Tom Critchlow @tomcritchlow

When writing in public, there is a common idea that you should make it accessible. This is a left over from mass media. Words addressed to a large and diverse set of people need to be simple and clear and free of jargon. It is valuable to write clearly of course, to a degree. Clear writing is clear thinking. But to make the content accessible? To

... See more

The internet used to be fun.

It was weird. It was frenzied. People didn’t know what they were doing, so they tried things. They didn’t optimize, because they didn’t know what to optimize for. Good websites got found because they were good. Good tweets went viral because they were good.

Then people learned how to get the results of being good, at le... See more

(S)pecialization doesn’t lend itself well to novelty and surprise.

Quality over quantity. I often worry that I write too much on this blog. After all, the world has a lot of text. Does it need more? Shouldn’t I pick some small number of essays and really perfect them?

Arguably, no. You’ve perhaps heard of the pottery class where students graded on quantity produced more quality than those graded on quality. (It wa

... See more

Two different approaches to finding your voice and point of view: “20% beefs” and the gap between industry and practice.