Write the way you’d explain it aloud, and your words stop acting as hurdles and start acting as doors. That’s the heart of Paul Graham’s advice: swap grand phrases for ordinary ones, long clauses for short sentences. When prose is spare, readers spend less effort decoding and more time absorbing. The idea doesn’t shrink; the friction does.

A quick sanity check is the Hemingway test: paste your draft into the Hemingway Editor and it flags long sentences, complex words, and passive voice - if the grade level drops to about ninth-grade or lower with minimal red or yellow, you’ve cleared the path for your reader.