I heard once that, "Writing is thinking," which has stuck with me throughout my life.
You really haven't thought about it hard enough if you haven't tried writing it down.
I have a whole system of journals that I use to collect my thoughts across various subjects I dabble in. Algorithms: there's a journal for that. Abstract algebra? There's a journal for that. Etc.
At work? I use bullet journal... I add sections in for projects I'm working on. When I'm working on refactoring an old area of the code or investigating a hard-to-diagnose error I start writing. I ask questions, get answers, and I update my project journal. It helps me clarify the issue and I find once I can explain the system or the error clearly the answers (or how to find them) becomes obvious.
It may seem quaint, eccentric, or out-dated but it's a practical, reliable tool. Ask questions and write down the answers. Eventually a coherent narrative and a full thought will form before you.
Writing is a great technique to better understand subject. When you try to explain it, you start to find all the gaps that need reinforcing. You go read, and come back to continue writing.
> It helps me clarify the issue and I find once I can explain the system or the error clearly the answers (or how to find them) becomes obvious.
This is so true for me too. It’s basically rubber ducking with oneself. Or in preparation for rubber ducking _with_ someone else, writing down my thoughts often helps me figure it out myself.
Personally, I've found computer writing is perfectly fine for note taking; but, once I actually want to compose something that I've really thought through, I'll turn to handwriting for complete sentences.
I think the internet generally makes way too much out of which tool you use. Use whatever works for you and what allows you to do it consistently.
I want to get better at taking project notes for work via Obsidian. I'm curious if you have a different page per project or do you just put everything in the same giant log? I like the idea of organizing it, but it takes me a bit of time to find out which notebook it should go under.
The beauty of Obsidian is that you don't have to file under a single notebook/directory. If you have a note that belongs to more than one category you can tag or link to both relevant notebooks.
Exactly, and I also feel like the act of "transferring" one's thoughts to visual symbols (writing, coding, diagramming) helps a lot with mental defrag and garbage collection.
The technology metaphor I've always used is serialization, which I think still makes sense for the action, but I really like defrag and garbage collection as the metaphor for the actual value in the activity, so I'm going to keep that, thanks!
I use a probably similar workflow (writing about everything, multiple journals - work projects, personal projects, notes taken when reading books, random thoughts, relationship topics etc.) and I feel like electronic vs paper/pen definitely makes a difference. I use both types for different things.
Electronic obviously has the advantage of being able to edit the text in a non-linear fashion, which I think is something necessary for the notes I take for work. Being in the same 'space' as the work I do (so on screen) is also helpful, as well as being able to include things like hyperlinks/chunks of code. Since I type fast, taking digital notes also lets me dump whatever is in my head faster (this is usually relevant for other types than work notes).
Paper on the other hand I feel puts me into a different headspace when writing (might be the lack of a screen, or maybe the slower writing?) and is (usually, not always) more fitting for stuff I write about personal topics or books. Some types of notes (e.g. stuff about music) also benefit from the freedom pen on paper gives you - adding scribbles, drawings, formatting text in non-standard visual ways. Small paper notebooks are of course also much easier to take with you on trips and write on a bus, train, park bench or w/e (I've heard some people use phones but I can't imagine myself writing proper notes on a smartphone keyboard).
I use pen and paper for the majority of my journals and a Remarkable 2 for some.
I find writing long-hand works best for me. It's slower and that's the point of it. The journey is the process and the goal. The end result is clear, well-formed thoughts. You cannot rush the process to get the end result faster: you'll end up with a jumble of short-hand, bullet points, and half-baked ideas.
I also prefer a page. I can draw diagrams when it suits me. Software forces me to switch tools and my mental context to add diagrams. And they're all clunky besides. I'd rather something more intuitive that doesn't get in my way: a pen and perhaps a ruler, slide, etc on occasion.
The Remarkable software has improved with time and with the addition of the keyboard I can get close to the best of both worlds. I tend to use it for work-focused and project-focused journals. I'll start with free-hand but use the text-conversion and clean things up from there. The free-hand diagramming is much improved now that they've introduced better drawing tools that can force straight shapes from my free-hand ones. And then you get the benefit of being able to search through your documents from a computer.
