How I write without new ideas
Reuse, refine, & repackage ideas like Scott Galloway
I stared at the email sent ahead of the panel I would speak at on Friday. There were five questions I needed to answer, except they were the same questions that I had been asked in previous speaking engagements.
“Why should we foster an LGBTQ-inclusive environment in the workplace? How important is being out in the workplace to you? What more can we do to uplift queer voices?”
I had been proud of the answers I crafted before (Being exclusionary deprives your firm from talented people that just happens to be LGBTQ+. I’d like to focus on my work in the office, not be preoccupied by worries that I would be discriminated against. Listen to your queer colleagues and ask them what they need), but I didn’t have anything new to say. Not much has changed in the five months since I last answered these questions in front of an audience. I copy and pasted these questions into a blank word document and let the blinking cursor taunt me into coming up with a fresh, witty response. I flinched and closed my laptop.
Cursor: 1. Becky: 0.
I could go back to this problem tomorrow. I packed my bag and hopped on the train home, putting on a podcast that often accompanied me during my commutes: the Prof G Pod hosted by Scott Galloway. He was yapping about how “AI is corporate ozempic”, which I was already familiar with because he had already said the same spiel on the business and tech podcast he hosts with tech journalist Kara Swisher, Pivot, that aired earlier in the week.
Wait a minute…
I opened the Readwise Reader app, which is where all the newsletters I subscribe to end up at. The subject of Prof G’s latest weekly newsletter? “Corporate Ozempic”.
Oh my gosh. Scott Galloway reuses his ideas.
He doesn’t just do it on his own platform. When he goes on other podcasts and media interviews, he leans into his most popular, existing ideas. Just six months ago, Scott said on Real Time with Bill Maher: “Don’t follow your passion. Follow your talent”. He’s been harping on this idea since 2017, if not earlier. On David Perell’s How I Write podcast, Scott said that he can say profane and controversial things because he has economic security. He said a similar iteration of it (“err on the side of professionalism and not profanity on social media”) in a recent Prof G Pod Office Hours episode, the advice segment of his show.
In April, Scott did a talk on “How the US is destroying young people’s future”, alternatively titled the “War on the Young”. Having listened to his podcast for a few years now, I’m familiar with most of his ideas. Yet, I was impressed by how he repackaged them into an engaging, 18-minute TED Talk. It felt like a culmination of his best ideas, and it’s reaching a brand new audience beyond his existing following.
It isn’t that his ideas are so good that they get repeated everywhere. It’s that he himself repeats them everywhere. The same ideas, just repackaged with more recent data, refined into more concise sentences, and restated when there’s nothing new to add. Like comedians testing out their bits in open mics and comedy clubs and saving the funniest version for their Netflix special.
Repeating ideas makes sense. Different audiences are on different platforms that are fueled by different algorithms. There’s a high chance that the casual audience may not see the same message twice. Media is also so overloaded with information that audiences may only understand the essence of a message like “invest in low-cost diversified index funds” after the second or third repetition, though Scott says that at least once a month. Plus, the superfans who follow the same creator on multiple platforms probably don’t mind that the same message is repeated several times.
So what’s stopping me from repeating the same talking points for a different panel? Since the engagement will happen in a different office, it’s unlikely that any audience member would have attended my previous panel. I can say the same thing twice. Or even thrice and more.
I often put pressure on myself to be novel and unique. That I need to put out an essay that’s not about technology addiction on Substack because I wrote about it just last month. That I need to branch out, write about fitness and personal finance and interpersonal relationships.
I’m allowed to repeat things. I’m allowed to flesh out an essay into a book. The same way writers on Substack repost essays and newsletter editions from last year. The same way we can write a note or a tweet or or film a 30-second reel that summarizes our essay.
If Scott Galloway can repeat the same ideas over and over to his 500,000 newsletter subscribers, then so can I.
Thank you to folks who took a fresh look at this idea: , , , , , Adya Singh, and .
Update log:
📖 Reading Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg (52% completed).
✍️ Write of Passage’s last live session was yesterday. This course has been a steadfast of my writing practice for two years now. Let’s stay in touch.
🏋️♀️ Less than two weeks till Hyrox. I’ve been taking it easy, going for lighter classes and not pushing my body as much.
🩻 Did a spinal x-ray and discovered that my back muscle tightness was from my scoliosis. I was actually diagnosed with it 10 years ago but I forgot…
❤️🩹 Some trickle therapy for the Substack crew: After my last therapy session, I felt sorry for myself for the first time ever and that surprised me. My therapist said that “feeling sorry for our younger self is perhaps an important step to grieve, especially when the grieving process is incomplete.”
🌈 Attended the Hong Kong Marriage Equality gala with my fiancée. What a fun event to acknowledge all of our hard work with everyone who strives for marriage equality in Hong Kong. It was also the first time I brought a plus one to a very formal work event.
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I remember you saying before about how some people are great at voicing their opinions because they say the same thing over and over again so it’s refined and sharpened. It’s kind of reassuring in a way, that people are consistent across the board, that they really believe the things they say instead of just saying something to purely entertain or surprise.
I found myself repeating the same ideas too in my writing and also in collaborations/interviews. I was worried that I am boring my readers.