“Getting Clear”
“Writer’s block is not a shortage of ideas. It is a disconnect between the voice in your head and the voice you want to see on the page.” - Write of Passage
A common question we get at Vnote.ai is “what kind of writing does it create”. Writing is a broad topic, it covers everything from short text messages like “I’m five minutes late” to full-length books. We help people with medium-form ideas. Things that fit in 1-2 pages. In other words, Notes! The statements serve as essential nuggets of information for complex ideas. We have special templates for journaling, meeting prep, meeting synthesis, and writing complex emails, and the list continues to grow.
Every founder knows that the more focused you can be on the problem you’re trying to solve, the easier it will be to get great results. Users need to know what it does and how it helps. The team needs to know where to focus their energy. Investors want to know how to beat the competition and accelerate feedback loops to win. The thing we’re focused on is creating a question model that helps people turn their rambling thoughts into clear communication (you’ll hear more on that soon), but we’ve often been told that it might also help to focus on a single type of written output. When we were still testing our app with beta users, we queried our database to understand the intended audience of our user’s results. Here’s what we found.
22% of the time the LLM determined the audience was broad. A newsletter, a blog post, or a strategy document for a large team.
28% of the time the audience was small. An email, product feedback suggestions, or meeting notes crafted for a peer.
But what about the rest? A whopping 50% were people working to clarify their own ideas. These writings were not necessarily intended for anyone. They were personal notes. People working to understand and evolve their ideas.
After we noticed this we started thinking about moving people from Self to Shared to Scaled. We modified the system so it creates emails in a natural tone. We made it easier to reformat writing so it can be posted online. There are, after all, lots of benefits to being public with your thoughts. But is that really the goal?
When I showed an early draft of this article to Aurora Klaeboe Berg at a weekly writers' group meeting, she noted that the real goal is getting clear. Sharing writing online doesn’t mean that people will read it. The hard part is creating a message that people want to share.
Our new mental model looks like this:
It doesn’t matter if you talk or type. Clarifying your ideas often involves both. The goal is to get your ideas out of your head and evolve them to find the most important part. Our question model helps people do this. So does the feedback provided by colleagues and friends. Getting to a first draft is probably the hardest part. If you need to modify it, that’s ok. You’re on your way.
Once you have your golden nugget, the other components tend to fall into place. Your messages make more sense. Your strategy becomes clear. When you post online, people understand what you mean, and marketing campaigns lead to results. But it doesn’t have to be posted online. Getting internal clarity or connecting with someone in a meaningful way often has equal rewards.
Do you want to know more how voice-writing can impact you? We’re organizing a series of conversations about how executives, educators, and online writers are using voice-writing in their daily lives. Let me know if you’re interested!
Nick Koshnick
Founder and CEO
Vnote.ai
