Drawing Letters: How AI Transformed This Designer into a Writer

Confessions of a reluctant writer who finally found his process

Welcome to Frank Takeaways. I'm Frank, writing the notes worth keeping from decades at companies like Slack, Etsy, and Google. I run a coaching practice dedicated to guiding leaders through the tricky stuff of building products and high-performing teams.

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For most of my life, I thought writing was for other people: the ones who read voraciously and who kept journals. After all, I spent much of my early career as a designer who thought in sketches and systems, not sentences. But leadership changed that. I struggled to translate my thinking into writing until AI gave me the bridge I didn't know I needed.

As an undergrad at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business (Goooo Dawgs, sic 'em!), I never had to write long papers. Class was all about case studies, group projects, and presentations so I never built the habit of writing to wrestle with complex …