For my paper journals I have to use a bookshelf and a box of index cards to keep everything organized. For the amount of journals I produce this is sufficient but it's not as convenient as it is on a computer... but personally I don't find I need to maximize convenience in my life, I'm satisfied with some processes and tasks being manual and tedious.
I also like the paper journals because it leaves a physical legacy of my learnings, thoughts, and experiences. I like reading through them on occasion to recall some algorithm I learned years ago that I need to remember or some book I had read in order to recall the salient thoughts and quotes I found interesting. And I hope maybe some day my children or surviving colleagues will find them useful too.
I find that writing with pen and paper is best for my mind. But, I’m a technologist so I love digital. I use the Kindle Scribe to cover both bases. I’ve written about it here:
Not op but for me what makes the difference is doing anything at all. Even if one is better than the other, writing down at all has a huge beneficial effect for many.
> If you’re repeatedly drawn to a thought, feeling, or belief, write it out. Be fast, be sloppy.
I couldn't agree more here! A friend has wanted to start a writing/journaling habit for a long time, but didn't know what to write about. I told him, don't think to write—write to think [1].
Show up to an empty page, without knowing, is totally acceptable! So is writing things down that make you feel embarrassed, confused, etc.
When I'm journaling, I often find prompts/frameworks helpful for guiding this escape.
I really like Byron Katie's framework, which she calls The Work [2]. After you notice and draw to mind a stressful thought, answer these four questions:
Q1. Is it true?
Q2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
Q3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
Q4. Who would you be without that thought?
Then, invert the thought. She writes, "Turn the thought around. Is the opposite as true as or truer than the original thought?"
Derek Sivers also shares some really great questions for journaling for reframing [3].
I absolutely hate to say it but chatbots ARE actually good at therapy, or acting as a sort of interactive journal.
I try to put my thoughts in as clearly and concisely as I can, and it rephrases it back to me and points out angles I hadn't thought of. Plus, I know not only does it not want to judge me, it's literally incapable of judging me unlike a human therapist.
Again I hate how dumb this sounds but I was surprised.
I've kept a journal of some sort for the past 10 years. Sometimes they're mostly used for capturing work tasks and working out architectures and designs, but occasionally I'll brain dump a random essay/poem/song/business ideas there, and those can be fun to come back to. I just moved into a new place unpacked them, so I've been paying through them as I get a chance. It's fun to see all the ways that I've changed, but it's actually more interesting to see some of the ways I haven't changed at all. I enjoy the act of writing because it makes me feel like my sense of self is less ethereal. Having something concrete that I made and like, even if it's just for me, is just satisfying.
There’s a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. One of the main tasks is writing three pages every morning, called The Morning Pages. I personally find the first two pages quite quick and easy, but it’s that third page where the interesting stuff comes out.
I’m nine weeks into the twelve week program and it has taken me on an incredible journey of self discovery. Memories from childhood, dreams and hopes for the future. All of them uncovered to explore.
There’s something beautiful about writing with a fountain pen and paper. Setting aside time every day to dive deep and see what comes out.
I mean, I can, but my handwriting is so bad I can barely read it, even if I've written pretty slowly. Like it was never good, but I could write a lot faster and still be able to read it. Now my slow and careful handwriting is worse than that, even.
It occurred to me some time last year, when reflecting on this, that I've probably averaged fewer than 50 words written by hand per year, not counting my signature, over... like more than a decade. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual annual average over that span is around 25 or 30 words, even. So, no wonder.
A big change from the days of writing several hundreds words in one hour for Blue Book tests, a few times per year!
I think you're still capable, just with that interval between use, you're perma-rusty at handwriting. My own experience is that I have retained the ability to learn scripts well into adulthood.
Within the last few years I've done what I call "installing a font." I was unhappy with my printed letter forms, so I looked up architectural lettering guides and modeled my new printing based on that. I also re-learned how to write cursive, which is always a struggle any time I re-start using it after months of having not.
Yeah, my father had lovely printed penmanship. I've planned on practicing to develop that as I return to reading more (in retirement), both to take notes as I read and learn, and because otherwise my notes will be illegible. My current hand printing or writing is atrocious.
