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David Perell

@david_perell

Sep 20, 2020 • 30 tweets • 13 min read • Read on X

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Bryson DeChambeau might be the most innovative athlete in the world right now.

He just won his first major championship and is changing how golf is played at the highest levels. People call him "The Mad Scientist of Golf." Here's what you can learn from him.

THREAD

1. Great ideas are buried in history

Bryson's swing is inspired by a 1969 book called The Golfing Machine. It describes 144 ways you can swing a club and inspired Bryson to adopt a "single plane swing." It's one of the most controversial books ever written about golf.

2. Experiment with yourself

Most players have irons of different lengths, but all of Bryson's are 37.5 inches long. Unlike other pros, all his irons have the same swing weight. Their lie angles are 10 degrees more upright than usual, which is why his swing looks funky.

@MarkBroadie

3. Follow the math

Bryson studied @MarkBroadie's ideas and determined that if he wanted to be #1 in the world, he needed to hit the ball farther. To do that, he gained 40 pounds, started swinging as hard as possible, and changed his swing. Now, he's the longest driver on tour.

4. Make progress by turning an art into a science

For all of golf history, golfers putted based on their feel and intuition. But Bryson uses a system called vector putting where he uses math to compute the break and determine how the ball will roll along the grass.

5. Optimal performance happens somewhere between conventional wisdom and what your body tells you

Most trainers will tell you to rest, but Bryson DeChambeau works out every day. Most golf coaches tell you to hit with a 7-10 degree driver, but Bryson's is only 5.5 degrees.

6. If you’re innovative, people will laugh at you

Bryson’s been criticized for turning golf into a science. Instead of “trusting his feel,” he pulls from physics and geometry. He’s the only golfer I’ve ever seen who consistently brings a launch monitor to the driving range.

7. Seeing that experts are wrong in one area inspires you to question conventional wisdom in other areas too.

He first questioned conventional wisdom with "The Golfing Machine." Then, he did it by putting big grips on his clubs. Now his goal is to live for "130 or 140" years.

8. Identify the highest leverage ways to improve

Professional golf increasingly rewards people who drive the ball far. But Bryson’s also improved his putting.

When he first turned pro, he was 157th in putting. Now, he’s 12th. Likewise, he’s climbed from 55th to 2nd in driving.

9. Work hard

The night before his US Open win, he was the last player on the driving range.

"People don't realize how hard I work to try and get a better understanding of my biomechanics. Right around 14, I started working really hard and that's kind of what changed my game."

10. Measure what you can

Bryson gets instant feedback after every shot on the driving range, which is unprecedented in the golf world.

The data pays off too. With a 200 mile-per-hour ball speed, this drive drive flew 365 yards — more than 3.5 football fields.

11. Unique people do unique things, even outside their main area of expertise

Bryson's autograph is as unique as his approach to the game. Even though he's right-handed, he often signs his autograph backward with his left hand.

12. Extreme results require extreme dedication.

Bryson once said: "I can be good at anything if I love it and dedicate myself. And I love history. I love science. I love music. I love golf. I love learning. I love life. I love trying to be the best at anything and everything."

@GOLF_com

13. Greatness is grueling

Bryson and his coach Chris Como set up the ideal indoor practice studio. This video shows how he swings as hard as he possibly can to increase his clubhead speed. Note the force plates under his feet and the data at the end of the video.

h/t @GOLF_com

14. Cutting-edge innovation happens in weird ways

Bryson works out his brain by watching movies. He measures the peaks and valleys of his brain's electrical current, with a goal of staying calm during stressful scenes.

He also monitors his brain activity on the course.

15. Collect more data

Bryson insists on collecting data beyond the driving range. He's the first golfer I've seen that brings his launch monitor onto the course so he can mimic tournament conditions.

With all that data, he can study trends and identify where he can improve.

16. Stick to the plan

At the gym, Bryson focuses on isolation exercises instead of compound movements like squats and deadlifts.

