Write Like Peter Attia

“I’ll never forget the first patient whom I ever saw die.”

Sheesh, what an opening line, right? Peter has an outstanding resume: he’s a medical surgeon, a Stanford grad, and a longevity expert with 25+ years of industry experience — not to mention, a published author who has sold over two million copies of his book, Outlive.

In a nutshell, Peter is a prime example of what can happen when you share your expertise through writing. And he’s going to help you get started.

In this episode, you’ll learn how Peter wrote his first book — frameworks, strategies, how he packages industry expertise in a way that’s digestible for the masses — and how you can, too. If you’ve been burning to turn your expertise into a bestseller, this episode is for you.

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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:50 How Peter Attia started his book with a dream
00:04:55 How Peter Attia structured his book around a story
00:07:00 Writing technical vs emotional
00:09:40 Peter Attia's 3-part framework (Strategy, Objectives, Tactics)
00:11:20 How to develop a framework
00:12:50 How to develop your voice and select a medium
00:16:55 Why Peter decided to lower profit with his book cover (Easter egg!)
00:17:30 How to successfully work with a co-author
00:20:30 Collaborating on Google Docs vs in person
00:21:00 Why Peter didn't want a self-help book for the New York Times list
00:22:15 How to provide practical, concrete tactics
00:26:00 Setting your most important goal
00:28:00 How to write painful personal stories
00:31:15 Peter's career (Medical school, McKinsey, Doctor, Writer)
00:34:00 How podcasts changed Peter in 2016
00:35:20 Why the publisher trashed Peter's book
00:39:00 How Michael Ovitz resurrected Peter's book
00:45:00 Peter's daily schedule to write this book
00:46:10 What idea Peter polished the most and his focus on nutrition
00:50:10 How to handle perfectionism, fear, and criticism
00:52:15 Why Peter admires writers and speakers like Sam Harris
00:55:45 Non-linear process of writing a book
00:58:30 How to structure the framing of a book
01:00:00 Editing in the final stages
01:03:30 What matters in writing a provocative conclusion
01:04:50 How to categorize your book
01:06:10 The hardest chapter to write
01:09:00 Explaining core ideas over dinner, not an elevator pitch
01:11:00 The importance of fact checking
01:14:15 How Peter found the courage to share his personal stories
01:15:58 Writing Example (Rocketmen)

PODCAST LINKS:

ABOUT THE HOST:
I’m David Perell and I’m a writer, teacher, and podcaster. I believe writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. I seek to help as many people publish their writing online as possible.

How I Write is a podcast by Write of Passage // Production by Adam Soccolich

[DavidPerellChannel]

Peter Attia is one of the most famous doctors in the world.

After studying health for years, he turned his philosophy into a book. It's sold more than 2 million copies and at one point in 2023, it was the #1 best-selling non-fiction book on Amazon.

What'd he learn? Some lessons below:

1. Learn to write because your papers will outlive you.

2. The reason you can keep improving as a writer with age is that writing pulls from your crystallized intelligence, which peaks later in life.

3. Sam Harris's book-writing advice to Peter: "You're not really editing the book until you read the entire thing out loud."

4. Want to get better at explaining complex ideas? Editing them in a Google Doc isn't enough. Talk about them with people. Bouncing ideas off people who aren't in your field is particularly useful. For Peter, that meant speaking to hundreds of patients over the years.

5. Not all good ideas can be distilled into an elevator pitch, and it's insane to think they can be. Aiming to communicate something clearly over dinner is often a better goal.

6. Peter says: "One of the things about our society that's problematic is everybody wants an elevator pitch for everything."

7. “Good writing is clear thinking made visible.” —Bill Wheeler

8. Writing improves your thinking by letting you parallel process ideas. Writing things down increases the number of things you can think about at once because you can store ideas on paper instead of your head. It's the same reason why mathematicians do their best thinking with a whiteboard.

9. Stephen King said it best: "Kill your darlings." Every great writer does it. For experts who are writing about something they know a lot about, this means removing the non-essential facts you're fascinated by so the essential ones can reach a large audience.

10. If you want to build an emotional connection with your reader, data isn't enough. You probably need a story.

11. Peter didn't just tell stories. He infused his own narrative into the book.

12. Most books about health stop being relevant because they focus on tactics. But if a book about health is going to endure, it has to focus on the things that don't change.

13. Scientists struggle to write popular books because they're trained not to editorialize their findings. But a popular book requires a narrative, which is the epitome of editorialization.

14. How do you write about science and medicine for the general public? Peter says it "requires striking a balance between brevity and nuance, rigor and readability. I’ve done my best to find the sweet spot on that continuum, getting the substance right while keeping this book accessible to the lay reader."

15. How to write a conclusion? Have a clear sense for what you want the reader to do — not to think, but to do. The same is true whenever you're giving a talk (this advice only applies to non-fiction books like Peter's).

That's just a taste of my conversation with
@PeterAttiaMD
. There's a whole lot more in here about working with a co-author, how to share your expertise, and the backstory behind the first sentence in the book: “I’ll never forget the first patient whom I ever saw die.”

[ishan]

Hi David,

Hope you read this: Don't stop. This interview, and the ones before, are a collective time stamp.

Of?
Seriousness.

Mediocrity is the color inside many people's work and effort. But you give me hope of the excellence possible in the pursuit of serious work.

About this episode: much like the liver, there's no substitute for the struggle behind good writing. No machine that can write for me in my absence. The cocktail of anecdotes, facts and perspectives were helpful and on-point.

Thank you ❤

[producedbypodcast]

Didn't see this one coming but so glad to see Peter on! 🎙Loved "Outlive", can't recommend it enough. 📚Top quality interview as always!

[author.gggodchild]

I pray for a chance like him. His story sounds awesome and inspiring. God bless!

[sjkba]

Another great guest and Podcast. Love the setup, timestamps, everything.

[iLoveWriting]

Just read Outlive this year and loved it. Incredible to hear the behind the scenes!

[joansprinkle]

Great podcast, great book (I haven't finished it yet). I don't know when and where I learned to read my writing out loud...could have been graduate school but more likely it was during the time I homeschooled my daughter and was learning to teach her. This has been one of the best ways to edit my work. Yes, my colleagues think I'm talking to myself.

[satishgaire]

Some of my takeaways for my context:

1. Limit "Tactics" and focus on fundamental if your want
your book to be relevant in a decade.

2. Until you read it “out”, you are not editing.

3. Fact Checking is more important than ever,
and i think it has gotten easier because of AI tools that will expedite this process.

4. As an author, you got so much ideas but you don't need
to talk about EVERYTHING.

5. Provocative conclusion with CTAs for the readers

[SelloutSmbero]

I would argue "because it's cool" is the only reason ANYTHING is worth doing.

[paprikaawa]

Mmm I Love this Podcast but I can’t believe the Ghost Writer is not responsible for most of the book. I rather an interview with the Ghost Writer