Oddly my handwriting is aesthetically better than ever in old age, but I find I just have no patience left for it. Halfway through scribbling a word my brain is screaming "come on already!" for a keyboard, and by the next word it's completely checked out of whatever thought I was supposed to jot down. It's like watching the most boring scene unfold in slow motion. I've been hearing the handwriting->memory argument for decades, but screw that. Give me >100wpm.
I also find it's a great sanity check. Ideas that seem good in my head often fail when I put them into words. Especially when I outline it in step by step format
This needs to be the default way we instill in young people and to think about learning, as if, "escape your default setting" is akin to "exploration".
Especially in the age of generated written word, the act of writing it yourself _cannot_ be more important.
First we shape our tools, then our tools shape us.
The same is true with writing — and our modes of writing.
I agree that writing to think is important, and that putting ideas on paper makes an ephemeral idea "real".
However I disagree that "writing things in a blog post / paulg narrative format to be shared with other internet readers" is the best way to turn ephemeral thoughts into solid ideas.
I think using pen and paper, sketching, drawing, scribbling, writing short-form jot notes, writing on the shower glass while steaming away in the shower — I think those forms of writing are how good ideas get captured and solidified.
The paulg kind of writing is merely an exercise in peacocking to the other HN crowds.
---
For designers, the best way is to draw things. If you have a hard time "imagining" a user flow, draw the screens in a flow diagram. If that's hard, draw all the interfaces, cut them out, and put them on a table. Put the pieces on top of each other to approximate how the interface will flow.
I found when I was working on my dissertation that I struggled make progress on the actual writing. No matter how much work I did, I wound up rewriting, editing, re-thinking, deleting, and starting over.
I never fully solved that problem, but I found a workaround that helped: I started writing notes and drafts by hand in cursive with my non-dominant hand.
Writing by hand, by itself, calmed me and focused my mind, whereas writing in a word processor almost always caused a spiral of distraction and increasing agitation.
Increasing the difficulty of the literal, physical writing process helped me, I think, in a few ways. It became much costlier not to commit to a single version of a thought, so I had a strong incentive to pare away some of the noise surrounding it and state it in its most direct, least objectionable form.
I'm also convinced, though I can't prove it, that dramatically slowing the physical act of writing improved my working memory.
That being said, I strongly agree with just about everything this piece says, whether or not one writes by hand. And I would add that writing also forces people to use a wider range of faculties and forms of reasoning. I doubt one could overstate the value of this as intellectual exercise.
Writing is quite different as a discipline and in its effects when it's for self-discovery, self-analysis, messaging others, etc.
It's like the vast differences between relaxing alone at home, caring for your partner, hosting guests, going to work, taking kids on vacation...
What's helpful in either case is the ritual of entering that domain: you pull yourself together for work, dissolve on the couch, and put on a happy listening face for the kids. The more consistent you are in your rituals, the more quickly and deeply you enter and exit that domain.
That's how to escape mental defaults: have a huge variety of them, widely-spaced, so you can introspect their difference and play their respective lights against their shadows.
Anecdotal: I recently found a little trick that works for me to overcome the horrors of the blank page: I turn my phone (having opened my preferred note-taking solution) into horizontal mode. The keyboard gets larger in width, making it nicer to type, and on my medium-sized phone, it covers enough of the UI that I don't actually see what I type into the textbox, until I close the keyboard again. So I just happily type away and hit save at the end.
Love it. Your whole website is great. I recently started writing down whatever passing thoughts happen to me in a small notebook. Only a couple of entries now, but it's a start. Unfortunately I was terrible at, or perhaps terrified of, writing at school and college, so I never learned how to be any good at it. I also find that nothing reveals more about what you know about a given topic than looking at an empty page or a blinking cursor. Even writing this comment makes me feel queasy, huh.
I picked up handwritten journaling as a way of processing my life. It has been therapeutic through a few incidences in how I'm feeling whether it's about work, family or more personal thoughts. With each stroke, I am challenging myself to write more cleanly and appreciating the subtle beauty as the pen strokes create letters, words, sentences, ideas. I feel more at peace as I let my most challenging thoughts live on paper.