Gaining weight gives him stability on the course which has helped him increase his swing speed to 135mph and his ball speed to 200 mph.

17. Keep pushing the limits, even after other people think you’ve made it.

Right after winning the US Open, Bryson announced that he’s going to experiment with a 48-inch driver (3 inches longer than the norm) so he can drive the ball even farther — “maybe 360 or 370 yards.”

18. Perform intuitively

Bryson practices like a scientist so he can play like an artist. Here's what he learned from his hero, Moe Norman: "Why was he able to hit it straight every time? It wasn’t that he was thinking about everything. More like he was thinking about nothing."

19. Ground yourself in timeless ideas

In 2014, Byson almost quit playing golf. He was depressed and unhealthily obsessed. Desperate for answers, he turned to his favorite Bible passage from Colossians 3:23: "Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men."

@MarkBroadie

20. Surround yourself with experts

Early in the week of his US Open win, @MarkBroadie and Bryson’s coach realized that the fairways were so small that driving distance would be a deciding factor.

Bryson heard that, doubled-down on long drives, and over-powered the golf course.

More than 1 million people have now seen this Twitter thread, making it one of my most popular threads of all-time.

If you want to read it as an article, I published it on my website.

perell.com/tweetstorms/wh…

21. If you’re want to become world class at your craft, it helps to have fun

Here’s a video where Bryson hits a driver with 203 mph ball speed. That’s insane. For reference, the PGA Tour average is 167 mph.

He’s like a kid in this video too — playing instead of working.

22. Trust your DNA

Bryson believes that his only constraints are the laws of physics and the rules of golf. That’s why he continues to experiment with his technique, even after he wins a major championship.... it’s who he is.

Great interview with his coach, Chris Como.

23. Use the data of science and the wisdom of intuition

Bryson may take a scientific approach to the game but that doesn't mean he ignores his hunches. Internalizing the technical side of the game should actually improve your intuition.

Love these ideas from his coach below.

24. Question the standard trade offs

Bryson refused to accept that there was a trade off between distance and accuracy. He copied both the world’s long drive champions and the straightest hitters in golf history.

What Billy Beane is to baseball, Bryson DeChambeau is to golf.

You don’t reach a state of mastery when you know it all. You reach it when you’ve absorbed the knowledge so deeply that it becomes a part of you. Though Bryson thinks like a scientist, he ultimately trusts his intuition.

Here's my Bryson-inspired essay.

perell.com/blog/practice-…

27. Find what you’re uniquely good at

Bryson is an exceptionally quick information-processor, as shown by his ability to solve Rubik’s Cubes.

With that mentality, he prefers practicing instead of playing.

https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1366596660860776454?s=20

Mastery shows up in all kinds of weird ways. When you're an amateur, the act of performing can send you into a daze. But professionals work with superhuman presence, sort of like how Tiger Woods still remembers shots from 20 years ago.

LeBron James, too.

https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1366596660860776454?s=20

Bryson’s unique approach to the game has him looking at golf courses in ways that players have never looked at them before.

I haven’t seen golf fans roar like this since Tiger Woods was in his prime.

• • •

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More from @david_perell

David Perell

@david_perell

Oct 3

Announcing: Writing Examples

Today is launch day! We built this website to celebrate great writing.

It’s 100% free. Each article deconstructs a piece of writing from an iconic writer. The goal is to give you X-Ray vision into what makes sentences and paragraphs come alive (so that you can improve at your craft).

Every example has an analysis of why the writing works. Analytical often means dry. But instead of going technical, we’ve gone technicolor. There are text-explainers, summary graphics, and videos that come together to make the writing instruction lively and multi-dimensional.

It’s a place where you can discover how great writing comes together. Where we lift up the hood and see the mechanics in action. It isn’t about giving you a set of rules to follow. It’s about showing the diversity of ways writers approach their craft, so you can develop your own style.

