Millennial Fieldnotes #8: Building Your Personal Nuclear Factory ?

Today, I tell you why you should consider building your own nuclear factory by writing atomic essays.

As the Pulitzer Prize Winner and prolific writer, David McCullough said:

"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard."

To that I say, let's find ways to make it easier.

One of the ways is to write atomic essays.

An atomic essay is a 300-400 word short essay that you write regarding any theme you are interested in. I see it as the basic building block of your exploratory ideas.

Brevity has three key benefits.

• Low cost. All you need is 30 minutes to process and write. No long hours of research, editing and commitment required.
• Low risk. Writing an atomic essay does not mean you are married to your idea. Rather, think of it as you swiping for ideas worth diving into. Just as 'not all that glitters is gold', not all interesting ideas are worth your commitment. Atomic essays let you test ideas out and in the age of free trials and swiping, this is not a bad strategy.
• High potential yield. The practice of this low cost and low-risk activity not only sharpens your thinking and ability to synthesize information. It also increases the probability of getting lucky in your search for good ideas and strategies. When the essay makes an idea sticky and you find yourself compulsively thinking about it. That is when you know you hit the jackpot.

The atom is the smallest unit of matter that has the characteristic properties of a chemical element and is thus, the basic building block of chemistry. The atom might seem insignificant but under the right conditions, nuclear plants can use them for clean and unlimited energy.

The analogy here is instructive.

One atomic essay might seem trivial. But with enough of them bouncing off each other, you can create your own nuclear plant of ideas. Clean, powerful and sustainable.