263. Smart Isn’t the Same as Clear: How to Sharpen Your Ideas

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: Each of us needs to have a hobby or outlet that helps us grow and develop. My name's Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. Today I look forward to speaking with Nick Thompson. Nick is the CEO of the Atlantic and the former editor-in-Chief of Wired. He's also a highly accomplished competitive runner holding the American age group record for men 45 and older in the 50 K race, and being ranked among the top master marathoners in the world. His newest book is The Running Ground. Welcome, Nick. I am super excited for our conversation.

[00:00:42] Nick Thompson: Thank you, Matt. I am thrilled to be here talking with you on my favorite campus in the world.

[00:00:47] Matt Abrahams: Should we get started?

[00:00:47] Nick Thompson: Let's do it.

[00:00:48] Matt Abrahams: Excellent. You've had a front row seat to many, many changes that we've all seen in the way that we communicate. What makes for a good communicator in today's world of likes, LLMs, and quite frankly, let's face it, laziness.

[00:01:00] Nick Thompson: This is clichéd, but I found that the things that work are clarity and authenticity. If you can get across what you're really trying to say, if you can say it honestly, specifically, and ideally, briefly, that's good. And you can say it in a way that feels like it's you. That's great. Now you can fake authenticity. Authenticity is hard to define, but I definitely think that when you try to force yourself in a box, try to do something that doesn't feel natural, the audience can tell. 

[00:01:30] Matt Abrahams: And you yourself, you write, how have you found your voice in all of this? What have you done to find what's authentic to you? 

[00:01:36] Nick Thompson: There are a whole bunch of different ways I communicate. So I do a daily video, right? And the daily video is just me in the moment, right? And I film it wherever I am. Yesterday I filmed it because I had the idea while I was walking to the office on the wharf, and the only place I could film it was by balancing the phone above an ice machine stand facing out over the river. And then I stood up to do it, and then I realized I had a problem, which is that if I took a step back, I would go in the river, right? And so I had to be really careful last night not to fall. But what people like is, it's short. It's to the point.

[00:02:08] I explain what's happening in text, something that's on my mind, and I just do it where I am. It's not polished, it doesn't go through comms. So that's one form of communicating. Another form of communicating is of course, what I write, and that's much more serious, right? And that's polish. That's, I try to find voice. I try to add humor. I try to make it as brisk as possible. I try to have scenes and structure, all the things I learned in my years at The New Yorker, at Wired, at the Atlantic. So that's a very different kind, but both forms are things I care about a lot.

[00:02:37] Matt Abrahams: How much do you edit your work?

[00:02:39] Nick Thompson: The book immensely. So my new book is just out and it's now November of 2025. I finished the first draft in August of 2023, and so I haven't done a word comparison, but I think if you were to do a word comparison of that first draft versus the final draft, probably 5% of the sentences existed in the final version. It just went through so many different revisions trying to get it right. 

[00:02:59] Matt Abrahams: I have learned in my time how important editing is. I used to think editing was just a necessary evil, but in fact, I think the most creative things happen during editing. You really do have to think through, who's my audience? What's my structure? How do I make it clear and concise? I've had to learn to be a better editor, and actually now I think I'm probably a better editor than writer as a result.

[00:03:19] Nick Thompson: It's interesting. I went the other way around where I was an editor first and then became a writer. So I loved the craft. And you would watch at The New Yorker, or I worked at this place called Legal Affairs before, and you'd come in and you'd get this 10,000 word draft and be hard to get through. And then you would go through all these rounds and you'd end up with this beautiful 6,000 word final version that had all the same good information and was just much cleaner, tighter, better structured, character handoffs, chronology, everything. And so with my book, at the end, I was going through it every, I was like reading out loud every a hundred word sequencing.

[00:03:50] Is there anything I should cut? Anything I like? Do I actually have something interesting in this paragraph? If I don't have anything interesting in this paragraph, let's get rid of this whole paragraph, and really working to make it tight and controlled. And I actually made these giant maps of the chronology and like, how can I do a handoff from this character to this character? Okay, this observation happened at this point involving this thing, which sort of relates to this event. So there are three places in the book I can put it. If I put it in the third place, what other pins does it knock over later on in the chronology? I put in the second. Okay, let's figure that out. So it was a really complicated process.

[00:04:21] Matt Abrahams: I want you to comment a little bit more about the reading out loud piece. I encourage people to do that, and I'm curious why you recommend that. And then to see your narrative, to see your story visually and to connect the dots, I am a huge supporter of having structure and logic in communication. So many people just list and itemize. I love this idea that you actually visually represent it and then take yourself through that mental questioning of, if I move things around, what are the consequences? I, I appreciate that. But talk to me about the reading out loud.

