I am writing this post for two reasons:
- So I remember why I created this place and started to write in the first place.
- For others who might have hesitated about writing their thoughts in a blog but couldn’t convince themselves that it’s useful.
Why bother writing?
I mainly write to think better and survive my lazy memory. I used to read a lot in the past and continuously absorb content. However, recently, I have discovered an even more fundamental process: writing.
Writing is more challenging and time-consuming but has great benefits.
I like the following quote from Leslie Lamport:
If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.
The main point is that you can only think straight by organizing your thoughts using writing, the fantastic tool we humans possess.
Writing is also more reliable than solely storing knowledge in our brains, which will eventually fail or deteriorate. A long time ago, we started to progress as a species by sharing our thoughts with the next generations. However, this process is limited by the amount of knowledge humans could have fit in their heads and how much they could transfer to the next generation before dying. Writing solved this issue as we accumulated our knowledge from generation to generation. The great thing is that it’s highly reliable. There is a saying that “The faintest pencil is better than the sharpest memory,” which we all have experienced daily as the sole memory forgets things all the time. Therefore, not only on a species level but on a personal level, writing is our best tool to keep thoughts reliably for later use.
Why bother writing blog posts?
So, writing is essential because of the organized thought process and not forgetting stuff. But why should we bother to put effort into writing blog posts rather than just keeping some messy notes for ourselves?
This was my initial question when I saw people writing blog posts, as I was happy with my fast and messy note-taking, which I still think it’s great since taking notes should be effortless. For me, the problem with just taking notes was that I didn’t go back to my notes and contemplate what I have learned. Reading my gathered knowledge was missing, and I needed a way to go back to my notes and think more about what I had learned and their connections. Blogs are great for this, as they let you read your notes and understand them entirely, and just after that, you can write a blog post about a concept. They also help others to gain insight from the distilled knowledge from your local notes. Writing blog posts is a great way to occasionally stop just taking notes so you can go back to your notes and gain insight from them on a higher level.