[HN Gopher] Write to Escape Your Default Setting
___________________________________________________________________
Write to Escape Your Default Setting
Author : kolyder
Score : 222 points
Date : 2025-02-28 14:45 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kupajo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kupajo.com)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| 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.
| randcraw wrote:
| 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.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| 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!
| 0_____0 wrote:
| 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.
| randcraw wrote:
| 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.
| makeset wrote:
| 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.
| vonunov wrote:
| Granted, I don't know that there's _not_ something to the
| idea of some kind of special benefit or effect that only
| handwriting has. It does feel meaningful and important in
| some way. But I more strongly suspect that it 's a matter
| of fluency. If someone types fluently enough that the act
| itself takes no conscious effort or deliberate attention,
| then maybe they can engage and form associations
| comparably well as if they were handwriting. Most people,
| I think, don't -- that is, even if their typing speed is
| more than adequate for whatever work they do, I'm
| guessing it remains a bottleneck in this sense.
| Handwriting is slower, typically, but I don't mean a
| speed bottleneck, even though speed is part of the point.
| I mean something more along the lines of whether the
| conceptual task at hand enjoys dedicated resources, or
| has to share mental bandwidth, attentional control,
| working memory, flow, etc. with the mechanical task. I
| get the same frustration as you, of course: I don't
| handwrite painstakingly, but I do it slower than I type
| for sure. Both are low-effort, but handwriting loses out
| in terms of speed. If my handwriting and typing speeds
| were the same, but typing were a higher-effort activity
| for me, it's then that I suspect handwriting would have
| the advantage. Then, how much faster can the typing get,
| while remaining high-effort relative to handwriting,
| before the speed advantage overcomes the cognitive load
| advantage?
| Miraltar wrote:
| Well, same blog has an article about that too it seems :
| https://kupajo.com/write-to-pool-your-shifting-selves/
| kolyder wrote:
| "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.
| vivekd wrote:
| 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
| stronglikedan wrote:
| 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.
| herbertl wrote:
| > 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
| pbronez wrote:
| Thework.com looks like a great resource, thanks for sharing.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| 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.
| agentultra wrote:
| 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.
| ParallelThread wrote:
| Curious as whether writing your journals (work or home)
| electronically vs paper/pen makes a difference. Interested in
| your thoughts.
| barbazoo wrote:
| 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.
| agentultra wrote:
| 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.
| dzjkb wrote:
| 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).
| codazoda wrote:
| 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...
| barbazoo wrote:
| > 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.
| hakaneskici wrote:
| > "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.
| nlawalker wrote:
| 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!
| tmaly wrote:
| 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.
| criddell wrote:
| My digital strategy is to use my iPad for notes. I can type,
| record audio (or, I guess, video), or write by hand and all
| of it is indexed, searchable, and can be shared. If I want to
| write on paper, I can do that and then "scan" it into the
| iPad (ie take a picture of it) and again the built-in OCR
| will index it. With a paper-like screen protector, writing on
| it is decent.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| 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.
| taw1285 wrote:
| 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.
| sixtyj wrote:
| Agentultra was talking about paper notebooks imho.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| 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.
| HackerThemAll wrote:
| Does it need to be a handwriting, or computer writing is
| sufficient?
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| 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.
| triyambakam wrote:
| There is definitely something about writing by hand that
| seems to have unique cognitive and memory benefits. But
| strictly only writing by hand is unnecessary and of course
| inefficient.
| agentultra wrote:
| It doesn't have to be. I don't think there are sufficient
| empirical studies to suggest writing by hand is better in
| some dimensions than typing.
|
| I _prefer_ it myself for several reasons. First, it forces me
| to filter the present jumble of ideas in my head into a
| linear progression on the page. Second, it helps me resist
| the temptation to edit myself before I have finished. I tend
| to be more mindful and focused when writing long-form.
|
| Writing digitally, which I often do, comes with the
| temptation to edit and succumb to distraction before I've
| finished a thought. It allows me to explore many branches
| quickly... but quantity is often not what I'm after.
|
| I think what you consider sufficient has more to do with your
| personal process and what you hope to achieve with your
| writing, if that makes sense.
| tvcx wrote:
| How much productive writing is too much productive writing?
