Annotations (11)
“The impact of an essay is how much it changes readers' thinking multiplied by the importance of the topic. But it's hard to do well at both. It's hard to have big new ideas about important topics. So in practice there's a tradeoff: you can change readers' thinking a lot about moderately important things, or change it a little about very important ones.”
Strategy & Decision Making · Creativity & Innovation · Economics & Markets
DUR_ENDURING
Impact = novelty × importance; hard to max both
“The three reasons readers might not already know what you tell them are (a) that it's not important, (b) that they're obtuse, or (c) that they're inexperienced. If you're writing for smart people about important things, you're writing for the young.”
Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior · Creativity & Innovation
DUR_ENDURING
Important + smart audience = young target
“But with younger readers the tradeoff shifts. There's more room to change their thinking, so there's a bigger payoff for writing about important things. The tradeoff isn't a conscious one, at least not for me. It's more like a kind of gravitational field that writers work in. But every essayist works in it, whether they realize it or not.”
Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Youth shifts novelty-importance tradeoff favorably
“It's hard to write a really good essay about an unimportant topic, though, because a really good essayist will inevitably draw the topic into deeper waters. E. B. White could write an essay about how to boil potatoes that ended up being full of timeless wisdom. In which case, of course, it wouldn't really be about how to boil potatoes; that would just have been the starting point.”
Creativity & Innovation · Philosophy & Reasoning
DUR_ENDURING
Master writers mine mundane for universal
“Now that I know it, should I change anything? I don't think so. In fact seeing the shape of the field that writers work in has reminded me that I'm not optimizing for returns in it. I'm not trying to surprise readers of any particular age; I'm trying to surprise myself.”— Paul Graham
Strategy & Decision Making · Creativity & Innovation · Philosophy & Reasoning
DUR_ENDURING
Optimize for self-surprise, not audience
“I knew I wanted to write for smart people about important topics. I noticed empirically that I seemed to be writing for the young. But it took me years to understand that the latter was an automatic consequence of the former. In fact I only really figured it out as I was writing this essay.”— Paul Graham
Creativity & Innovation · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Discovered strategy by writing about it
“There's a continuum of surprise. At one extreme, something you read can change your whole way of thinking. The Selfish Gene did this to me. It was like suddenly seeing the other interpretation of an ambiguous image: you can treat genes rather than organisms as the protagonists, and evolution becomes easier to understand when you do.”— Paul Graham
Psychology & Behavior · Philosophy & Reasoning
DUR_CONTEXTUAL
Paradigm shift: change unit of analysis
“The way I usually decide what to write about is by following curiosity. I notice something new and dig into it. It would probably be a mistake to change that. But seeing the shape of the essay field has set me thinking. What would surprise young readers? Which important things do people tend to learn late? Interesting question. I should think about that.”— Paul Graham
Creativity & Innovation · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
Follow curiosity but consider strategy
“Whatever you say should also be at least somewhat novel to you, however old you are. It's not an essay otherwise, because an essay is something you write to figure something out.”— Paul Graham
Creativity & Innovation · Philosophy & Reasoning
DUR_ENDURING
Essays discover, not just report
“One reason people won't know something is if it's not important to know. That doesn't mean it will make a bad essay. For example, you might write a good essay about a particular model of car. Readers would learn something from it. It would add to their picture of the world. For a handful of readers it might even spur some kind of epiphany. But unless this is a very unusual car it's not critical for everyone to know about it.”
Strategy & Decision Making · Creativity & Innovation
DUR_ENDURING
Good content on unimportant topics exists
“At the other extreme, writing merely puts into words something readers were already thinking, or thought they were.”
Psychology & Behavior · Creativity & Innovation
DUR_ENDURING
Minimum: articulate the inchoate
Frameworks (2)
Three-Part Audience Analysis
Identifying optimal audience by mapping importance, intelligence, and experience
A diagnostic framework for determining which audience will benefit most from content. By categorizing why readers don't know something (unimportant, obtuse, or inexperienced), the framework reveals that writing for smart people about important topics automatically targets the young, because they represent the intersection of high receptivity and high importance.
