Writing and Thinking
August 2021
Writing is a lot more powerful than I used to think.
I hated writing in school. Everything they made me write was boring. School taught me that writing was something academic people did to argue about pointless stuff. It's a fine way to share information, but everything I wanted to share could fit inside a text message.
Nevertheless, inspired by Paul Graham, I started writing. I'd write about random stuff: business ideas, dating, pickleball, philosophy. Over time, I got more respect for writing. It helped me solve problems I couldn't otherwise solve.
Complicated problem can be really messy. For example: What do you want to do with your life? You need to break it into smaller questions, like:
How will I make money?
Who do I like spending time with?
What are my passions?
And these “smaller” questions are still pretty big. They inspire more questions, which leads to more questions, which leads to...
The final solution comes from putting the small ideas back together. It's like building a house from 1,000 bricks. And like 1,000 bricks, it's hard to hold them all at once. Even smart humans are limited to ~7 ideas in short term memory. When a problem exceeds that, you can't solve it in your head no matter how hard you try.
For example: 15,829 x 93,457.
(Almost) Nobody can solve this in their head. You need to remember dozens of numbers, and each one makes it a little harder. Eventually all your focus is spent remembering numbers and you can't make progress. You'll run out of short term memory before you find the answer. But writing makes this problem simple because it expands your short term memory.
It's surprising how rarely people write about non-math problems. By any reasonable metric, “Should I quit my job?” is more complicated than 15,829 x 93,457, and yet most people don't write about it.
The other major benefit I noticed while writing is focus. My mind wanders a lot. I bet most people can relate. I sit down to brainstorm a workout plan. Suddenly I'm thinking about my diet. Where should I go grocery shopping? Does the car need gas? How much money do I have? Gas and food are cheap. I'm hungry and I should go eat. Suddenly I'm walking away to get food. I don't even realize how off-topic I am.
Thinking is like a hot air balloon. It drifts in random directions. I struggle to think about a single topic for a prolonged period of time. Balloons are great for wandering aimlessly, but what if you have a destination in mind?
When I'm writing, the last sentence I wrote is an anchor. My mind will still drift about, but eventually I look at the page and remember what I was doing. The physical reminder helps. Writing is like tying a tether to the balloon that only lets it move in the right direction. Over time, the difference in progress is enormous.
The combined benefits of focus and memory make writing an entirely different form of thinking. It's slower and more powerful. Thinking is a sports car. Writing is a bulldozer.
When I started to think about writing this way, I started writing for myself a lot more. Most of my writing is written in shorthand, jumps around chaotically, and never gets shared. I'm not trying to communicate; I'm trying to solve hard problems.
Writing and thinking are different tools for different tasks. Writing is for complex problems. Everybody knows how to write, but school gives everyone a warped perception. Even if the perfect task for writing appears, most people don't realize it. They spend all day digging with a hammer while there's a shovel in their garage.
If you've thought about a problem a hundred times and it's still unsolved, the problem is too hard. Try writing. It's a lot more powerful than you think.