Think in bullets

The humble bullet proof 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 engages, as well as merely conveying the necessary information.

By nesting your bullets, you create a clear information hierarchy, allowing you to determine which ideas should be subservient to others. The length and breadth of each nested idea helps you judge, visually and theoretically, their relative weighting. You can grok, almost immediately, where effort has been over- or under-exerted, where your word count will bloom beyond necessity or fail to hit the minimum threshold.

You can judge the exhaustiveness of your argument, the ability of your collected ideas to cover the scope of the topic in sufficient detail. You’ll realise when your ideas blur together, masquerading as separate concepts but actually existing as a sub-topic or reframing of the same idea.

You force yourself to convey every idea in the most direct possible articulation. In doing so, you afford yourself maximum flexibility for rearranging your ideas, making it easy to shuffle around these atomic units of thought without succumbing to the allure of long-form prose and their elegant transitions.