Components
- Assess Topic Importance
- Assess Audience Intelligence
- Assess Audience Experience
- Calculate Impact Potential
Prerequisites
- Clear sense of own expertise level
- Ability to assess topic importance objectively
Success Indicators
- Content resonates more with target audience
- Higher engagement from intended demographic
- Clearer strategic focus in content creation
Failure Modes
- Misjudging audience intelligence
- Conflating importance with interest
- Over-optimizing for experienced audiences
Internal vs External Optimization
Choosing between self-surprise and market fit
A decision framework for creative work that distinguishes between optimizing for market response (external) and optimizing for personal discovery (internal). The framework suggests that optimizing for self-surprise often yields better long-term results because it maintains genuine curiosity and leads to more novel insights.
Components
- Identify Your Natural Motivation
- Understand the Strategic Field
- Choose Your Optimization Target
Prerequisites
- Self-awareness about motivation
- Understanding of your domain's strategic constraints
Success Indicators
- Sustained enthusiasm for work
- Production of novel insights
- Long-term external success despite internal focus
Failure Modes
- Confusing internal motivation with ignoring feedback
- Forcing external optimization when internally motivated
- Never testing strategic understanding against reality
Mental Models (8)
Audience-Topic Matching
Strategic ThinkingThe principle that optimal audience selection emerges from the intersection of topic importance and
In Practice: Graham's insight that writing for smart people about important topics automatically targets the youn
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Novelty-Importance Tradeoff
EconomicsImpact equals novelty multiplied by importance, but achieving high levels of both simultaneously is rare.
In Practice: Graham's explicit formulation of the impact calculation and resulting tradeoff
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Shifting Frontiers
Decision MakingApparent tradeoffs can shift based on context.
In Practice: Recognition that younger readers shift the tradeoff frontier
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Discovery Through Creation
Decision MakingCreating something often reveals insights that couldn't be found through pure analysis.
In Practice: Graham's realization discovered through writing
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Internal vs External Optimization
Decision MakingThe choice between optimizing for self-surprise or audience response.
In Practice: Graham's decision to continue optimizing for self-surprise
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Curiosity with Strategic Awareness
Decision MakingBalance between following pure curiosity and incorporating strategic understanding.
In Practice: Graham's decision to continue following curiosity
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Perspective Shift as Understanding
Decision MakingChanging the unit of analysis can make complex phenomena easier to understand.
In Practice: Graham's example of The Selfish Gene
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Gravitational Field Effects
Physics & ChemistryThe principle that invisible structural forces shape outcomes more powerfully than conscious intentions.
In Practice: Graham's gravitational field metaphor for strategic constraints
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Connective Tissue (2)
Tradeoff frontiers in economics and physics
The novelty-importance tradeoff in content creation mirrors the concept of production possibility frontiers in economics: you can have more of one dimension only by accepting less of another. The essay insight (high novelty on moderate topics vs. moderate novelty on critical topics) parallels the guns-vs-butter tradeoff. Both reveal fundamental constraints where attempting to maximize both dimensions simultaneously is impossible given finite resources (cognitive capacity in one case, productive resources in the other). The younger audience shifts the frontier, expanding what's possible, just as technological innovation shifts the production possibility curve outward.
Recognition that the impact formula (novelty × importance) creates a tradeoff identical to economic production constraints
Gravitational fields in physics
The essay describes strategic constraints as a gravitational field that shapes behavior whether actors are conscious of it or not. This parallels how gravitational fields in physics curve spacetime and determine the motion of objects regardless of the objects' awareness. Just as planets orbit stars not through conscious choice but through the warping of spacetime, writers produce work shaped by strategic fields (audience characteristics, topic importance, novelty requirements) that constrain their options unconsciously. The insight: making the field visible (like mapping a gravitational field) allows conscious navigation within it, but doesn't eliminate the field's influence. Both phenomena demonstrate how invisible structural forces shape outcomes more powerfully than conscious intentions.
Graham's explicit metaphor of strategic constraints as a gravitational field, revealing how invisible forces shape outcomes
Glossary (2)
obtuse
VOCABULARYSlow to understand; lacking intellectual sharpness
“Is it because they're inexperienced, or because they're obtuse?”
empirically
VOCABULARYBased on observation or experience rather than theory
“I noticed empirically that I seemed to be writing for the young.”
Key People (2)
Richard Dawkins
(1941–)Evolutionary biologist, author of The Selfish Gene
E. B. White
(1899–1985)American essayist, author of Charlotte's Web
Concepts (2)
Gene-centric view of evolution
CL_SCIENCEEvolutionary theory treating genes as the unit of selection, not organisms
Tradeoff frontier
CL_ECONOMICSThe boundary showing maximum achievable combinations of competing objectives
Synthesis
Synthesis
Migrated from Scholia