Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah. Yeah, so you do a podcast, it's like, okay, what kind things that the users could find engaging, right? And I find this a little bit and a lot of companies you have launch a product, you have a narrative coming out and say, okay, how do we position this product in a way that users would want? So I feel like I have done technical writing for a while and I felt like I had some experience trying to predict what engineers would want to hear or care about. But then I don't have any experience like this, completely different type of audience. So that's what I want to, creative writing, writing a story. And that's why I was doing a lot of research [inaudible 01:18:55]. I mean, doing research [inaudible 01:18:56] enjoyed a lot, watching a lot of dramas. I just see what people like. So one thing that I care about is, I think I learned what emotional journey was from a editor. So when we write something we care about how users would feel across a story. We want something in the beginning, we want something, we need to have a hook so that people continue reading. But we also don't want too much of drama because we'll get too tired because you're emotionally exhausted because it's like you're being emotionally manipulated a lot of time. So it gave a emotional journey, maybe have some climax or something more chill, maybe like... And also care about another thing I didn't realize is, for me, for technical writing, you entirely focus on the content, the argument. It's very impersonal. For example, people like ML compilers, doesn't matter if they like the person telling them about compiler or not because it's just objective [inaudible 01:19:56]. But for a novel, people care about character likeability. So in the first version of my story, it makes the characters a little bit more, very logical, very rational, and just does everything just very rationally. And then the feedback I got is, I have a very good friend read it and he was like, he's an amazing person, he's a great person. And he was like, "Chip, I'll be honest, I hate that person." So it doesn't matter as a story, it's just like the person is so unlikeable, that's why he doesn't want to continue. So is a second version. It makes that person, the character more likable. How she makes that character more likable is that you put in some vulnerability sometimes it's like okay maybe it's person have setback because sometimes we can relate to it. So in a lot of ways, it's very interesting. A lot of it is about understand the emotional bit, like how the users feel, not just about the story but also about the characters. That is so interesting. Wow. I learned a lot more there than I thought. That was awesome. Really good example. Chip, two final questions. Where can folks find you online, if they want to reach out and maybe work with you or maybe even just share the stuff that you offer if folks want to reach out. And then how can listeners be useful to you? I'm on social media, LinkedIn, Twitter. I don't post a lot, but I keep telling myself that I should do more because I kind of like the conversation with readers. So I'm actually about to I start a Substack. So I have a placeholder for Substack right now and I'm thinking of doing it for more system thinking because I think it's a very interesting skill. I'm also thinking of doing a YouTube channel on book reviews and basically books than help you think better. So I think it's the first book I'm a review is probably like this book because it's my favorite book growing up and I've been keep on reading it. So yeah, so how can you be helpful? Send me books that you like, books that help you have changed the way you think or change you the way you do anything. So I would appreciate it.…

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