Write What You Repeat
If you say it more than once, write it down — then get an accountability partner to enforce a monthly cadence.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
A publishing discipline with a built-in enforcement mechanism. The content rule is trivial: if you find yourself saying something more than once, write it down, so next time you can hand it over. The hard part is doing it consistently, so the framework pairs the rule with external accountability — a manager's standing commitment or a peer group that asks 'where's this month's post?' Liu ran it monthly for years, published internally first, and it eventually produced a book.
Origin
The 'write what you repeat' rule comes from Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth (now CTO of Meta), who was Liu's manager at Facebook. When they made a written contract to work together after a rocky relationship, his single ask of her was: write and publish something every month. Liu protested that she didn't have that much to say; he told her she had so much to teach people and to trust him.
Core principles
- 01Write what you repeat — if you say something more than once, it's an artifact, not a conversation.
- 02The barrier is never the writing, it's the hump of starting; once you're over it, the only questions left are how good and how much time.
- 03Accountability beats motivation. You need someone who might be watching.
- 04Publish internally first if external feels like too much — the audience can widen later.
- 05The people who most need to write are usually the ones who insist they have nothing to say.
How to run it
- 1
Collect your repeats
Notice the advice, explanations and frameworks you deliver more than once — in 1:1s, in mentoring, in reviews. Each repeat is a piece you already have the content for.
Pro tip The next time someone asks, you can just hand them the piece. The writing pays for itself in reclaimed conversations.
- 2
Commit to a fixed cadence with a named person
Make the commitment to someone specific — a manager, a mentor, a peer. Liu's was a written contract with Boz: monthly, no exceptions. She did it faithfully for years because she felt he was watching, whether or not he actually was.
Pro tip The accountability doesn't need to be real to work. Liu isn't sure Boz ever checked.
- 3
Start with an internal audience
Liu published internally at Facebook for a long time before ever going external. Lower stakes, real audience, real feedback loop. External publishing came later, then a substack, then a book.
- 4
Form an accountability group if you have no manager pushing you
Liu and Ami Vora created a small accountability group to prompt each other — 'hey, did you do it?' A friend asking where this month's post is does the same job as a manager's contract.
- 5
Only optimise quality after the habit exists
Liu's sequencing: once you're over the hump of 'I have to do it', the remaining questions are how good you make it and how much time you put in. Quality is a second-order problem.
Watch out Inverting this — polishing before the cadence exists — is why most people publish twice and stop.
In the wild
Liu and Boz had a poor relationship before her team moved into his org, so they wrote a mutual contract. She wrote a long list of how she wanted him to take care of her team and support her products. His counter-ask was one line: write and publish something every month. She said she didn't have that much to say; he said she had so much to teach people and to just trust him.
→ She published every single month from then on — through his tenure as her manager, through a manager change, and continues today. It led to external publishing, a substack, and a book.
Liu's colleague Ami Vora was writing incredible material internally for years while the world got none of it. Liu told her she should publish externally; they created a small accountability group to nudge each other and ask whether the month's post was done.
→ Vora now publishes publicly and, per Liu, is one of the wisest career coaches she has ever worked with — wisdom that had previously only reached people who happened to know her.
Common mistakes
Believing you have nothing to say
Liu's own first reaction to Boz was 'I don't really have that much to say.' She's since written a book. The belief is almost never a fact.
Relying on motivation instead of accountability
Liu's cadence held for years because she felt someone was watching. Without an external prompt, monthly publishing quietly becomes annual.
Going straight to a public audience
The internal-first path lowers the stakes enough to actually start. Insisting on a public launch is a common way to never begin.
Is it for you?
Best for
Senior operators with hard-won expertise who repeat the same advice in 1:1s and have never written any of it down.
Not ideal for
People with no accumulated repeats yet — early-career practitioners whose time is better spent acquiring the lessons than broadcasting them.
From the transcript
“he wrote back here's what I'm asking of you I want you to write and publish something every month”
“and so his advice was write what you repeat if you say something more than once just write it down”
“part of it was just the commitment I now had accountability because I knew he was watching”
“necessary to get over that hump is either having Soul en forcing you like your manager”
From the episode
Succeeding as an introvert, building zero-to-one, and why you should PM your career like you PM your product
Deb Liu (CEO of Ancestry, ex-Facebook, PayPal, eBay)