I'm surprised to not see a mention of "This is Water", the commencement speech by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College, which thesis is that the point of a liberal arts education is to help you escape your default setting.
I think the title of this post may be a reference to "This is Water", since I haven't seen the term "default setting" anywhere else, but I could be mistaken.
To present a counter perspective. I like to believe that I possess a fair crop of sane defaults here and there upstairs.
And there are some things that I refuse to write down. They’re motivated more by a raw feeling than what can be found through their transliteration. Language of the guts gargles into scribbles and scripts.
Lest I be forced to result to pictography. You know sketch pads are also helpful.
Maybe the writer’s resort is toward the days he ain’t writing. Eventually stopping and becoming content.
I had this insight that I thought was evident. "AGI is an interface problem". It made sense in the context. But when I decided to write about it, my initial idea and example were pretty weak. The more I wrote the more I found counterpoints. In fact, writing forced me to think through those arguments and see if the idea can still stand.
Many times, my ideas fade into darkness after a good writing session. But that's how you form a strong opinion.
The cognitive scientist John Vervaeke describes the "4 Ps of Knowing", moving from propositional, up through procedural, perspectival, and participatory.
Most of our thought is propositional: we see a thing, know the thing, and move. Writing moves us up that hierarchy. And sharing that writing—ideally within the context of shared dialogue—moves us even further.
I noticed that writing prompts for my 'code bot' gives more structure to my thoughts. I sometimes even delete a prompt because just the writing already gave me new thoughts.
Writing about writing is in the air! I just published a post with a tongue-in-cheek reference to the A-Team [1] :D
The OP led me to `kupjao`'s series of posts on writing, and I can't help but nod my head in agreement. I'm in the choir they are preaching to!
Little writing habits compound over time to help people (and teams) escape the gravity well of their "default" setting. It isn't rocket science. Just simple bullet-point-ing can be good enough to help a bunch of people...
- conserve personal and collective attention
- power creativity
- grow intellectual capital
- maintain clear situational awareness
- run high-trust workplaces, and
- make high-quality decisions.
etc. etc. etc. because, like I said, I'm sold on the author's premise!
Just be aware that once you escape your default setting, you'll come to realize everybody else hasn't.
It'll be like teenage angst at your parents, except it'll be angst at the entire species :)
Anyone that writes and asks earnest questions pretty quickly turns to spirituality, religion, philosophy or pseudo-philosophy/pseudo-science (self-help) because they end up realizing oh - I don't know what's going on at all!
The spiritual path is living with truth of don't know. Religion is choosing to have 'faith' and a set of instructions but really is about huddling with others for warmth and comfort. Philosophy is about attempting to build a logically consistent system of what's going on. Self-help is a set of quick hacks to make one feel better.
Almost all people settle in a modified default setting (self help) and choose to use thinking to do tiny little puzzles instead of asking the deeper questions. They can't handle the angst, they want that human comfort more than they want the truth :)
I heard once that, "Writing is thinking," which has stuck with me throughout my life.
You really haven't thought about it hard enough if you haven't tried writing it down.
I have a whole system of journals that I use to collect my thoughts across various subjects I dabble in. Algorithms: there's a journal for that. Abstract algebra? There's a journal for that. Etc.
At work? I use bullet journal... I add sections in for projects I'm working on. When I'm working on refactoring an old area of the code or investigating a hard-to-diagnose error I start writing. I ask questions, get answers, and I update my project journal. It helps me clarify the issue and I find once I can explain the system or the error clearly the answers (or how to find them) becomes obvious.
It may seem quaint, eccentric, or out-dated but it's a practical, reliable tool. Ask questions and write down the answers. Eventually a coherent narrative and a full thought will form before you.
Writing is a great technique to better understand subject. When you try to explain it, you start to find all the gaps that need reinforcing. You go read, and come back to continue writing.
> It helps me clarify the issue and I find once I can explain the system or the error clearly the answers (or how to find them) becomes obvious.
This is so true for me too. It’s basically rubber ducking with oneself. Or in preparation for rubber ducking _with_ someone else, writing down my thoughts often helps me figure it out myself.