What are some of the articles about? You’ll learn how to describe a party like F. Scott Fitzgerald, how to tell a story like George Orwell, how to write a speech like John F. Kennedy. There are other articles inspired by the likes of John Steinbeck, James Clear, Winston Churchill, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, Steven Pressfield, and Jerry Seinfeld.

Writing Examples is a crusade against the sterility of contemporary writing. So much of the advice you read says the same thing: “Be direct. Cut the fluff. Get to the point. Stick to short sentences.” And yeah, sure, this advice has merit. It’s useful in certain cases, but the problem is writers take these rules to be universal, which has homogenized writing styles. Even in my own writing, there’ve been so many times where I’ve stripped away my own voice in the name of “correctness.” I regret that.

The truth is, there is no one way to write well, just as there is no one way to speak well. The way you speak in a boardroom is different from the way you speak on a first date, which is different from the way you speak with your childhood best friends. Writing is similar.

Writing Examples is the opposite of Grammarly. It celebrates the wild, wacky, and the weird because it’s the bedrock of personality. The site’s explicit purpose is to inject some High Noon Chutzpah back into the world of writing. To teach you how to write with distinctly human fingerprints in a world that’s about to be flooded with AI-generated content.

Forget playing it safe. That’s the most dangerous thing you can do in a world of instant writing. I want you to write with personality. I want you to play with punctuation. I want you to ditch the corporatized hogwash. I want to expand your sense of what great writing can be. And I want you to have fun doing it.

But there’s more to the mission. Writing Examples is a protest against today’s Internet, where people spend the majority of their time reading ad-polluted articles and doom-scrolling the same few social media sites. Remember when we used to surf the Internet? When every site was its own wave to ride? Now, we’re like phone-addicted zombies, we mindlessly scroll Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram until we feel bad about ourselves — only to repeat the cycle a few hours later.

Writing Examples is different. Heartfelt writing deserves a heartfelt presentation, so every element of the site has been designed from scratch. Energetically, we wanted to honor the gravitas of classic writing without the sleepiness of a drab old library shelf. We said no to ads. We said no to pop-ups. No hijacking your attention. None of the flat white backgrounds that make the Internet feel so homogenous. And we said no to anything that feels like your 5th-grade English class.

Writing Examples isn’t about what’s trending. It’s about learning from the great writers of times past, most of whom you know, many of whom you probably haven’t taken the time to read.

The ultimate goal is to make Writing Examples a one-stop shop to learn about any kind of writing you can think of.

Now, I dare you to dive into the site and get to work.

Here's the full site

WritingExamples.com

How to Title a Book (@JamesClear)

Atomic Habits has sold 20 million copies and was the #1 best-selling book on Amazon in 2021 and 2023.

It’s found a permanent place on the recommended shelf of just about every airport bookstore, and its success indicates that people do judge books by their covers. Is it any coincidence that it has the perfect cover for a self-improvement book?

Let’s start with the title. It achieves what Hollywood writers call “Fresh Familiar.” People know about habits, but the phrase “Atomic Habits” promises an unfamiliar twist. The title is short too. It’s easy to say and easy to remember, which makes it easy to share in conversation.

The phrase isn’t just fresh and familiar though. It’s also the ultimate distillation of what the book is about. The word ‘atomic’ has three meanings:

1. Tiny: Like an atom, because the big changes people want come out of many small actions.

2. The fundamental unit in a larger system: Habits are the building blocks of your life.

3. A source of immense energy: Habits may be small, but when you combine them, they have serious power — like an atomic bomb.

That list doubles as a summary of the book: If you (1) make tiny changes and (2) layer them together like units in a larger system, then (3) you will achieve powerful results.

When somebody is thinking about buying a self-help book, they'll ask two questions: “How will my life improve?” and “Will this method work for me?” The sentence at the bottom, right above James’s name, answers these questions. Every salesperson knows that you can build trust by proactively speaking to people's objections. Calling this method “easy” lowers the barrier to entry, and calling it “proven” gives people the security that others have already been successful with it. All this analysis happens subconsciously.

