Writing is Thinking

Why you should develop a writing habit

In a recent interaction on LinkedIn, I was asked this about my career: “If you had your time again, would you do anything differently?” I love this question, so shout out to Jae for the dialogue.

My response was this: “I would write about my experience from the start. I write a lot now, but the curse of knowledge makes it hard to really feel what it was like just starting out.”

The reason for this isn’t just personal branding and building an audience. I do think those are important. Modern networking has switched from who you know to who knows you. With a big audience who engages with your ideas, finding your next gig is on autopilot. You don’t need to find the opportunity; the opportunity will find you.

But the reason to write is deeper. It’s what the writing does for you; it makes you better. If you write, you will be able to articulate things much easier, you will remember things, and you will draw the best ideas to yourself. You will thrive in the market of ideas because, in the end, writing is thinking.

We assume people who become thought leaders start to write about their thoughts, right? What if people who write about their thoughts become thought leaders?

When you write, you engage with your own ideas in a new way. You take the third person, detached from your own ideas. When you are detached, you can criticize them. Like rubber ducking in software development, writing forces you to clarify your thoughts so they flow together. You become another person, dialoguing with yourself. You spot the holes in your own arguments and start to wrestle with them.

We think we are doing all of this inside our heads when we stare off into space and mull over an idea. However, have you ever had that idea that was revolutionary in your head but once you try to articulate it to an actual person it ends up coming off more like a crazy person connecting various news articles together with push pins and red yarn? This happens to me all the time. The idea is still there, but it needs a bit of work before people can connect the dots.

Writing also reinforces memory. Famous physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was once asked why he knew all of the details about science and physics off the top of his head. His response was that he had written about them in multiple books. By writing about things, you engage a different part of your brain which aids in retention. This is why taking notes is useful even if you never read them.

Once you have dialogued with yourself, distilled your ideas, and reinforced their memory, you can test them in the world by publishing your work. This gives you feedback about how others perceive things. It further hones your ideas. You learn what explanations work and what falls flat. If you write something, take the next step and publish it. Use this as another way to improve your thinking.

You may be at the start of your career and feel like you have nothing to add to the conversation. Nobody wants to hear from the noob who is just starting out, right?

Wrong.

There is a curse that comes with time and experience. This curse disconnects you from people who are just starting out. It makes it almost impossible to put yourself in their shoes. It’s called “the curse of knowledge”. Once you know something, it’s hard to engage with ideas as if you didn’t know it. The memory of what it’s like to hear something for the first time fades, and you only know what it’s like to know.

If you are just starting out, you have a unique perspective. Take this teenager, for example. They have 12k followers and they are talking about what it’s like to be a teen and making it relatable to parents. They are leveraging the curse that faces every parent: “What’s it like to be a teenager?” We all did it, but we can hardly remember it.

I started writing Forged Managers for myself, when I made the switch from being a developer to being a manager. I wish I had started years earlier, the day I wrote my first line of code. I just started publishing my ideas, sometimes 5 years after I wrote them. I should have hit publish on years ago.

What do you think?

If you have an answer to that question, write it.

Once you have written it, publish it.

Once you have published it, send it!

If you liked this, consider subscribing to my Substack. I publish an article about software engineering and software engineering management every Tuesday. If you want even more, consider joining my paid content where I am writing a course in real time about making the jump from developer to manager.