[HN Gopher] Writing down unfiltered thoughts enhances self-knowl...
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Writing down unfiltered thoughts enhances self-knowledge
Author : elorant
Score : 70 points
Date : 2023-10-08 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| zingababba wrote:
| I've been journaling for something like 25 years now. The hardest
| yet most rewarding part for me is going back and reading my
| entries. Sometimes I have to force myself because I'm often
| revolted by what I've written during various periods however it
| has really helped me understand my moods.
| layer8 wrote:
| The problem I have with this is that my thoughts come 10 or 20
| times quicker than I can write them down. And while doing this
| writing exercise I'll have meta-thoughts about the writing and
| the exercise. The thoughts hopelessly outrun the writing, and
| also the train of thoughts will be wildly different from what it
| would be when not attempting to write it down. I guess one still
| learns _something_ from the exercise, but it's quite a
| frustrating experience.
| prepend wrote:
| I few similarly, but writing both makes me edit in real time
| and then again as I move stuff around.
|
| I don't think it's useful for literally capturing every idea,
| but it captures as many as you can get down.
|
| It's kind of like how when you're reading a book aloud you get
| a few seconds ahead in your head.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| It's my preferred method of communication but persuasion is
| popular. Self-help rhetoric propagates quickly through large
| groups.
| jseliger wrote:
| A lot of people suffer a lot of anxiety around writing, and it
| seems like trying to lower the stakes helps:
| https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/on-writing-or-not
| adaml_623 wrote:
| Now I'm anxious about cancer and I didn't even get to the
| secret about lowering the stakes :-/
| voisin wrote:
| I read it and can't find what the secret about lowering the
| stakes is. It seems like it takes the impending death of a
| loved one to put into perspective the resistance of writing
| as an emperor with no clothes. That if you're meant to write
| you will when it realize it.
|
| Is my reading comprehension poor today or was there advice I
| missed on how to lower the stakes outside of a serious
| situation like she faces?
| zeroCalories wrote:
| I like writing because it forces you to turn vague feelings into
| concrete ideas. You can barf your thoughts onto paper and then
| read it with a critical eye, allowing you to evaluate your own
| thoughts. It helps me to find the gaps in my knowledge, notice
| sloppy arguments, etc. Sometimes that leads to a better
| understanding of the topic, but most of the time I realize that I
| have no understanding of the topic, which is still useful
| information. For example I've found myself eager to drop a hot
| take on a recent international event, but after writing out my
| comment I realize that I'm an idiot, so I make a mental note and
| post it anyway.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| >I like writing because it forces you to turn vague feelings
| into concrete ideas.
|
| Yep. I've started painting my dreams and it is surprisingly
| difficult to turn vague memories into concrete scenes. It's
| almost physically exhausting.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Do you paint them as you remember them or do you write them
| down before ?
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| I try to paint them as soon as possible after waking up.
|
| Usually I just write down a list of keywords, that seems
| enough to keep my brain from erasing them. I don't think
| it's really possible to capture a scene in text. The text
| only serves as memory aid.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| That's interesting, care to share them?
| cableshaft wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > What if you just can't think of anything?
|
| Just write about your day if you need to. What you did, what you
| read about online (including reflecting on news if you read
| that), what thoughts you had over the course of the day.
|
| When I have good writing habits I can easily write 500-3000+
| words about my day, and I don't have what most people would
| consider an interesting life. I just work from home, work on my
| hobbies (mostly gamedev), read articles, go to one or two social
| events a week (often just a family party or casual game night or
| meetup, nothing crazy), go to a few conventions throughout the
| year, and take one weeklong trip.
|
| One year I managed to write 120,000+ words with this approach,
| and it likely would have been higher if I hadn't skipped a decent
| number of days (maybe not a lot higher, I sometimes made up for
| the skipped days by reflecting back as much as I could).
|
| I'm not currently that good about it, though. In general it's
| been a bad year for me for writing these things. Maybe this
| article will help me get back into it.
| rajataghi wrote:
| Read through the article - fill-in journal seems like a good idea
| for a small app. Does anything like that exist?
| extasia wrote:
| Fill-in in what sense? Like a physical journal but digital?