Then, there’s the typography. Font size dictates the sequence that people will read the cover. They’ll read the big words first, then the smaller ones. This one works because everything reinforces itself. Each layer expands on the one before it. As the font gets smaller, the sentences get longer and more concrete, which clarify the promise of the book.

Writing a best-selling book begins with clear and distinct packaging, and the cover of Atomic Habits is as good as it gets.

Read 11 tweets

David Perell

@david_perell

Sep 25

The Sam Altman Interview

You know him as the CEO of OpenAI — but he's also an avid writer.

We spoke not once but twice about how Sam captures ideas, clarifies his thinking, edits his writing, decides what to work on, and uses ChatGPT.

Timestamps:

1:47 Will LLMs change how we write?
8:39 How does Sam use ChatGPT?
11:26 How Sam became less anxious
17:24 Sam once dreamed of being a novelist
18:37 Lessons from Peter Thiel
21:35 Lessons from Paul Graham
26:02 The book Sam Altman wants to write
28:37 Advice for startup founders
30:20 How Y Combinator shapes OpenAI
35:55 How Sam chose to work on AGI
37:35 Writing strategy memos at OpenAI
41:34 Why isn’t ChatGPT a better storyteller?
44:20 Sam's obsessive note-taking method
47:12 Will AI put writers out of work?

If you'd rather listen to the episode, you can do that here...

Apple:

Spotify: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how…
open.spotify.com/episode/4zskFs…

If YouTube is your jam, you can watch the full thing there

Read 7 tweets

David Perell

@david_perell

Jul 17

Harry Dry is the best copywriter I know.

He's built a 130,000-person newsletter teaching people how to do it, and by the end of this interview, you'll be at least a Green Belt in copywriting.

Some of his rules for writing:

1) A great sentence is a good sentence made shorter.

2) Writing great copy begins with having something to say in the first place.

3) Copy is like food. How it looks matters.

4) Since the look of copy matters so much, don't write copy in Google Docs. Write it in Figma (so you can write and design at the same time).

5) Kaplan's Law of Words: Any word that isn't working for you is working against you.

6) You know a paragraph is ready to ship when there's nothing left to remove. It's like a Jenga tower. The entire thing should collapse if you remove something.

7) Make a promise in the title so the reader knows exactly what they're going to get if they click. Then, deliver on the promise.

8) The three laws of copywriting: (1) Make it concrete, (2) make it visual, and (3) make it falsifiable.

9) Make it concrete: Don't be abstract. For an example, say you're writing about habits. Don't talk about "productive routines." That's abstract. Write about "waking up at 6am to write" instead. It's concrete — and much more vibrant.

10) Make it visual: People see in pictures. This is why instead of memorizing card numbers directly, world memory champions memorize cards by turning them into pictures and then back to cards.

11) Make it falsifiable: When you write a sentence that's true or false, you put your head on the chopping block, which makes people sit up in their seat.

12) When has a falsifiable statement resonated? Galileo got sentenced to a decade of house arrest for saying that the earth spins around the sun. That's a falsifiable sentence. But nobody would've done anything if he'd said that the earth has a harmonious connection with a celestial object.

13) Write with the delete key. Using fewer words lets you be more impactful with the words you keep.

14) The job of a sales page is to make a bold claim at the top. Then spend the rest of the page backing up what you've said... with a ridiculous amount of proof.

15) If your competitor could've written the sentence, cut it.

16) Good copy is differentiated. Here's an example: Elon Musk shouldn't write "The Cybertruck is the world's best truck." Ford or Dodge can write that sentence. But only Elon can write: "The Cybertruck is tougher than an F-150 and faster than a Porsche."

17) Some days, the writing comes easily. Some days, it takes sweat. The reader doesn't care if you wrote for two minutes, two hours, or two days. The ink looks the same.

18) Great copy reads like your customer wrote it. Talk to them.

That's just an introduction to the copywriting philosophy of @harrydry.