Does it need to be a handwriting, or computer writing is sufficient?
Personally, I've found computer writing is perfectly fine for note taking; but, once I actually want to compose something that I've really thought through, I'll turn to handwriting for complete sentences.
I think the internet generally makes way too much out of which tool you use. Use whatever works for you and what allows you to do it consistently.
I want to get better at taking project notes for work via Obsidian. I'm curious if you have a different page per project or do you just put everything in the same giant log? I like the idea of organizing it, but it takes me a bit of time to find out which notebook it should go under.
The beauty of Obsidian is that you don't have to file under a single notebook/directory. If you have a note that belongs to more than one category you can tag or link to both relevant notebooks.
Agentultra was talking about paper notebooks imho.
> "Writing is thinking"
Exactly, and I also feel like the act of "transferring" one's thoughts to visual symbols (writing, coding, diagramming) helps a lot with mental defrag and garbage collection.
The technology metaphor I've always used is serialization, which I think still makes sense for the action, but I really like defrag and garbage collection as the metaphor for the actual value in the activity, so I'm going to keep that, thanks!
I still have a leather bound journal, but these days I also use Obsidian to make my writing easier to search.
Since it stores everything as markdown files in folders, I can use ripgrep to search for things.
Curious as whether writing your journals (work or home) electronically vs paper/pen makes a difference. Interested in your thoughts.
I use a probably similar workflow (writing about everything, multiple journals - work projects, personal projects, notes taken when reading books, random thoughts, relationship topics etc.) and I feel like electronic vs paper/pen definitely makes a difference. I use both types for different things.
Electronic obviously has the advantage of being able to edit the text in a non-linear fashion, which I think is something necessary for the notes I take for work. Being in the same 'space' as the work I do (so on screen) is also helpful, as well as being able to include things like hyperlinks/chunks of code. Since I type fast, taking digital notes also lets me dump whatever is in my head faster (this is usually relevant for other types than work notes).
Paper on the other hand I feel puts me into a different headspace when writing (might be the lack of a screen, or maybe the slower writing?) and is (usually, not always) more fitting for stuff I write about personal topics or books. Some types of notes (e.g. stuff about music) also benefit from the freedom pen on paper gives you - adding scribbles, drawings, formatting text in non-standard visual ways. Small paper notebooks are of course also much easier to take with you on trips and write on a bus, train, park bench or w/e (I've heard some people use phones but I can't imagine myself writing proper notes on a smartphone keyboard).
I use pen and paper for the majority of my journals and a Remarkable 2 for some.
I find writing long-hand works best for me. It's slower and that's the point of it. The journey is the process and the goal. The end result is clear, well-formed thoughts. You cannot rush the process to get the end result faster: you'll end up with a jumble of short-hand, bullet points, and half-baked ideas.
I also prefer a page. I can draw diagrams when it suits me. Software forces me to switch tools and my mental context to add diagrams. And they're all clunky besides. I'd rather something more intuitive that doesn't get in my way: a pen and perhaps a ruler, slide, etc on occasion.
The Remarkable software has improved with time and with the addition of the keyboard I can get close to the best of both worlds. I tend to use it for work-focused and project-focused journals. I'll start with free-hand but use the text-conversion and clean things up from there. The free-hand diagramming is much improved now that they've introduced better drawing tools that can force straight shapes from my free-hand ones. And then you get the benefit of being able to search through your documents from a computer.
For my paper journals I have to use a bookshelf and a box of index cards to keep everything organized. For the amount of journals I produce this is sufficient but it's not as convenient as it is on a computer... but personally I don't find I need to maximize convenience in my life, I'm satisfied with some processes and tasks being manual and tedious.
I also like the paper journals because it leaves a physical legacy of my learnings, thoughts, and experiences. I like reading through them on occasion to recall some algorithm I learned years ago that I need to remember or some book I had read in order to recall the salient thoughts and quotes I found interesting. And I hope maybe some day my children or surviving colleagues will find them useful too.
I find that writing with pen and paper is best for my mind. But, I’m a technologist so I love digital. I use the Kindle Scribe to cover both bases. I’ve written about it here:
https://notes.joeldare.com/handwritten-notes-on-the-kindle-s...