|
| As a teenager I got wound up in the narrative of productivity,
| note taking, and all that. Since then, I've had to unlearn that
| writing (well, note-taking) just for the sake of organizing
| some information nobody will go back to is not the best use for
| my time. I've discovered that having the best notes doesn't
| magically make me better prepared to get something done at
| work. The best way to create something new is to JustDoIt tm
| (and fail, and do it again, ..). To me, it's important to trust
| your brain to do the magic. Your job is to help it do it's
| magic. Paper doesn't think. It may help YOU think, but IT
| doesn't think.
|
| However, I'm in my 20s, and I do keep a journal and I write
| frequently. But I've shifted my writing from productivity to
| emotions. I've found that expressing my own emotions and non-
| productive thinking on paper helps me understand myself.
| Calavar wrote:
| I think there's two ways you can approach productive writing
|
| 1. Maintaining a list potentially useful facts in case you
| ever need to reference them again. I tried this before and
| found it to be a waste of time because I almost never go back
| to reference something. It becomes a write only database.
| Although YMMV because zettelkasten is essentially a
| refinement of this and some people swear by it.
|
| 2. Reading about a topic, then writing yourself a tutorial on
| what you learned. I've been trying to teach myself concurrent
| programming over the fast few weeks and I wrote an essay to
| myself on the pros and cons of lockless vs lockfree
| algorithms and when you might choose one over the other. As I
| was writing it, I realized there were gaps in my knowledge,
| some concepts that I thought I understood, but apparently not
| well enough to explain myself in writing. Other concepts
| where the act of writing revealed edge cases in my logic that
| I hadn't considered before. The process of writing forced me
| to engage with the material more deeply, and that sticks even
| with you delete the document when you're done.
| lxgr wrote:
| And a corollary to this: There is probably an intellectual cost
| of returning to oral culture, which seems to be what's
| happening at the moment at a large scale [1].
|
| It's been happening with social media already, but having non-
| human entities take over "written thought" for many is probably
| going to have pretty significant consequences. I'm finding a
| lot of utility in LLMs, but at the same time I'm concerned
| about what parts of my cognitive faculties it'll cause to
| atrophy when overused.
|
| Then again, maybe this is just yet another inevitable (albeit
| much bigger than the ones before) step on the same path we've
| been on since the onset of cognitive tradeoff [2] in early
| humans?
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-02-07/we-
| re-...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_tradeoff_hypothesis
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| 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.
| gareth_untether wrote:
| 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.
| criddell wrote:
| Are you doing the program on your own or part of a class?
| daoboy wrote:
| I had no idea how sloppy my thinking was until I started writing.
| writersblock wrote:
| Loved this article. Learning to love writing is one of my biggest
| takeaways from my Computer Science PhD program.
| graboid wrote:
| 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.
| senkora wrote:
| 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.
| kolyder wrote:
| 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/
| senkora wrote:
| Thanks! Really enjoyed that post as well.
| tolerance wrote:
| 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.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Another perspective is that Latin and Greek would make a person
| smarter. Have fun sketching.
| firefoxd wrote:
| 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.
| cyberlimerence wrote:
| 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.
| globnomulous wrote:
| 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.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| 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.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| 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.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| 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.
| Gys wrote:
| 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.
| paulorlando wrote:
| Has anyone noticed that once they lose the writing habit that
| their thinking suffers?
| w10-1 wrote:
| 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.
| alexashka wrote:
| 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
| :)
| adityaathalye wrote:
| 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...
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| 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.
| sudosteph wrote:
| 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.
| andai wrote:
| 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.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| I'd like to ask the author how they made this amazing, clean blog
| site.
| megadragon9 wrote:
| > Writing reveals what you don't know, what you can't see when an
| idea is only held in your head. Biases, blind spots, and
| assumptions you can't grasp internally.
|
| I completely agree with this. Often, I think I understand
| something, but when I try to explain it to others, I quickly
| realize where my understanding is shaky. The gaps become even
| more apparent when I attempt to write it down because I have to
| structure my thoughts logically and precisely. Writing goes a
| step beyond speaking because it forces me to re-read and refine
| my ideas, whereas spoken words often disappear without deeper
| reflection. Oh, even this comment that I'm writing now was edited
| a couple of times before submitting it. The second half of the
| comment was added after re-reading the first half.
| 2color wrote:
| > Writing expands your working memory, lets you be more brilliant
| on paper than you can be in person.
|
| So true!
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