[00:04:49] Nick Thompson: That was something I started really doing at The New Yorker and I didn't have confidence, so I worked at The New Yorker from about age 34 to 41, so at like a very important point in my career. And I started a moment where I, I had done well in journalism, obviously I got hired at The New Yorker, but I didn't have full confidence and I certainly didn't have confidence in my writing. And I show up at this place with the best writers in the world, and I wanted to be like them. And I knew I couldn't write like them. And so I would go home and I would take their stories and I would read them out loud and I would try to understand what are they doing? Because when you read out loud you force yourself not to skip words, right?

[00:05:22] When you're reading on paper, your eyes are scanning, you're moving, you're like taking a little piece of this paragraph and that piece paragraph, and you can understand voice and flow, and it comes through. You read out loud, forcing yourself to really understand and to study it through it. And then when you do it for yourself, you can't cheat, right? When you're writing, you can pretend that the sentence makes sense, but you read it out loud and it doesn't make sense, it doesn't sound right, or it doesn't flow right, or it's repetitive, you're confronted with it like it's, you know, you look in the mirror and you really see yourself in a way you don't, when you're just reading it. 

[00:05:53] Matt Abrahams: Right. It's almost like you're having a conversation with yourself. And if a conversation doesn't make sense, you change it.

[00:05:57] Nick Thompson: I will tell you that one of the scariest things for me, so I finished the book, I've gone through and I've read it out loud. I've gone through all this editing, and then I have to read the audio book, right? And you're in there for 14 hours, but at that point, you're done. You can't change anything. And I remember going to the studio the first day thinking, I'm gonna wanna change so many things when I read this out loud and then I didn't. It was fine. 

[00:06:14] Matt Abrahams: One of the most stressful experiences I had in writing my latest book was the audiobook reading. I believe attention is the most precious commodity we have in the world today. How do you coach your editors and writers to craft sticky content that's not just soundbites, and how do you actually get people to write in a way that's meaningful and draws people in?

[00:06:34] Nick Thompson: There are a couple of rules that I follow that I think are really important. When I was working as an editor at Wired, I would push people and I would say, okay, let's take a look at your story. If you were to describe the story to someone at a cocktail party, would they be interested? And if you were to describe this section of the story, would they be interested? And if not, find a different story. Okay. Secondly, now can they visualize it? Not necessarily is it gonna, you know, sell to a Hollywood screenwriter, but as they read the story, is there gonna be a little movie playing in the theater of the mind, right? And if there's not, you need to rewrite it.

[00:07:04] 'Cause if they can't see it, right, and if they can't relate to it, they're not gonna be able to follow it. Okay, now what is their emotional reaction gonna be? It has to be something. They can be angry, they can hate it, they can love it, but if there's no emotional reaction, what's the point of it? Okay, now we've got those things in order and like the writers there. So now let's go through the story. Let's just identify exactly how the narrative is working. Why is this here? Why is that here? Is it completely chronological? Do you have any extraneous characters? And just going through with writers to make sure that the piece was as crisp as possible, as clean as possible.

[00:07:36] Matt Abrahams: I really appreciate the idea of visualizing your narrative, your story, seeing it, what is it showing people? And then what makes ideas sticky for sure is the emotion and thinking about what is the emotion you're drawing out and how do you bring that about in people? I can't speak to somebody who does what you do without bringing up the AI question. What role should AI play in journalism specifically and in our everyday communication more generally?

[00:08:01] Nick Thompson: So AI is the hardest thing in journalism by far. And the reason it's so hard is that there are a whole bunch of different matrices on which you have to evaluate it. And there's a question of how journalists should use AI to do their report. And my view is they should use it all the time, right? Not to write anything because the reader is reading the story. It has your name on. It should be you, right? So they should never write a sentence. Also, it's a bad writer right now. Maybe it'll get good, but even when it's good, it should be you. But for finding stories, for understanding topics, for like figuring out chronology. Take your 3000 word story before it goes to the editor and say, hey, are there any chronological gaps in this story, right?

[00:08:39] There's a whole set of editorial things you can do with AI. Put it in there. It'll give you suggestions. You can fix 'em or not fix 'em, but if you don't, I think you're crazy. So that's one thing. On the other hand, my profession has been very wary of adopting it. My company in particular, and the reason for that is, you know, the industry is built on theft and theft of our material, right? All of these companies came, scraped our sites, in violation of our terms of service, often using bots that they disguised. It made the people in my profession very angry. Secondly, they're quite scared because every study and every ranking of what industry is gonna be displaced the most, journalism is at the top.

