The personal website of Ryan Law. https://ryanlaw.me/notes/ Sat, 07 Mar 2026 15:14:45 +0000 https://ryanlaw.me/quality-content-can-be-automated-now https://ryanlaw.me/quality-content-can-be-automated-now Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Pretty soon most technology companies will fully automate content creation, and it will be indistinguishable from all the human-written content they have produced in previous years. (People who disagree with this tend to a) under-value the current capabilities of generative AI and b) over-value the quality of the average company’s marketing) Many of the limitations that have prevented “quality” content... https://ryanlaw.me/bluf-bottom-line-up-front https://ryanlaw.me/bluf-bottom-line-up-front Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) is the practice of opening any written communication with the most important idea stated immediately. BLUF originated as a military communications framework, designed to enforce clear communication in situations where life and death may be at stake. BLUF is useful in all forms of writing. Open your emails with your main request. Share the main... https://ryanlaw.me/wide-for-inspiration-narrow-for-execution https://ryanlaw.me/wide-for-inspiration-narrow-for-execution Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 I think of writing as constant vacillation between two competing states: wide and narrow. Both states are necessary, but they are enemies, and many problems result from residing too long in the incorrect state. To find inspiration it’s important to cast a wide net, to read and watch and listen to as many disparate and unrelated things as possible. We... https://ryanlaw.me/mece-mutually-exclusive-collectively-exhaustive https://ryanlaw.me/mece-mutually-exclusive-collectively-exhaustive Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) is a principle for organizing ideas into categories that do not overlap and do not leave gaps. Developed by McKinsey, MECE helps break complex problems down into clear, complete, and non-redundant parts. MECE is most useful at the outlining stage of writing. Start by identifying the core question your article must answer. Then list every... https://ryanlaw.me/think-in-bullets https://ryanlaw.me/think-in-bullets Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 The humble bullet point list is my most-used, most-effective, most-loved tool for thought. The simple act of committing ideas to a list forces you to consider their sequence, the order in which the information flows from one point to another. You create a simulation of the reader’s journey, and begin to frame your ideas in a way that persuades and... https://ryanlaw.me/just-write-it-down https://ryanlaw.me/just-write-it-down Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 I’ve lifted weights for sixteen years. The hardest part of the entire routine is putting on my gym clothes. If I can muster the energy to change, a cascading sequence is set into motion that almost always ends up with exercise. Writing is the same. The hardest part is starting. You just need to put a few words on the... https://ryanlaw.me/predictions-are-just-information-asymmetry https://ryanlaw.me/predictions-are-just-information-asymmetry Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 The only decent predictions I’ve ever made weren’t true predictions but simple information asymmetry: I saw something happening that other people couldn’t see. When it became mainstream, I seemed more prescient than I really was, as though I had conjured the prediction into life, when in reality I was describing, not predicting. I am not very good at predictions and... https://ryanlaw.me/choose-compounds-over-isolates https://ryanlaw.me/choose-compounds-over-isolates Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 When my son started eating solid food, I spent several frenzied months researching nutrition. My biggest takeaway from that exercise was that salt isn’t always salt, and calories aren’t always calories, because the way they are consumed changes how our bodies interact with them. We get different results from the same substance when taken in its pure form (as an... https://ryanlaw.me/finish-things https://ryanlaw.me/finish-things Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 The most important thing you can do in work and life is to build a habit of finishing things. It’s easy to derail yourself and lose confidence when projects are halfway done. Your motivation ebbs, you encounter greater friction than expected, you find yourself drawn to something with greater promise. But there are no rewards for ideas that could have... https://ryanlaw.me/reader-s-draft-versus-writer-s-draft https://ryanlaw.me/reader-s-draft-versus-writer-s-draft Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Most writers build gradually to the point they want to make. This has the undesirable effect of burying the article’s most interesting ideas and concepts deep within an article, requiring the reader to wade through mental throat-clearing to reach the pay-off. Few readers will persevere. Good writing achieves the opposite, opening with the clearest possible articulation of an idea and... https://ryanlaw.me/list-of-personal-websites https://ryanlaw.me/list-of-personal-websites Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 This is a list of inspiring personal websites. Many of these websites are minimal and share my affinity for Markdown and plaintext: Stephan Ango Jimmy Daly Paul