A short essay is generally understood as a focused piece of prose writing — typically 500–1500 words — that develops a single central argument or idea through a coherent sequence of reasoning, evidence, and reflection. The key word is essay in Montaigne’s original sense: essai, an attempt or trial. It’s less about exhaustively covering a topic and more about thinking through it in a disciplined but personal way.
The purpose is usually one (or a blend) of these: to argue a position, to explore an idea, or to illuminate something through a particular lens. What distinguishes it from a paragraph or a list is the expectation of development — introduction, body, conclusion as a minimum scaffolding — and from a long essay or paper, the constraint of economy. Every sentence should be load-bearing.
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On Using Stoicism as a Daily Operating System
A Spartan Answer There is so much that feels like it must be done. If you run a company, love people well, and try to…
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A Framework for Life – 21st Century Edition
To aid active work I also use this Notion page. Whenever the framework approaches some final state, all information will be centralised to bramdelisse.me. Tis…
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Computational Democracy
Image by katsuma tanaka A Brief Introduction: When Democracy Meets the Wisdom of Nature Ever wonder why a flock of starlings can perform aerial ballet…
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How I work
How I plan my week I usually do this 8 -> 10 AM Monday morning before the week kick-off. My planning takes significant time: I…
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My 24/25 framework for a thorough year reflection + goal setting
I took three days to reflect on 2024.I consolidated the learnings, and created this daily direction for my 2025: To do this, I created a…