Writing advances thinking
I write a lot. Personally, I journal extensively to make sense of the world and my place in it. Professionally, I take copious notes throughout the workday and utilize shared documents to clarify positions and drive alignment. Writing is one of my most powerful “secret weapons,” and when product managers ask me for tips on how to improve their craft, I often tell them step one is to write more. (Step two is to write better)
Many industry thinkers have articulated the benefits of writing. Paul Graham wrote "a good writer will almost always discover new things in the process of writing." Deb Liu concluded "Writing things down is a simple yet powerful tool to drive more clarity, persuasion, and impact in your work and at home. It can help you achieve more by documenting the fuzzy understandings we all share, putting you more firmly on the path to alignment." Adam Grant noted "Writing isn't what you do after you have an idea. It's how you develop an inkling into an insight." David Perell put it succinctly "Read to collect the dots, write to connect them."
I aim to do more thinking here
Yet as a person who is privately prolific, a terrible irony is how little I publish on this blog. Used correctly, tt should be a great vehicle to develop and engage with ideas both personally and professionally.
I've always struggled to write here because I felt the posted material must be "perfect": a timeless distillation of some vetted, hard-won truth that I'll be eternally proud to have put out into the world. In retrospect, that reflects a failure to use the site as a tool for thinking; agreeing with much of my previous writing means I've taken too conservative an approach to publishing and sharing. I ought to make room for the half-baked and nascent so I can share and learn more openly with friends, family, and colleagues.
Put another way, I need to be comfortable being more wrong, less perfect, and those two things happening in public. While I shouldn't intentionally publish falsehoods or garbage, I shouldn't be afraid to treat this as a garden for developing thoughts that will grow and evolve over time. It ought to be exciting to return and think "Huh that's a poor take. I see that differently now," as that would indicate newfound wisdom. An even better outcome will come by accelerating my learning process via others interfacing with more raw materials from my brain. In creating a tighter feedback loop, I can increase the speed of improvement as a professional, a manager, a colleague, and a citizen.
If I’m lucky, this blog will become a paper trail for these work-in-process thoughts and lead to me becoming a more considerate, well-rounded thinker.