I've shared the full interview below. I recommend you watch this one because we pull from so many visual references and do a lot of screen sharing. If you'd rather watch on YouTube, I've shared the link in the reply tweets.

If you'd rather tune in on YouTube, here's the full link.

Here are the audio links to Apple and Spotify, even though I strongly recommend watching this one relative to other How I Write episodes.

Apple:

Spotify: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lea…
open.spotify.com/episode/3g1AjY…

Read 5 tweets

David Perell

@david_perell

Mar 27

Neil Strauss once got a call from the FBI.

They wanted to learn about seduction (he's written a lot about it).

He's published ten New York Times bestsellers and ghostwritten for celebrities like Kevin Hart and Rick Rubin.

15 things he taught me about writing:

1. A desire for universal praise kills your voice. Great writers always work keeping very specific role models in mind. They want to live unto — write up to — their heroes.

2. In your first draft, be vulnerable. Then edit so that your vulnerability is interesting to other people.

3. Notice, process, share: Writing starts with the eye (where you notice), moves to the mind (where you process), and ends with the fingertips (where you share).

4. Write with uncommon honesty. Edit with uncommon brutality.

5. None of Neil Strauss’ books would exist without him brain dumping interesting experiences into a doc in the first 24 hours. How many ideas have you lost because you didn't write them down?

6. The first paragraph, the first page, and the first chapter are crucial because they establish the vibe and tempo you have to adhere to…till the last word.

7. Don’t rush your main idea. It probably came to you in bits and pieces over time, so don’t hit the reader in the face with it. Take them to the main idea via stories. You don't need to say everything at the beginning.

8. Your writing develops a vital zing when you realize no one cares. Your job is to make them care. Start with this attitude and your brain will subconsciously erase unnecessary set ups and cut to the chase.

9. Create systems to protect you from your lower self. For example, a part of your animal brain wants to scroll Twitter for 10 hours and bathe in the glow of the timeline. But great writers side with their higher self over the lower. Neil uses an app called Freedom to keep distractions at bay.

10. There's a point where you stop telling the book or the essay what you want it to be, and it starts telling you what it wants to be. Don’t ignore this message.

11. The first draft is for you. Be uninhibited and let your ideas flow like lava.

12. The second draft is for the reader. Make what matters to you matter to the reader. Ask questions like: "Where are they bored? Where are they confused?"

13. The third draft is for the haters. Clean up your prose. Get the facts straight. Take the bullets out of the gun. Then... ship.

14. When we begin a book–or any artwork or creative endeavor–the goal is not to execute a plan. It’s to surrender to the art itself. To let the art create itself, with you as a conduit.

15. Writers need a sacred space. A place or a time of the day that’s sealed off from the outside world, with no distractions…where you can enter undisturbed flow states.

I've shared the full conversation with @neilstrauss below.

If you'd rather listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple, check out the replies.

Listen to the episode below...

Apple:

Spotify: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nei…
open.spotify.com/episode/0OkUE9…

Here's the full episode on YouTube

Read 4 tweets

David Perell

@david_perell

Mar 20

25 million people, every single year, download Shaan Puri’s podcast. What has Shaan figured out about storytelling?

He spilled the beans in our new chat. Here's how he does it:

1. A story is a five second moment of change. A story is not a sequence of events; it's about transformation. Weave in U-turns and unexpected flips.

2. Write like you talk. Natural, conversational, led by stories.

3. A formula for a great story: Intention + Obstacle. At all moments, the listener should know what the hero wants and what's stopping them from getting there. This one's from Aaron Sorkin, who wrote The Social Network.

4. Work backwards from the emotion you're trying to create in the reader. Then let the structure follow.

5. Aim for strong reactions. If you can get the reader to widen their eyes, raise their eyebrows, and/or burst out laughing, they will share your work.

6. Don't write to the faceless masses. Write to one specific person. BuzzFeed writers used to write to "Debbie at her Desk," the bored woman at her desk who wanted a 5-minute distraction.

