3 Ways to strategically use style

Everyone has style preferences. Likes and dislikes. It’s not our task to assess the value of your style preferences compared to others.

Instead, let’s understand style as a tool we and others use.

There are three definitive situations where style holds strategic value and matters most:

1. When it improves substance: style can improve and elevate substance when it adds polish or precision to what is valuable.
2. When it draws attention to substance: style can attract people to substance by appealing to emotional desires and pointing them toward value.
3. When it conceals a lack of substance: style can hide an absence of substance by distracting people with attractive but empty appeals.

This is how we use style as a tool and how others use it around us. Wisdom is in the discernment to use style well and not get fooled by those who would misuse it.

Brick by brick. Do the work.