[00:09:18] So they're very scared and they're very angry. And then also our business is being disrupted by AI, particularly in search, right? So we have an existential business threat that we're already facing. So there's this funny, complicated mess where we need to use AI, and I really want everybody to use AI, but more or less, everybody hates AI and is terrified of AI.

[00:09:39] Matt Abrahams: And do you use it in your daily life?

[00:09:40] Nick Thompson: Oh, 50 times a day, like nonstop for prepping for anything. Last night I had to host a dinner for 18 people, and we're talking about a really complicated type question. I didn't know the 18 people, I know a couple of 'em. So, alright, hey AI, get me bios. Okay, great. Now AI help me sort through the most interesting questions that relate to these bios. Okay, great. Now AI, please make me flashcards and quiz me on who everybody is. Gimme a name, I'll tell 'em their company. Gimme the company. I'll tell 'em the name. Takes a process that would've taken maybe six hours, makes it an hour process, right? And so I go to dinner, I'm totally prepped. I know everybody's name, I know their companies. I can identify their faces, and I have a bunch of good questions. And so it's so helpful. 

[00:10:23] Matt Abrahams: That's a great use case. And one I might borrow from you. Like you, I enjoy running, but unlike you, I only run 10Ks. You're a true runner, marathons, ultra marathons. What does running mean for you, and how has it helped you in your life?

[00:10:36] Nick Thompson: It's my form of meditation, right? So I go out and I listen to the birds, listen to the sounds, listen to my breath, listen to my body, understand. It opens up all kinds of thinking. So it's a very important time in my day. By the way, I, because we're on the Stanford campus and we're not far from Campus Drive, I'll tell you when I decided never to listen to music, I was on the Stanford Track team my freshman year in college. I wasn't good enough to stay through, but I was good enough to be there freshman year. And I remember the coach Vin Lananna, who's one of the legends of the sport. And I remember it, he gathers us all around and he's like, I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something like, you have a big race coming up and we're here to compete. We're here to try to win. We're here to do our best. And if you're not on board with that, just go put on your headphones and run around Campus Drive.

[00:11:17] And what he was saying is that if you're gonna be serious about it and you're really gonna try to like understand your body and improve, you have to turn off the music. You have to listen to yourself. Anyway, so back to your question. So it's a way for me of meditating, releasing, getting out in the world. I work in New York City, I live in Brooklyn. I'm very domesticated, but I used to love the mountains, right? I grew up and was outside all the time. Like the thing I love to do most is my mom would just let me go out the back door in Maine and I'd just go run in the forest. And so, running is a way to get back to the spirit of that little child. So that's important. But then it's also taught me all kinds of habits of mind and discipline and pacing. Like there are all kinds of lessons from the sport that apply to my business life. And then also I like to win and get faster.

[00:12:01] Matt Abrahams: I can tell you've got a competitive streak in you. I have always found and recommended that having some physical outlet, whatever it is, I don't care if it's building Lego models, playing music, uh, for me it's martial arts, finding some opportunity to express yourself in a different way. And like you, there are great learning opportunities. I hear you when you say you learn about yourself, your body, but you also can bring that into your work. That's really important.

[00:12:25] Nick Thompson: It's great. And you disconnect from your phone, right? And you disconnect from all the stuff. One of my theories, people often ask like, why do so many people run marathons? Like, why do 55,000 people run the New York Marathon? I'm like, complicated reasons, but in part because they know they're on TikTok too much and running a marathon and training for a marathon is a way to get away from it.

[00:12:42] Matt Abrahams: Do you often run solo or do you run with other people?

[00:12:44] Nick Thompson: I mostly run solo. I prefer to run with other people, but then you have to schedule it and like my life is so complicated, I've just foregone that.

[00:12:52] Matt Abrahams: You've noted that running is the simplest sport and the simplicity can be a tool to understand complicated stuff. Can you give us a concrete example of how you've taken those lessons of simplicity and brought it into what you do for a daily thing?

