How I learned to write

Since you read my writing every week (or at least are reading it today), I thought you might like to know how I learned to write.

Despite what you may think, I was not always a good writer. In fact, even though I was a pretty good student growing up, English was the one subject where I would occasionally get a C.

In addition to poor grades, I also got in quite a few spats with English teachers. I remember one teacher from high school who sent me to the corner quite a few times after I questioned the importance of her daily lesson.

Years later, when I read Paul Graham’s essay about essays (you can read it for yourself here), I would get support that my criticism was grounded in reality (and not just teenage angst). Still, I now see that questioning the value of my teacher’s career in front of our class was not smart, even if it was fair.

Regardless, none of this changes the fact that I was not a good writer.

I first tried to figure out how I could avoid writing. After giving up hope of becoming a professional athlete, I realized that avoiding writing would be hard. If I wanted a job, I would probably need to become better at writing.

So, when I started college, I prioritized learning how to write.

Many people told me that college required a lot of writing, so I did not think it would be hard. It turned out to be harder than I thought. Although many classes required writing, the writing expected was often in the form of long research papers that examined abstract ideas with big words.

Writing long and boring papers was not what I wanted to learn. I wanted to learn how to clearly communicate a point with less words, not more.

Fortunately, I discovered a 1 of its kind class taught by a wise professor. The class had no textbooks, no lectures, no research and no exams. The goal was simple - to teach us to write in a way that others understood. Bingo.

The class met 3 times a week:

• Monday: come to class with a paper on a topic of our choice (2-pages maximum). During class, meet with a classmate to review our papers together.

• Wednesday: come to class with a revised version of our paper. During class, meet with a new classmate to review our papers together.

• Friday: come to class with a revised version of our paper. During class, meet with both classmates who reviewed our paper earlier in the week. Get their feedback again.

After Friday’s class, we would revise the paper again then share it with our professor. At that point, we would begin a new paper for Monday and start the weekly cadence over.

On top of the 3 weekly peer review sessions, we would meet with our professor every month 1v1 to discuss our papers. After the meeting, we would revise the papers again (so each paper would get 4 revisions) before finalizing it for our class’s writing portfolio.

It was more work than the average class. There were plenty of Sunday nights that I cursed myself for taking the class

But getting so much feedback sure was helpful.

Before that class, my writing was below average. After that class, my writing was above average. I was still far from a great writer, but I started getting As on papers that I wrote for other classes. More importantly, my identity changed. I was no longer afraid of writing.

Not only did the class teach me how to write, it gave me a framework for improvement. The process goes like:

1. Do something (write a paper, talk to someone, go for a run, build a product, etc.)

2. Seek feedback on it

3. Think about the feedback

4. Incorporate the feedback that makes sense

5. Do a better version of the thing from step 1 OR use my learnings to do a new thing that is better. Either way, I am back at step 1

The process not only helped me learn to write, it has helped us to improve Run The Day.

Instead of spending years tucked away in an ivory tower, we like to be at races with our eyes open and our ears perked. This way, we can observe what areas are ripe for improvement and hear feedback on how we can enhance our technology and streamline our systems.

Our goal is to get better at supporting races, so that we can advance our mission of uniting athletes and strengthening communities.

I know your time is precious, so thank you for reading my writing (today and every week that you choose to open my email).

Maybe now that you know that I used to be bad at writing, you might cut me some slack (not much, but some) when I write nonsense.

-Ian

What makes me happy

I like critical feedback because it helps us improve. But I would be lying if I said that hearing positive feedback doesn’t make me happy. I’ve had quite a few conversations with happy races this week, so I wanted to mention a few quotes.

If you shared kind words (you know who you are!), a big time thank you! Our team loves hearing it. At the risk of sounding like I’m bragging:

• “I am in love with Run The Day. I just can't say enough about how great Run The Day is. I truly couldn't be happier with you guys."

• “You have been great at following up and I appreciate it.”

• “There was a problem last year and you guys took care of it almost instantaneously. We immediately got an answer back and it was fixed and taken care of. So thank you for helping us.”

• "You should be proud of the crew you have. Everyone will be massively successful in this world. They just know how to make it in life."

• “You sure do make it seamless. It was great last year. Run The Day’s guys were just like, okay, what can we do next? How can we help? And we're like, not used to having somebody asked that. So it was really great last year.”

Ian runs the forget me not race

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