Not op but for me what makes the difference is doing anything at all. Even if one is better than the other, writing down at all has a huge beneficial effect for many.
> If you’re repeatedly drawn to a thought, feeling, or belief, write it out. Be fast, be sloppy.
I couldn't agree more here! A friend has wanted to start a writing/journaling habit for a long time, but didn't know what to write about. I told him, don't think to write—write to think [1].
Show up to an empty page, without knowing, is totally acceptable! So is writing things down that make you feel embarrassed, confused, etc.
When I'm journaling, I often find prompts/frameworks helpful for guiding this escape.
I really like Byron Katie's framework, which she calls The Work [2]. After you notice and draw to mind a stressful thought, answer these four questions:
Q1. Is it true? Q2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? Q3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? Q4. Who would you be without that thought?
Then, invert the thought. She writes, "Turn the thought around. Is the opposite as true as or truer than the original thought?"
Derek Sivers also shares some really great questions for journaling for reframing [3].
I also show up to the page
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32628196
[2] https://thework.com/instruction-the-work-byron-katie/
[3] https://sive.rs/u
I absolutely hate to say it but chatbots ARE actually good at therapy, or acting as a sort of interactive journal.
I try to put my thoughts in as clearly and concisely as I can, and it rephrases it back to me and points out angles I hadn't thought of. Plus, I know not only does it not want to judge me, it's literally incapable of judging me unlike a human therapist.
Again I hate how dumb this sounds but I was surprised.
Thework.com looks like a great resource, thanks for sharing.
I've kept a journal of some sort for the past 10 years. Sometimes they're mostly used for capturing work tasks and working out architectures and designs, but occasionally I'll brain dump a random essay/poem/song/business ideas there, and those can be fun to come back to. I just moved into a new place unpacked them, so I've been paying through them as I get a chance. It's fun to see all the ways that I've changed, but it's actually more interesting to see some of the ways I haven't changed at all. I enjoy the act of writing because it makes me feel like my sense of self is less ethereal. Having something concrete that I made and like, even if it's just for me, is just satisfying.
There’s a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. One of the main tasks is writing three pages every morning, called The Morning Pages. I personally find the first two pages quite quick and easy, but it’s that third page where the interesting stuff comes out.
I’m nine weeks into the twelve week program and it has taken me on an incredible journey of self discovery. Memories from childhood, dreams and hopes for the future. All of them uncovered to explore.
There’s something beautiful about writing with a fountain pen and paper. Setting aside time every day to dive deep and see what comes out.
I find that, once I write something down, even if I never look at what I wrote, I often don't need a reminder. If I don't write it down, I forget.
And if you literally write it down, with pen on paper, supposedly that's more memorable still.
I need to experiment with this. My memory needs more assistance now that my spring chicken days are behind me.
I've found I can barely write anymore.
I mean, I can, but my handwriting is so bad I can barely read it, even if I've written pretty slowly. Like it was never good, but I could write a lot faster and still be able to read it. Now my slow and careful handwriting is worse than that, even.
It occurred to me some time last year, when reflecting on this, that I've probably averaged fewer than 50 words written by hand per year, not counting my signature, over... like more than a decade. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual annual average over that span is around 25 or 30 words, even. So, no wonder.
A big change from the days of writing several hundreds words in one hour for Blue Book tests, a few times per year!
I think you're still capable, just with that interval between use, you're perma-rusty at handwriting. My own experience is that I have retained the ability to learn scripts well into adulthood.
Within the last few years I've done what I call "installing a font." I was unhappy with my printed letter forms, so I looked up architectural lettering guides and modeled my new printing based on that. I also re-learned how to write cursive, which is always a struggle any time I re-start using it after months of having not.
Yeah, my father had lovely printed penmanship. I've planned on practicing to develop that as I return to reading more (in retirement), both to take notes as I read and learn, and because otherwise my notes will be illegible. My current hand printing or writing is atrocious.
