Thinking & Writing

If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.

– Leslie Lamport

I came across the quote above a few days ago on Twitter and it resonated extremely strongly with me. I’ve always felt that writing helped me crystallize my thoughts and ideas. Often while working on some article and re-reading it I’d change my perspective on something, do additional research, discover some new path that I’d like to explore.

Paul Graham clearly feels the same way, as he added the following on subject:

Writing about your ideas both exposes flaws in them and develops them further. Which means thinking without writing = having incorrect and incomplete ideas.

– Paul Graham

Of course, that’s just one part of it. The other one is that written thoughts are easier to share and you can easily get plenty of feedback on them. That’s extremely valuable!

Occasionally people will ask me why do I spend 2-3 hours working on some essay and now I have a really short answer for all of them - a link to this article. It’s no coincidence that my blog (a medium for writing) is named “(think)”. Keep thinking! Keep writing!