The Super Specific How
Cut the what and the why; spend your word count on the how nobody else will teach.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 95%
Most writers, teachers and course creators over-invest in explaining what a concept is and why it matters, and under-invest in how to actually do it. Wes Kao's fix is to assume your audience already agrees with the premise, then push every sentence down into the layer of specific, situational execution. The test of a strong piece is whether it answers 'how do I apply this in my own life, with my own nuances?' rather than 'is this idea important?'
Origin
Wes Kao's own framework, developed across her writing and her work designing cohort-based courses for Seth Godin (altMBA), Section4, David Perell, Tiago Forte and Morning Brew, where the how-layer is the only thing students can't get from a blog post.
Core principles
- 01Your audience already agrees with the general premise — don't sell them on it again.
- 02The what and the why are commodity content; the how is where expertise actually lives.
- 03Specificity is the proof of experience — vague advice reveals you haven't done the thing.
- 04Only spend time on the what/why when the claim is genuinely controversial or new to the audience.
How to run it
- 1
Name the generic version of your topic
Write down the surface topic as most people would state it (e.g. 'communication is important for product managers'). This is the version your reader already believes.
Pro tip If a reader would nod without learning anything, you've found the generic layer.
- 2
Check whether the premise needs defending at all
Ask: is this truly controversial or new to my audience? If not, allocate almost no space to the concept and why it matters, and move straight to execution.
Watch out Spending paragraphs justifying an obvious premise is the single fastest way to lose a sophisticated reader.
- 3
Drop one level into the situational how
Convert the generic topic into the hard, specific sub-problems your reader actually faces — e.g. 'how to get buy-in when you don't have positional authority', 'how to turn chaos into order across multiple stakeholders', 'how to communicate a hypothesis that might not work but that gets the team moving'.
Pro tip Each 'how' should be phrased as a situation plus a constraint. The constraint is what makes it juicy.
- 4
Add the nuance layer and worked examples
Show how to think about edge cases when applying the method, and give examples the reader can pattern-match against so they internalise how it really works.
- 5
Draft, then cut the preamble
Write freely, then go back and delete the context-setting. Most people need far less preamble than you assume.
Pro tip Do this as a separate editing pass — you can't cut preamble while you're still writing it.
In the wild
A generic draft argues that communication matters for product managers — a point every PM already accepts. Applying the super specific how, the piece is rewritten around three concrete situations instead: getting buy-in without positional authority, turning chaos into order across multiple stakeholders, and putting forward an assertion or hypothesis that might be wrong but that gets the team going.
→ The same topic becomes teachable and shareable because every section answers a question the reader could not have answered themselves.
Lenny Rachitsky said the framework explained why his writing works: he cuts the intro as much as possible and gets straight to the substance of the piece.
→ He now shares the super specific how post with other writers whose content is struggling.
Common mistakes
Re-teaching the premise
Spending most of the piece establishing that the topic is important. Readers who chose to read about the topic already believe that — you're spending your scarcest asset (their attention) on the least valuable content.
Staying abstract to sound universal
Writers keep advice general so it applies to everyone, but generality is exactly what makes it useless. The situational constraint is what makes the advice actionable.
Is it for you?
Best for
Writers, course creators, and operators publishing to an audience that already shares their basic worldview and wants execution detail
Not ideal for
Genuinely contrarian or brand-new claims where the audience does not yet accept the premise — those need the why first
From the transcript
“most writers most course instructors spend too much time on the what and the why and not enough”
“people really want to know how do I do this how do I apply this to my own life how do I think about the…”
“I find that sometimes in my writing I'll write and then go back and cut a lot of the Preamble so most people need less…”
From the episode
Persuasive communication and managing up
Wes Kao (Maven, Seth Godin, Section4)