Graham Simon Willison Wes Kao Derek Sivers Yamina Pressler Joschua Wuyts Oliver Burkeman Tom Critchlow Seth Godin Karl Yang Patrick Collison Si Quan Ong Herbert Lui Julian Shapiro Shaan Puri Shea Fitzpatrick Chris... https://ryanlaw.me/how-this-website-was-built https://ryanlaw.me/how-this-website-was-built Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 I have tried many content management systems for this website over the years: Carrd, Squarespace, Webflow, WordPress, Quartz, Obsidian Publish, Django, and even hand-written HTML and CSS files. Every solution has either been too technically complex for a mere writer, or too prescriptive and lacking in customisation. The latest iteration of this website is built using Jekyll and compiled directly... https://ryanlaw.me/the-enshittification-of-non-fiction https://ryanlaw.me/the-enshittification-of-non-fiction Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Most modern non-fiction books have been enshittified to the point of rendering them useless. This is probably a product of big publishing houses having margins squeezed and needing every book to cater to the broadest possible audience. I suspect this will worsen as generative AI becomes more commonplace in writing and publishing processes, making it ever easier to create simulacrums... https://ryanlaw.me/my-favourite-books-of-2025 https://ryanlaw.me/my-favourite-books-of-2025 Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 (Disclaimer: if you’re looking for marketing book recommendations, prepare to be disappointed.) Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death by Otto Dov Kulka. Deeply beautiful and nightmarish in equal measure, a total fever-dream reflection of a childhood spent in Auschwitz, prose intermingled seamlessly with poetry. I found this at random in a secondhand bookstore, and it ended up being the most... https://ryanlaw.me/marketing-is-repetition https://ryanlaw.me/marketing-is-repetition Sun, 10 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Good ideas are hard to find, and most marketing channels are extremely lossy: most people will not see what you share, and those that do will forget it very quickly. Once you have a good idea, shift gears towards repeating that same core idea through as many mediums and framings as possible. https://ryanlaw.me/never-outsource-understanding https://ryanlaw.me/never-outsource-understanding Sat, 26 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 It’s easy to generate summaries of articles, essays and research papers in a couple of clicks. But the point of summarisation is not to possess a summary—it’s to develop understanding of the source material: its usefulness, its applicability to your areas of interests, the strengths and weaknesses of the idea. Manual summarisation is a laborious process that forces you to think,... https://ryanlaw.me/marketing-is-a-continued-exercise-in-novelty https://ryanlaw.me/marketing-is-a-continued-exercise-in-novelty Mon, 07 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Marketing is a continued exercise in novelty. The primary goal of the marketer is to earn attention for their brand by doing noteworthy, original, and unexpected things, creating a continuous stream of reasons for other people to think about you. There are caveats attached to this definition. Help the audience, and not hinder. Create an obvious segue to the thing... https://ryanlaw.me/get-great-with-bad-gear https://ryanlaw.me/get-great-with-bad-gear Tue, 01 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000 I learned to play guitar on a hunk of plywood with action high enough to fit a phone book between string and fretboard. I remember feeling embarrassed whenever I opened my gig bag at jam sessions, pulling out my eBay-caster with the sanded-off brand name (“Maxine”), surrounded as I was by wealthy middle-class bandmates with Fenders and Gibsons. But the... https://ryanlaw.me/be-your-own-harshest-critic https://ryanlaw.me/be-your-own-harshest-critic Tue, 10 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 As a writer, you have to be your own harshest critic. You have to inhabit the role of a hyper-critical reader every time you write. You have to poke holes in your work wherever you can. You have to construct the strongest steel-man possible and confront the criticism it raises head-on. You have to be brutally self-critical with your writing,... https://ryanlaw.me/when-education-goes-to-zero https://ryanlaw.me/when-education-goes-to-zero Fri, 06 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000 In the next 10 years, the value of “educational blog content” as a marketing strategy will go to zero. Almost all informational queries will be resolved by LLMs in the places we already spend time: in our messaging and note-taking apps, in our email clients, in our social media feeds. There will be no reason to tolerate visiting a random... https://ryanlaw.me/could-should-did https://ryanlaw.me/could-should-did Fri, 09 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 There are three levels of credibility in writing. You can make your writing more persuasive by moving up the hierarchy. I like to think of them as could, should, and did: Could: the writer talks about things you, the reader, could do, in a theoretical and abstract sense. Their recommendation is simply a summary of other sources of information, and based on no firsthand experience... https://ryanlaw.me/creativity-is-a-muscle https://ryanlaw.me/creativity-is-a-muscle Fri, 04 