Jason Fried is a legend of business. He’s published 4 books and 1,000s of blog posts and built a massively profitable software business his own way. How does he write? This interview is a 91-minute answer to that question. Here’s his method: 1. Don’t write, communicate. 2. If you’re writing and not feeling the flow, close the computer and walk away. Don’t struggle. 3. Jason’s best writing just flows out. There are no drafts. He gets the whole thing on paper in one sitting, then goes back to edit and play around with it. 4. How do you know when you’ve found a good idea? Well, you don’t know. You feel. You give in to your intuition, tune into your senses, and notice goosebumps. Follow those things. Good ideas are like slipstreams — they have their own effortless, accelerated pull. 5. You need a point of view. Something you stand for. Something you believe that others don’t. Something you see that others are blind to. That’s the writing that spreads and makes a difference. 6. Good writing has rhythm. It flows, it bounces, it brings the reader from one word to the next, then the next. 7. Focusing on attention at the expense of writing something of quality is a Faustian bargain. Jason says: “In the same way that sound isn’t music, traffic isn’t audience.” 8. If Jason could teach any writing class, he’d focus on distillation. He’d ask students to explain something in five pages, then one page, then one paragraph, then one sentence, then one snappy phrase. This would teach students to find the essence of what they’re saying. 9. Sometimes, it’s okay to be detached from your industry. Jason doesn’t read industry news and built his software company in Chicago, not Silicon Valley. That detachment gives him a point of view. 10. Murakami once wrote: “If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” 11. Writing is the first filter he uses in the hiring process because he doesn’t look at resumes. Only cover letters. 12. Why is writing quality so important to him? He says: “Business writing isn’t about beauty or eloquence. It’s about clarity of thought. To write is to scale your thinking. And the better you write, the further your ideas spread, which is why good writers make the whole team smarter. When choosing between two people, hire the better writer.” 13. Jason’s tip for overcoming writer’s block: Don’t write, speak. Chances are, you won’t have a problem explaining what you’re trying to say out loud. So do that. Then write it down. 14. Writing prompt: Where are you the most unconventional in how you do things? Write about that. 15. Jason’s marketing strategy has been to share without expectation of return — books, blog posts, podcasts, design reviews, code reviews, and the ins-and-outs of how he runs his business. 16. Jason has time to write because he insists on an open calendar. That gives him time to walk, think, and follow his creative whims. He has no set writing schedule. I’ve shared the full conversation with @JasonFried below. The best part is the deep-dive into his Founder Letter’s, which he publishes whenever he launches a new product. If audio is your thing, I’ve linked to Apple, Spotify, YouTube in the reply tweets.