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3rd Edition: Uncool decisions

May 08, 20253 min read

Welcome back to the Thursday Strategy Notes Newsletter!

Personal story: one pragmatic decision, for once, please.

I was 20, halfway through a History degree, and it wasn’t going well.

All I’d done up to that point was follow my passion.

And there I was—the most unhappy I’d ever been.

I needed to switch majors.

I needed a new plan.

But what are the odds that the same mindset that dug this hole would get me out?

Because I was reading literature all the time to avoid doing school assignment, I was considering studying Russian, or German.

In the middle of all that confusion...

My common sense kicked the door down and gave it to me straight:

“For once in your damn life, make a pragmatic decision.”

My life was going downhill.

My potential was just a mirage.

Time to get practical and learn some apocalypse skills:

Like English.

For my adolescent brain that was very uncool, too mainstream.

But I heard the voice.

I couldn’t be experimental all the time.

If you don’t know what to do, grab that vine of certainty.

Something tried and tested for once.

The voice was right.

That gave me everything.

It was like having Wi-Fi when everyone else was still on fax machines.

A sixth sense.

A cheat code for life.

Friends, relationships, adventures, hobbies, a bit more finaces...

It's all downstream from that one uncool pragmatic decision.

...

Years later, I found something even more mainstream.

Even more uncool:

Internet marketing.

People have strong feelings about marketing.

It's the ultimate uncool thing. Its job is to take things out of obscurity and put them on the main road.

But hey—if you’re thinking in adolescent terms, here’s another one for you:

You can be cool when you’re dead.

Before that comes, I want agency, autonomy, optionality and security.

The fact is, without internet marketing, people are painfully vulnerable.

Watch Black Mirror, season 7, the episode “Common People.”

That’s what happens when you don’t know how to market and sell your services.

I think you only need 3–4 big pragmatic decisions in your life.

Then, by all means—be romantic and idealistic. Be an explorer.

Go experimental all you want.

Don't you agree with that?

That's my little story about getting out of the woods.

Strategy Note 3:

The low hanging fruit that is so low you can't see.

Some of you already know this.

Some of you don’t.

I've seen it.

When you're writing copy—

You're not writing to pass an exam.

You’re writing to capture attention and sell.

That’s the whole job.

Here's the worst thing you can do:

BLOCKS. CHUNKS. UGLY WALLS OF TEXT.

It hurts the eye.

It offends the eye.

It's self-sabotage.

Use your spacebar.

Use the Enter key.

Let your text breathe.

You don't have to pay extra, it's not paper.

Forget everything you learned about paragraphs.

Paragraphing is not the boss of you.

Go further, break a sentence in

the middle just for fun.

Once you get jiggy with the spacebar and Enter key...

Hold your iPad up like you’re admiring a Monet, and contemplate the layout of the lines of text.

Does it look like the heartbeat graph of a dying rat?

Like a bombed-out Soviet building?

Or the silhouette of the Italian Alps under moonlight?

Writing is a visual art. You are looking at it now.

If your text looks like a pile of garbage...

I’m not excited to see what your idea is.

Before you learn all the rest about copywriting—

Hypnotizing hooks, and psychological pressure points.

Grab the low hanging fruit.

See you on the next,

Gydion

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