Oddly my handwriting is aesthetically better than ever in old age, but I find I just have no patience left for it. Halfway through scribbling a word my brain is screaming "come on already!" for a keyboard, and by the next word it's completely checked out of whatever thought I was supposed to jot down. It's like watching the most boring scene unfold in slow motion. I've been hearing the handwriting->memory argument for decades, but screw that. Give me >100wpm.
"I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it to remember it now." Not sure who said that, but I think of it often.
Well, same blog has an article about that too it seems : https://kupajo.com/write-to-pool-your-shifting-selves/
I also find it's a great sanity check. Ideas that seem good in my head often fail when I put them into words. Especially when I outline it in step by step format
Same. Copious notes in college, and never had to go back and look at 99% of them. It's like writing it scribes it into my brain.
This needs to be the default way we instill in young people and to think about learning, as if, "escape your default setting" is akin to "exploration".
Especially in the age of generated written word, the act of writing it yourself _cannot_ be more important.
First we shape our tools, then our tools shape us.
The same is true with writing — and our modes of writing.
I agree that writing to think is important, and that putting ideas on paper makes an ephemeral idea "real".
However I disagree that "writing things in a blog post / paulg narrative format to be shared with other internet readers" is the best way to turn ephemeral thoughts into solid ideas.
I think using pen and paper, sketching, drawing, scribbling, writing short-form jot notes, writing on the shower glass while steaming away in the shower — I think those forms of writing are how good ideas get captured and solidified.
The paulg kind of writing is merely an exercise in peacocking to the other HN crowds.
---
For designers, the best way is to draw things. If you have a hard time "imagining" a user flow, draw the screens in a flow diagram. If that's hard, draw all the interfaces, cut them out, and put them on a table. Put the pieces on top of each other to approximate how the interface will flow.
I think the main benefit of writing is that it makes the implicit explicit. It makes your ideas "solid".
You can look at them and see them clearly. And often you aren't so happy with what you see!
And that's great, because now you can do something about it.
I found when I was working on my dissertation that I struggled make progress on the actual writing. No matter how much work I did, I wound up rewriting, editing, re-thinking, deleting, and starting over.
I never fully solved that problem, but I found a workaround that helped: I started writing notes and drafts by hand in cursive with my non-dominant hand.
Writing by hand, by itself, calmed me and focused my mind, whereas writing in a word processor almost always caused a spiral of distraction and increasing agitation.
Increasing the difficulty of the literal, physical writing process helped me, I think, in a few ways. It became much costlier not to commit to a single version of a thought, so I had a strong incentive to pare away some of the noise surrounding it and state it in its most direct, least objectionable form.
I'm also convinced, though I can't prove it, that dramatically slowing the physical act of writing improved my working memory.
That being said, I strongly agree with just about everything this piece says, whether or not one writes by hand. And I would add that writing also forces people to use a wider range of faculties and forms of reasoning. I doubt one could overstate the value of this as intellectual exercise.
Writing is quite different as a discipline and in its effects when it's for self-discovery, self-analysis, messaging others, etc.
It's like the vast differences between relaxing alone at home, caring for your partner, hosting guests, going to work, taking kids on vacation...
What's helpful in either case is the ritual of entering that domain: you pull yourself together for work, dissolve on the couch, and put on a happy listening face for the kids. The more consistent you are in your rituals, the more quickly and deeply you enter and exit that domain.
That's how to escape mental defaults: have a huge variety of them, widely-spaced, so you can introspect their difference and play their respective lights against their shadows.
Anecdotal: I recently found a little trick that works for me to overcome the horrors of the blank page: I turn my phone (having opened my preferred note-taking solution) into horizontal mode. The keyboard gets larger in width, making it nicer to type, and on my medium-sized phone, it covers enough of the UI that I don't actually see what I type into the textbox, until I close the keyboard again. So I just happily type away and hit save at the end.
Love it. Your whole website is great. I recently started writing down whatever passing thoughts happen to me in a small notebook. Only a couple of entries now, but it's a start. Unfortunately I was terrible at, or perhaps terrified of, writing at school and college, so I never learned how to be any good at it. I also find that nothing reveals more about what you know about a given topic than looking at an empty page or a blinking cursor. Even writing this comment makes me feel queasy, huh.
