You can practically predict who wins a competitive cycling race based on their watts per kilogram. Descending and aerodynamic positioning play a minor role, but mostly it’s just watts per kilogram. But there’s no equivalent for words.
Words seem like a poor substitute for ideas. (I once had a boss who criticized a colleague for his low wo…
You can practically predict who wins a competitive cycling race based on their watts per kilogram. Descending and aerodynamic positioning play a minor role, but mostly it’s just watts per kilogram. But there’s no equivalent for words.
Words seem like a poor substitute for ideas. (I once had a boss who criticized a colleague for his low word-to-meaning ratio; he wasn’t wrong, unfortunately.) Maybe it’s not even ideas, but something like “the right idea expressed just so at the perfect moment in a way that changes someone’s behaviors and improves their well-being.” That’s so hard to do on Substack (when it happens, we probably never hear about it) and more likely through mentorship, marriage, or management.
Increasing my watts makes me a better cyclist. But increasing my words won’t make me a better writer or manager.
I think about how the Industrial, Scientific, and Computing revolutions devalued watts. Lately I’ve been reading about the role that horses played in Spain’s conquest of Mesoamerica — like some advanced alien technology from 3 Body Problem. One horsepower equals 735.5 watts while brain can perform the equivalent of an exaflop of operations with 20 watts.
The steam engine made the horse a rich person’s hobby, and brain power took over.
For now. These words are coming from my brain. But how long until I train an agent on all of the comments I’ve left on the Internet and instruct it to leave comments in my style on the latest posts of the 100 writers I admire the most — and another 10,000 who write like them? And then instruct it to send me a digest of the five most interesting comment threads to see how other people’s agents have interacted with my agent?
Sigh. For now, like you, I’ll keep focusing on my watts more than my words.
You can practically predict who wins a competitive cycling race based on their watts per kilogram. Descending and aerodynamic positioning play a minor role, but mostly it’s just watts per kilogram. But there’s no equivalent for words.
Words seem like a poor substitute for ideas. (I once had a boss who criticized a colleague for his low word-to-meaning ratio; he wasn’t wrong, unfortunately.) Maybe it’s not even ideas, but something like “the right idea expressed just so at the perfect moment in a way that changes someone’s behaviors and improves their well-being.” That’s so hard to do on Substack (when it happens, we probably never hear about it) and more likely through mentorship, marriage, or management.
Increasing my watts makes me a better cyclist. But increasing my words won’t make me a better writer or manager.
I think about how the Industrial, Scientific, and Computing revolutions devalued watts. Lately I’ve been reading about the role that horses played in Spain’s conquest of Mesoamerica — like some advanced alien technology from 3 Body Problem. One horsepower equals 735.5 watts while brain can perform the equivalent of an exaflop of operations with 20 watts.
The steam engine made the horse a rich person’s hobby, and brain power took over.
For now. These words are coming from my brain. But how long until I train an agent on all of the comments I’ve left on the Internet and instruct it to leave comments in my style on the latest posts of the 100 writers I admire the most — and another 10,000 who write like them? And then instruct it to send me a digest of the five most interesting comment threads to see how other people’s agents have interacted with my agent?
Sigh. For now, like you, I’ll keep focusing on my watts more than my words.