|#115 MWAVC| - Write like an Amazonian

New years resolutions? Yea, those don’t work. By second week in February, you’d have forgotten everything and gone back to skipping gym every other day 😂. But do you know what works? No? I don’t either. But I can show you something that will definitely work. A basic framework for communicating ideas clearly and succinctly. This is not the reason for Amazon’s success but it framed its employees’ mindset to go straight to the point and reduce fluff words. Want to be a better writer? Look no further. Copy and paste this somewhere, look at it every time you’re typing/ replying an email and see how good you become at communicating clearly. Also, shoutout to Rozay who’s moving to Amazon Web Services (AMZN’s most profitable unit) and starting in Feb. Our conversation motivated me to put this out. Find the extract below:

—

1. Use less than 30 words per sentence 

   1. Due to the fact that —> because 

   2. Totally lacked the ability to —> could not 

2. Replace adjectives with data 

   1. We made the performance much faster—> we reduced server side tp90 latency from 10ms to 1ms 

3. Eliminate weasel words 

   1. Neatly all customers —> 87% of Prime members 

   2. Significantly better—> +25 basis points (bps) 

4. Does your writing pass the “so what” test? 

5. If you get a question, reply with one of the four Amazon answers: 

   1. yes 

   2. no 

   3. a number 

   4. i don’t know (and will follow up when I do) 

---

🖥🖥Currently watching

The Oligarchs l Al Jazeera Investigations

---

📱📱Quote of the day

“We shall not cease from exploration 

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started 

And know the place for the first time...

...only those who will risk going too far 

Can possibly find out how far one can go.”

—T.S. Eliot

Remember: “Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.”