Clear thinking shows up in clear writing

Stripe is a payments processing company known for its strong writing culture and rigorous decision-making processes.

I don't think you can be a good writer, unless you're a clear thinker. And if you couldn't write well, I think it was actually pretty hard to be successful at Stripe, at least in the early days.

No one would ever say, for example, 'It's a best practice to do X.' People would be like, 'Well, why?' You had to go a few levels deeper.

Second order thinking is known to be the most powerful trait to predict the success of somebody.

I think a pretty first principles driven approach for this, which is to think about how long does it take me right now to get to the reaction I'm looking for from my recipient? If it takes a bunch of back and forth and a bunch of friction, then that's my baseline. And once you start practicing some of these communication skills, how does that speed up?