Day 9: How to become an Antifragile Writer

Hey there,

Today’s tip will show you how to become an Antifragile Writer.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb developed the concept of antifragility in his book Antifragile.

Antifragility describes something that becomes stronger as a result of applied stress. In contrast, fragility describes something that becomes weaker as a result of that stress.

The following graph by Ravi Mehta illustrates the point:

Everything from countries to ideas to technologies to careers can become more antifragile.

An antifragile writer improves their writing (and thinking) through incremental gains from small, frequent stressors. An antifragile writer publishes frequently. They receive constant feedback. They change based on this feedback. And they aren’t afraid to fail.

In contrast, a fragile writer will spend months writing an essay without feedback. When the writer finally publishes the essay, it hasn’t been “tested by the market,” and it isn’t as strong as it could have been.

To become an antifragile writer, your goal is to more frequently expose more of your writing to the stresses of the real world (ex: publicly publishing your ideas on the internet).

With that in mind, here are two ways to think about antifragile writing:

1. Build A Portfolio

• To become an antifragile writer, change your mindset from aspiring to write the best possible individual essay to building the best possible portfolio of posts

• This approach takes the pressure off any individual post and reframes your writing as a work in progress

• Over time, your portfolio will grow and strengthen into a body of work as you receive feedback, learn, and grow

• As your portfolio builds into an interconnected web of ideas, you will be able to link back to old posts and build on previous ideas

• A portfolio is more antifragile than an individual essay

2. Know That Your Writing Will Never Be Complete

• Your writing will never be complete, so gain the confidence to publish incomplete work

• Conquer the fear of publishing writing that isn’t perfect, and you’ll publish more, receive more feedback, and learn faster

• Publishing a few posts that don’t live up to your standards is better than not publishing at all

Become an antifragile writer and grow stronger by more frequently exposing more of your writing to the stresses of the real world.

 

Go Deeper:

1. Check out “Copy of Writing Tips Email Sequence” for a copy of every email in this series

2. Check out Cohort Resources for all resources

3. Explore the Notion Home for cohort-specific information, like the Leaderboard