Half of being a good analyst is finding the insight. The other half — the part most people skip — is making someone else understand it. You can have the cleanest model in the world and still lose the room in the first slide.

Writing forces you to think clearly. When you have to explain something in sentences, gaps in your reasoning become obvious. A fuzzy chart can hide fuzzy thinking. A paragraph cannot.

// The problem with most analysis

Most analysis decks are built backwards. The analyst does the work, finds something interesting, and then throws together slides to "show their work." The result is a tour of the methodology rather than a story about the finding.

The question is not "what did I do?" — it's "what should the reader do differently after seeing this?"

That shift in framing changes everything. It forces you to lead with the conclusion, support it with evidence, and cut everything that doesn't serve the argument.

// A simple framework

Before writing anything, answer these three questions:

What changed? Every good piece of analysis has a "before" and "after." If nothing changed or nothing is at stake, there's no story.

So what? Why does this matter to the person reading it? Connect the finding to something they care about.

Now what? What should they do with this information? A recommendation — even a tentative one — is worth more than a perfectly neutral summary.

// On SQL and sentences

There's a reason good SQL and good writing feel similar. Both reward clarity over cleverness. Both benefit from structure — a well-named CTE is like a well-named paragraph. Both are easier to read when you break complex things into smaller, named pieces. 

-- Clear intent, easy to follow
WITH active_users AS (
  SELECT user_id, last_login
  FROM users
  WHERE last_login >= CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL '30 days'
),
revenue AS (
  SELECT user_id, SUM(amount) AS total_revenue
  FROM orders
  GROUP BY user_id
)
SELECT u.user_id, r.total_revenue
FROM active_users u
LEFT JOIN revenue r USING (user_id)

Name your CTEs like you'd name your sections. If you can't name it clearly, you probably haven't thought it through clearly yet.

Writing is a skill, and like SQL, it gets easier with practice. Start small — write one paragraph summarizing each analysis you do, before you touch a slide. Over time, you'll find the story before you build the deck. That's when things get faster, not slower.