The ways in which

liz

I’ve always thought of myself as a good writer. Then, I started grad school.

In my doctoral program, I write anywhere from 1,000 to 7,500 words a week to satisfy my class assignments. Then, there’s my dissertation. For that, I crank out at least another 3,000 words a week. After edits from my committee chair, though, it can be a net loss over the prior week.

Although I write a lot in school, only two of the dozen or so classes I have taken thus far has focused on writing. These classes have been invaluable.

These two courses emphasized word economy. Whereas before I might describe ‘the ways in which’, now I just say ‘how’. For someone who not only loves words but also the sound of her own voice, it’s been a tough transition. However, the goal is to be profound, not simply profuse.

Although it’s been attributed to everyone from Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln to Mark Twain and Henry David Thoreau, Blaise Pascal was the first to write that he sent a long letter because he didn’t have time to compose a short one. It sounds cooler in French.

Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.

Blaise Pascal, 1656

When I write, I must pare down my sentences. I want to communicate simply and with impact. I’ve found that it is harder to speak succinctly. In addition to improving my academic work, this focus has benefited my mental health.

Writing this way forces me to consider each word. Is it relevant? Is it true? Is it necessary? It’s been great for excising the fluff. Jerk Brain is full of fluff. Jerk Brains lies. Jerk Brain never shuts up. The discipline I have gained from transforming my writing now helps me to fend off Jerk Brain. I still get lost in its narrative from time to time, but I am far better at recognizing when the messaging is not serving me and stopping it.

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Published by liz

From history major, with side quests in Medieval Studies and chemical engineering, to nonprofit finance leader, Big 4 tax partner, technologist, researcher, and now co-founder of Divine, nothing about my career has been linear. The throughline has always been systems: financial systems, organizational systems, technological systems, and human systems. I have an MBA in Operations and Supply Chain Management and a PhD in Organizational Leadership Psychology, and I’ve spent my career trying to understand how complex systems shape people’s choices, opportunities, wellbeing, and sense of belonging. Today, my work sits at the intersection of psychology, technology, human-centered design, and digital trust. I am co-founder of Divine, an open-source, decentralized social video app built to put creativity back in human hands and replace doomscrolling with joyscrolling. Divine is part of a bigger question I care deeply about: how do we create online spaces that support safety, creativity, identity, and belonging without defaulting to surveillance, extraction, or control? At Divine, I wear a lot of hats across engineering, finance, operations, and strategy, while helping shape the app’s trust, safety, and values work. I focus especially on teen online safety, human-generated content, participatory design, and healthier relationships with technology. I am a postdoctoral alum of Vanderbilt University’s Department of Computer Science, where I worked with Dr. Pam Wisniewski’s Socio-Technical Interaction Research Lab. I continue to write, speak, and research at the intersection of online safety, digital trust, decentralized technology, and youth wellbeing. I was named a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Data Integrity in 2023. In 2025, I had the honor of serving as President of Division 13 of the American Psychological Association, the Society of Consulting Psychology. I also live with major depressive disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 2020, I took a leave from PwC to focus on my mental wellness, and I now speak and write openly about mental health, especially in the workplace and in relation to digital wellbeing. This blog, Seriously Jerk Brain, chronicles much of that journey.

1 Comment

  1. Totally agree. I try to avoid adjectives, especially in technical or business writing. FWIW I find IRS publications are well written in this regard 🤓

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