7. “Likeability” is downstream of vulnerability. The more honestly you share your challenges, the more invested your reader gets. Write your heart out.

8. Don't be the 9,000 IQ guy. Stop competing in imaginary intelligence contests and start telling stories. Big words alienate but tight narratives pull people in.

9. Forget resumes and portfolios. Create a “binge bank” instead. A binge bank is a set of videos or essays that people can binge on. Stack up material so that when people do go down your rabbit hole, they come out the other side a fan.

10. Mere practice gets you nowhere. But intentional practice leads to exponential progress. Always learn from your attempts and make intelligent tweaks on the next try.

11. Comedy is great, but definitely don't make every sentence a joke.

12. Comedy is a pretty easy way to improve your writing. The essence of all comedy is surprise. Study your favorite comedians. Read books like How to Write Funny and The Hidden Tools of Comedy.

13. For better storytelling, Shaan recommends two books: Storyworthy and Building a Storybrand.

14. How to make headlines juicy: use specific and odd numbers, focus on the first three words and the last three words, use "you" whenever possible, and know that longer is typically better than shorter.

15. Your writing should only be as long as it is interesting. An uninteresting 20 second reel will fail; an interesting 30-minute essay will win. But you must be honest while gauging how objectively interesting your piece is…in a world with infinite content.

16. Most people think writing is about transferring information but writing is just as much about transferring emotion. Emotion gets people to take action (like, share, buy…).

The first 40-minutes of this conversation with @ShaanVP is all about storytelling. Then there's an hour more about the genius of Dave Chapelle and how to write with zest.

If you'd rather listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple, check out the replies…

Listen to the podcast here...

Apple:

Spotify: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/3-p…
open.spotify.com/episode/3wqtAD…

You can watch the full thing on YouTube too

Read 6 tweets

David Perell

@david_perell

Dec 6, 2023

Ali Abdaal finished first in his class at Cambridge, became a doctor, and then built a YouTube channel with 5 million followers.

Here's what he's taught me about creative work:

1. Get going, get good, get smart—in that order.

2. If you're stuck, embrace the FBR Method: Fast, Bad, Wrong. Ali wrote the first draft of his book in seven days flat. Quantity leads to quality.

3. Prolific over perfect: If you want to get good at something, you have to put in the reps.

4. Be a Guide, not a Guru: Your writer's block will disappear once you stop trying to be the person who knows everything, and start being a friendly guide instead. Tell your story. Share what's worked for you. You don't need to have all the answers.

5. Do the verb instead of being the noun: Your identity can limit you. Make videos instead of being a "YouTuber." Publish essays instead of being a "writer." Labels tie you down. Action frees you up.

6. Work hard to find the work that doesn't feel like work. The more time I spend with Ali, the more I realize that he's always working in a way that doesn't feel like work to him.

7. Search for the work only you can do: Ali couldn't find a competitive edge in academia. As he once said to me: “The only way to win the academic game was just to work really, really hard because at the highest levels of academia, I had no natural advantages.”

8. You can thrive as a communicator without a bunch of new ideas. Interpreting existing ideas in a fresh, distinct, and personal way is more than enough. Just think of your favorite teacher from school. How many of their ideas were original? Same with writing.

9. Be real, not perfect: Ali's videos aren't 100% scripted. He speaks off the cuff, as if he's talking to a friend.

10. If you're stuck on an article, ditch the Google Doc and text a friend about what you're trying to say instead.

11. You don't need to be an expert to share what you've learned along the way. C.S. Lewis once said: “The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago he has forgotten.”

12. Algorithms are designed to put the right things in front of the right people at the right time. Put them to work for you.

I've shared the full conversation with @AliAbdaal below.

If you'd rather listen on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple, check out the replies.

"I've never had any goal around subscriber count or around views, revenue or anything like that. And all of that stuff has happened as a side effect of showing up and doing the work and controlling what's within my control."

Here's the YouTube link.