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 I often come upon the idea that creative processes are exempt from interrogation and refinement. The argument goes that the act of creation is inherently personal, varying wildly from person to person, and attempts to apply structure or process to creativity are doomed to failure (and destined to scare away whatever fickle “muse” we depend upon for our ideas). I... https://ryanlaw.me/collect-failure https://ryanlaw.me/collect-failure Tue, 18 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000 It’s easier to become great at something by collecting failures than it is by trying to collect successes. In On Writing, Stephen King shared an anecdote which has always stuck with me. After receiving the first few rejection slips for his manuscripts, he shifted his goal from “getting a manuscript published” to “collecting rejection slips from publishers.” He struck a... https://ryanlaw.me/buy-books-liberally https://ryanlaw.me/buy-books-liberally Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000 I’m a huge cheapskate but I allow myself total, reckless freedom to purchase books. I buy any book that seems interesting, any book that challenges a deeply-held belief, and any book that is mentioned by someone I respect. Books are condensed human knowledge and experience. When so much of life is striving to understand how things work, it seems only... https://ryanlaw.me/how-i-read-books https://ryanlaw.me/how-i-read-books Wed, 13 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000 I liked reading about how Wes Kao reads books, so I figured I’d share my own process: Finish every book. In defiance of popular wisdom, I make a point of finishing every book I start—no matter how awful. I have learned much about good writing from reading bad writing, and I often find useful information squirreled away in the dark... https://ryanlaw.me/the-final-ten-percent https://ryanlaw.me/the-final-ten-percent Thu, 30 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 The new ideas and novel insights that characterize great writing can feel impossible to create, but in reality, most great writing represents just an additional 10% of extra context and refinement over existing ideas and truisms. Good ideas generally don’t appear from the ether. They are riffs on existing ideas, refinements, responses, zooming in or zooming out. In almost all... https://ryanlaw.me/weasel-words https://ryanlaw.me/weasel-words Fri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 You can become a better writer almost immediately by learning to identify and replace “weasel words.” Weasel words are words (or phrases) that seem to convey clear meaning but upon closer inspection offer no real substance, like: “business outcomes” “experts believe” analyzing data” “make a decision” We use weasel words to hide gaps in our knowledge. They are often subconscious... https://ryanlaw.me/on-ghostwriting https://ryanlaw.me/on-ghostwriting Fri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 I’ve recently seen a few people share frustration at the quirks of being a ghostwriter, and they largely circle the same issue: namely that your effort goes “unrewarded.” You write something amazing, and someone else gets the credit. I’ve been ghostwriting for over a decade. I have a good number of bylined articles, but even so, some 90% of my... https://ryanlaw.me/the-risk-reward-asymmetry-of-difficult-things https://ryanlaw.me/the-risk-reward-asymmetry-of-difficult-things Fri, 12 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000 There is a huge (beneficial) risk/reward asymmetry in doing very difficult things. One of the roles I played at my last company was pinch hitter. I got tagged into difficult customer accounts with the mandate: fix this. In those situations, failure is expected. If you can’t solve the impossible problem, no big deal—you’re in the same situation as everyone else that... https://ryanlaw.me/the-primacy-of-good-ideas https://ryanlaw.me/the-primacy-of-good-ideas Tue, 14 Feb 2023 00:00:00 +0000 Most writing and editing processes are focused on things that are necessary but not sufficient for creating quality content. Grammar and spelling. Article structure. Search optimization. Reading experience. The absence of these can ruin a good post—but they alone can’t create quality. This is “primacy of good ideas.” A good idea can survive bad writing, but good writing can’t make... https://ryanlaw.me/convincing-case-studies https://ryanlaw.me/convincing-case-studies Fri, 19 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 I’ve been rethinking my approach to case studies. Here are some guiding principles I’ve been sticking to: Avoid writing about X,000% increases—they sound bullshit (even if they’re not). We’re all so inured to inflated statistics that most people will gloss over big percentage increases. Smaller, more “realistic” statistics are–counterintuitively–more persuasive. If you extract yourself, and your company, from a case... https://ryanlaw.me/the-power-of-the-pre-mortem https://ryanlaw.me/the-power-of-the-pre-mortem Tue, 16 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 I was introduced to the concept of the premortem by Haley Bryant, my COO at Animalz. A premortem is a structured process for identifying potential flaws in a plan. It requires users to assume the certain failure of their project—whether a product launch, a new customer relationship, even making a new hire—and posit the most likely reasons for the failure....