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| > Writing What Pops into Your Head
|
| I believe this is what I usually do when placing comments on this
| HN forum.
|
| Bonus: enhanced self-knowledge and in a lot of cases, instant
| feedback!
| hyperthesis wrote:
| The feedback-evaluation of you also must be evaluated.
| javawizard wrote:
| I have a pretty strong natural filter. Years of therapy and three
| different therapists have yet to get me to a place where I can
| truly open up, even when writing on a page I know no-one else
| will see.
|
| Two days ago I did weed for the first time. I accidentally took a
| much larger hit than I meant to. For the first 15 minutes I had a
| complete out-of-body experience; nothing seemed real, I felt like
| I was floating through space, able to peer into reality at will,
| still not quite trusting that it wasn't all a dream. I'm pretty
| sure the term of art for what I experienced would be a psychotic
| episode.
|
| After that... I lost my filter. Like, it was gone. And my mouth
| was a conveyor belt connected to the emotional part of my brain.
| No logic, just uninhibited speech, for 45 minutes, all while
| sobbing harder than I have in my entire life.
|
| I exposed every last deep, dark secret I possessed. My fear of
| never being good enough. My fear that everyone in my life will
| leave me at some point. My fear that I've done so many hurtful
| things over my life that I'm unworthy of love and of the friends
| I have. And many more things I won't be sharing with the world,
| at least not yet.
|
| Inside, it felt like my brain and my mouth were connected by a
| pipe, and all I could do was sit back and watch in horror as the
| very depths of my mind were laid bare for all to see.
|
| A good friend of mine was with me while I did it. She heard
| everything. It's a mark of our friendship that she held me,
| reassured me that she loved me for who I am, not who I want
| people to think I am. Our friendship is even stronger now,
| something I would never have thought possible before having that
| experience.
|
| It was terrifying, and yet oddly theraputic. I'm seriously
| considering cannabis-assisted psychotherapy now.
|
| ---
|
| I guess what I'm trying to say is: there are a number of
| substances that induce mind-altering states in ways that are
| relatively safe and free from long term effects. If you're
| someone who can't seem to open up naturally, don't be afraid to
| try them. They just might change your life.
|
| (As with everything, consume appropriately and safely. Have
| someone experienced in the substance you're consuming keep an eye
| on you. And for god's sake, don't do anything known to be
| addictive or to have severe negative side effects.)
|
| Also, find friends who you can truly be yourself around, who love
| you even when they know the absolute worst about you. It makes
| all the difference to know that someone loves you not for who you
| want the world to think you are but for who you actually are.
| Onawa wrote:
| I've been using marijuana for too long for it to have that
| effect on me unfortunately, but actual psychedelics are great
| at expanding the mind. If you can find someone that you trust
| to be a 'sitter' (at least for the first couple of times), it
| can be a life changing experience with positive long-term
| effects. Micro dosing psilocybin has been starting to show
| positive results in trials in recent years.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Writing is one of my favorite things to do high. Nothing that
| interesting just whatever pops in my mind. Pen to paper so I
| don't get distracted by shiny internet things
| jbm wrote:
| Sure it does, you aren't getting me this time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign
|
| Jokes aside, this definitely helped when I was in college,
| especially when I had a follow up session where I could ask
| questions to my professors or the TA
| motohagiography wrote:
| It's unbelievable how that campaign and even the hint of
| something like it here with internet mobs can obliterate the
| creative capacity of huge numbers of people. I write and make
| to understand things, and by example, I recently wrote about
| 12,000 words to get a yield of about 3,000 words of my best
| work. The stuff in that other 9,000 words will probably never
| see a screen again, but it had to come out to mine it for the
| single ideas and turns of phrase that become like library
| functions for dense, concise writing.
|
| If you can't produce the raw material, you can't make anything
| new or good.
| prepend wrote:
| There's a black mirror episode in the future about how LLMs
| trained on people's discarded drafts start outing them for
| having disfavored opinions.
|
| Maybe through people's digital AI ghosts (AIs made from
| people's content after they die) start spouting racist stuff.
|
| So people are surprised to learn their friends and heroes
| were racist/capitalist/nickel back fans/etc
|
| Ends up being a programming error that didn't properly
| account for boundaries.
|
| That's the end of my expected story idea. But I best google
| and Microsoft are training off every character written, not
| just what makes it to your final 3,000.
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