[00:13:05] Nick Thompson: So what I mean by running is the simplest sport, you really, you control it all yourself, right? You can open the door and run, and you can do it any day, anytime of night. I ran at 4 o'clock this morning and it was cold, but it was fine. I couldn't have done any other sport at 4 o'clock in the morning in Washington, DC on the wharf. No one was there to play tennis with me. I didn't have a ball. I didn't have a bat, right? Running, you really can control when you do it and how you do it. And not only that, you can tell how you're doing. You can go run a 10K. And you run it a minute slower than last year, that's bad. You run it a minute faster, that's good. And there's no external factor, like maybe the weather, but really it's like about you.

[00:13:40] And so what that does is it means that you can see yourself aging in a way that's hard with other sports. You can see, I just went through this thing where like I couldn't really tell I was sick, but I was kind of sick, and then I ran a marathon. It was like 30 minutes off my goal. Well, clearly I had some kind of respiratory problem, like you understand things about yourself, but then the important part is because it's you and because you control it, this gets to the habits. You can go every day, which means that you can teach yourself a habit, sort of a stoic habit of, I'm gonna go and run every day. It's like a tennis game, and you've got somebody else. Like it's a little harder. It's harder to blame yourself when you fail, and it's harder to credit yourself when you succeed. And so, running for better or for worse, really lets us kind of form ourselves and shape ourselves in good ways, bad ways. 

[00:14:27] Matt Abrahams: I really like how you use it as a tool for growth. Before we end, I like to ask everybody three questions. One I make up just for you, and two, I've been asking since the podcast started. Are you up for that?

[00:14:38] Nick Thompson: Of course.

[00:14:39] Matt Abrahams: So in order to train, like you must have to train for ultra marathons, marathons, you must be a master at time management. How do you make it fit in? Clearly it's a priority, but I have a lot of things that keep me busy in life. I can't imagine the allocation of time I need to run the distances you do. 

[00:14:55] Nick Thompson: Well, I mean, I train 8 hours a week, which is a lot, but it's not 20 hours, it's not 30 hours. And a lot of it is multitasking. Like I run to the office, I could take the subway to the office and it would take just as long. So it does take some time, but not that much time. And I think that net, it creates time because of the way it relaxes me and the way it opens my mind and lets me think about things. So I sometimes wonder, and I think my wife probably wonders this too, like, Nick just stopped running. Like what would, where would that extra time go to? Would it go to working more efficiently. I don't know what it would go to, but I think it would, I think my life wouldn't work as well if I didn't spend that time running. 

[00:15:35] Matt Abrahams: I hear you on that, and because running is something you can do whenever you can use it as a way to get to work. I think that's great. So somebody who might be not as into running as you are might, upon hearing this say, oh, there's ways I can fit it in. Question number two, who is a communicator that you admire and why? 

[00:15:50] Nick Thompson: I think Adam Grant's amazing. His ability to very pithily say what's important in life and to explain it. I just, I've never seen someone like that. Every time you see something that he says, something that he does and questions that he asks, I think he's just great. 

[00:16:01] Matt Abrahams: He's a very economical communicator who also is able to get to the point. Question number three, our final question. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe?

[00:16:12] Nick Thompson: Understanding your audience, who are you talking to and why? I don't know what the exact right word is, but it's almost like the water of a recipe or the milk of the recipe. It's like, are you conveying the essential thing and is it right there? There can be some fluff around it to set people up, and there can be some fluff at the back, but are you putting the right thing at the core? Are you getting the actual important stuff in there? The third ingredient, you know, respect. Are you like respecting the person you're talking to? Are you respecting the audience and is it actually about them? And that's really important. 

[00:16:47] Matt Abrahams: Focusing on the audience is by far the number one bit of advice people give. Critical to start there. This idea of distilling it down to its essence, its core, making sure that's clear and getting that upfront, really important. And I really like this idea of respect. I think people are so focused on just getting the information out. They don't really think about that respect, that somebody's giving you time to listen, to read that you need to respect them. You don't have to agree with them, and you might even challenge them. Nick, this has been fantastic. Not only have you taught us about better writing and better communication, but you've taught us about the importance of having a sport in our life that can really help. And yours is running. I run as well, and I certainly can see how the feet on the ground can help you be grounded for sure. Thank you.

[00:17:29] Nick Thompson: Thank you so much.

[00:17:32] Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. For more information on movement and activity and how it relates to communication, please listen to episode 183 with Kelly McGonigal. This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder. With thanks to Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also, follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram. And check out fastersmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider our Think Fast Talk Smart Learning Community where you can join a global community of people interested in honing and developing their communication skills. You get access to async lessons, an AI coach, quests and challenges, and much more. Join us at fastersmarter.io/learning. That's fastersmarter.io/learning.