The Slow Boring process

Ahead of the inevitable questions I’ll get asked over Thanksgiving dinner

The mailbag this week will be published on Wednesday due to the holiday, and evening posts will be simple discussion threads.

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When I tell people what I do for work, they typically respond in one of two ways:

1. They’ve never heard of Substack.

   1. When this is the case, I explain that I generally write about politics.

2. They are familiar with Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring, or at least the concept of a Substack newsletter.

   1. In this case, their questions are typically something along the lines of, “How does Matt write so much every day?” or “So how many people are helping Matt write his posts?”

The answers to those last two questions are I don’t really know how it’s possible, but he seems to remember everything and thinks and writes very quickly and he’s writing everything himself. Our team occasionally provides research help, but those instances are rare.

On this Monday before Thanksgiving (a day when I’ll undoubtedly get similar questions from friends and family), I thought I would give you all a peek behind the curtain at the Slow Boring process.