If it matters, write it well — and it all matters
Changing my mind in the hopes of changing the world, one more meaningful word at a time.
“Changing your mind is not a sign of losing integrity. It's often a mark of gaining wisdom.” -Adam Grant
I have had a change of heart.
In my business channels I have talked about the schism of written content. Over the last several years, written content has split into two buckets:
Informational content, meant to simply exist, to make a person or company look valid, or fulfill an algorithmic purpose.
Purposeful, meaningful content, meant to connect with the reader and/or do a measurable job.
And I’ve been saying that Bucket 1 content is fine to do quickly and cheaply. Use AI to write it if you want to. It doesn’t matter anyway.
But … that was my cynicism talking.
Look, it’s hard to be a writer in 2025. My hard-earned intellectual property is now available for free on ChatGPT. The books I spent years writing are being stolen and used to train the machines meant to replace me.
And still … I can’t give up. Cynicism be darned.
So I’m forming a new opinion, and I’m open to it evolving again as we move forward with all our new normals:
Writing is fundamental to human communication. We write to connect with one another. SO ALL WRITING MATTERS.
You wouldn’t write a letter to your grandma, or an email to your boss, or an essay for an application without thinking through what you want to communicate, what the recipient needs to get out of the exchange, and how to get your message across.
Why should a tweet, a blog post or an FAQ page be any different? If it doesn’t matter, why are you even writing it?
👉🏼 And if it matters, write it well.