I picked up handwritten journaling as a way of processing my life. It has been therapeutic through a few incidences in how I'm feeling whether it's about work, family or more personal thoughts. With each stroke, I am challenging myself to write more cleanly and appreciating the subtle beauty as the pen strokes create letters, words, sentences, ideas. I feel more at peace as I let my most challenging thoughts live on paper.
I'm surprised to not see a mention of "This is Water", the commencement speech by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College, which thesis is that the point of a liberal arts education is to help you escape your default setting.
http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html
I think the title of this post may be a reference to "This is Water", since I haven't seen the term "default setting" anywhere else, but I could be mistaken.
You couldn't be more correct. I wasn't actively thinking of DFW when I wrote this post, but his stuff is everywhere in my notes.
A DFW post I wrote: https://kupajo.com/david-foster-walleye-sic/
Thanks! Really enjoyed that post as well.
To present a counter perspective. I like to believe that I possess a fair crop of sane defaults here and there upstairs.
And there are some things that I refuse to write down. They’re motivated more by a raw feeling than what can be found through their transliteration. Language of the guts gargles into scribbles and scripts.
Lest I be forced to result to pictography. You know sketch pads are also helpful.
Maybe the writer’s resort is toward the days he ain’t writing. Eventually stopping and becoming content.
Another perspective is that Latin and Greek would make a person smarter. Have fun sketching.
I had this insight that I thought was evident. "AGI is an interface problem". It made sense in the context. But when I decided to write about it, my initial idea and example were pretty weak. The more I wrote the more I found counterpoints. In fact, writing forced me to think through those arguments and see if the idea can still stand.
Many times, my ideas fade into darkness after a good writing session. But that's how you form a strong opinion.
The cognitive scientist John Vervaeke describes the "4 Ps of Knowing", moving from propositional, up through procedural, perspectival, and participatory.
Most of our thought is propositional: we see a thing, know the thing, and move. Writing moves us up that hierarchy. And sharing that writing—ideally within the context of shared dialogue—moves us even further.
I noticed that writing prompts for my 'code bot' gives more structure to my thoughts. I sometimes even delete a prompt because just the writing already gave me new thoughts.
Writing about writing is in the air! I just published a post with a tongue-in-cheek reference to the A-Team [1] :D
The OP led me to `kupjao`'s series of posts on writing, and I can't help but nod my head in agreement. I'm in the choir they are preaching to!
Little writing habits compound over time to help people (and teams) escape the gravity well of their "default" setting. It isn't rocket science. Just simple bullet-point-ing can be good enough to help a bunch of people...
- conserve personal and collective attention
- power creativity
- grow intellectual capital
- maintain clear situational awareness
- run high-trust workplaces, and
- make high-quality decisions.
etc. etc. etc. because, like I said, I'm sold on the author's premise!
[1] "Becoming a software A-Team via writing culture" https://www.evalapply.org/posts/writing-practices-to-10x-eng...
I had no idea how sloppy my thinking was until I started writing.
Has anyone noticed that once they lose the writing habit that their thinking suffers?
pg explores a similar thought in his meta essay about essays: https://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html
In the essay, pg explores the idea that an essay helps him explore ideas.
I'd like to ask the author how they made this amazing, clean blog site.
Loved this article. Learning to love writing is one of my biggest takeaways from my Computer Science PhD program.
Just be aware that once you escape your default setting, you'll come to realize everybody else hasn't.
It'll be like teenage angst at your parents, except it'll be angst at the entire species :)
Anyone that writes and asks earnest questions pretty quickly turns to spirituality, religion, philosophy or pseudo-philosophy/pseudo-science (self-help) because they end up realizing oh - I don't know what's going on at all!
The spiritual path is living with truth of don't know. Religion is choosing to have 'faith' and a set of instructions but really is about huddling with others for warmth and comfort. Philosophy is about attempting to build a logically consistent system of what's going on. Self-help is a set of quick hacks to make one feel better.
Almost all people settle in a modified default setting (self help) and choose to use thinking to do tiny little puzzles instead of asking the deeper questions. They can't handle the angst, they want that human comfort more than they want the truth :)