles lyrics. That inspired him and he wrote that down in his note-taking system.
    - Easily Lost
      - Interesting quotes.
    - Personal
      - Personal observations – how does this relate on a personal level?
  - Information is like food.
    - Chefs want quality produce the way we want quality information in our lives.
    - Ideas are assets for writers.
  - The number of your notes increases linearly, but the possible connections between them increase exponentially:
  - Will Mannon on the Capture Habit: ^e873a6
    - Instead of filming an Instagram story, jot down stuff as you go throughout your day.
  - Write while you read
    - Most people just consume without making use of the information they’re taking in.
  - Build a digital diary.
    - David’s favorite book from 2021 is Matthew McConaughey’s Greenlights.
      - Matthew wrote the book by compiling 30 years worth of notes. He secluded himself in the woods and combined the notes into a finished manuscript.
  - Questions to Ask
    - Stories
      - What are your go-to stories?
    - Experiences
      - Write about once-in-a-lifetime moments.
    - Insightful
      - In what ways do you surprise your peers?
    - Memories
      - What’s a memory you don’t want to forget?
  - Modern writing is assembled.
    - Find
    - Assemble
      - Hot Notebooks
        
        Really specific – could be an essay. Examples include:
        
        Laws of the Internet
        
        The Microwave Economy
        
        The Knife Theory of Hiring
        
        The Inversion of Censorship
      - Cold Notebooks
        
        General topics – no immediate essay in mind, but they are collected in one place.
        
        Architecture
        
        Building a Second Brain
        
        Christianity
        
        Derek Sivers
        
        Electricity
        
        Philosophy
        
        Etc.
    - Express
      - Information from the Find and Assemble stages are merely collated or amalgamated in the Express stage.
  - Read to collect the dots. Write to connect them. Here’s a cool image from one of David Perell’s tweets:
    - Ken Burns’ 11.5-hour Civil War documentary was culled from 22.73 miles of film.
      - He says it’s like Maple Syrup: we need 40-50 gallons of sap for 1 gallon of sweet maple syrup.
2. Write from Conversation
  - Surround yourself with people who ignite an intellectual fire inside of you.
  - Writing doesn’t have to happen alone. It can be a social experience.
    - Henry David Thoreau isolated himself while writing Walden Pond. But writing doesn’t have to be this way.
  - We can learn something from James Clear:
    - Before James published a book, he tested each of them using David’s theory of the Content Triangle:
      - Conversation
      - Feedback
        
        Twitter
      - Feedback
        
        Article
      - Distribute
        
        Newsletter
        
        Book
    - David’s Content Triangle:
      - Here’s an interesting tweet from James Clear subtly referencing David’s Content Triangle:
  - We don’t need to be 100% original.
    - ”I thought, This is so banal!” There is absolutely nothing there that is new. I’m not an archeologist. I’m not a primatologist. I mean, I did zero new research… It was really reading the kind of common knowledge and just presenting it in a new way. – Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens
    - There are 1,010 biographies of Winston Churchill.
  - How to improve your writing.
    - Don’t just write words. Write music.
      - Here’s a quote from Gary Provost:
    - Imitate, then innovate.
      - Ironically, the more we imitate others, the more we discover our unique style.
      - Hunter S. Thompson handwrote every word in The Great Gatsby just so he could feel what it was to write a world-class novel.
      - John Cleese of Monty Python copied jokes he heard on the radio so he could recite them to his friends in school.
      - Quentin Tarantino is notorious for copying shots in films that he likes. The style associated with this copying then became Tarantino’s style.
      - *The road to originality is paved with the inspiration of others.
3. Write in Public
  - Don’t just write for yourself. Create serendipity by sharing ideas with others.
  - How do you get your ideas read?
    - Public vs. Private Bridge
      - Grow your audience on public platforms. Build relationships on private ones.
      - Public: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
      - Private: Gmail, Convertkit, Substack
    - Here’s an interesting slide from David’s presentation:
    - David’s advice: Medium is great but you don’t own your relationship with people, so two things: 1) Create a newsletter, and 2) Make your own website.
Personal Monopoly: ^ad6b39
- Unusual
  - Skills or knowledge not often found together.
    - Ed Latimore is a Physicist and a boxer, for example.
- Complementary
  - Skills that reinforce and amplify each other.
- Experiential
  - Skills gained through experience.
  - David can’t write about experiences in boxing because there is what he calls experiential wisdom in getting punched in the face a couple of times.
  - David then talks about a Write of Passage cohort who became an assistant to four (4) different billionaires. A lot of people don’t have that experience.
- Specific
  - The narrower the niche, the better.
  - Here’s an example from Packy McCormick:
  - And here’s another from Ana Lorena Fabrega:
- You can learn to write and build an audience of like-minded people. Many of the most influential writers aren’t seen as writers:
  - Emily Weiss
    - Started with a blog called Into the Gloss – now runs a multi-billion dollar company.
  - Bill Gurley
    - He started writing online in 1996.
  - Nathan Barry
    - Founder of ConvertKit – now worth $300,000,000.