Paul Krugman: recommendation

Transcript context

…To finish up the discussion, a few questions about what I call the Paul Krugman production function. In the 1990s, you wrote a well-known paper. It’s called “How I Work.” It was giving people tips, not quite advice for other people, but how it is that you get things done. A few decades have passed since then. What do you think you’ve learned about getting things done that was not in your paper “How I Work”? I put in a lot more effort. First of all, I still think that reads pretty well as a description of how I work. At the time I wrote that, though, I was writing for academics. Now, I do a lot, obviously, of public intellectual stuff. So you would probably have to add some principles about thinking about how this reads to people who are intelligent but come at it with no background. One of the principles I think about all the time with the Times is, nobody has to read your column, so you have to have a hook at the beginning, and you have to have a zinger at the end. [laughs] Style matters, as it should because people have scarce time, and you have to give them a reason to spend time with you. And of course, these days, with Twitter, which it turns out, I guess, if numbers are an indication, I do well at. There, I think the most important thing is to just not think about how many people are reading it. Dance as if no one is watching, tweet as if no one is reading. That just seems to be the way to make it work. You mentioned having had, around 1987, a kind of temporary dry spell in your career. How is it you pulled yourself out of that?…

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