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Tell HN: Writing helps

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I have been under constant pressure about a few things and that had me down from a few months, affecting my productivity, mood, appetite and lots more. Today, I just opened the notepad and started typing away what I felt. The idea to do so seemed a little funny at first as my thoughts were very clear in my mind and it was my helplessness to do anything that had got me down, but trust me, it helped tremendously. After so many days, I did some meaningful work, of course nothing compared to my peak days but it did break the "cant-do-anything" streak. I have also been feeling better overall after writing. Just thought would share this with you all. Happy holidays.

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Guaranteed Stress Reliever for Busy People.

Write. Write down exactly what you are thinking. It will probably be hard at first, especially if you are not used to blogging, creating copy, or writing essays. That's okay: start by just taking a pen and putting words down on paper. Do not worry about grammar or structure. Switch from point to point as they come to you. The purpose is to get each idea down on paper. Structure can come later: read it again and rewrite it.

I have discovered, and I want to prove this but I do not yet know how, that when a person writes down an idea, the mind no longer stresses itself to remember that idea. This makes sense: why waste time and space indexing new information if it can just be looked up? Instead, your mind just remembers where to look.

Moreover, because they are out of your mind, these ideas will not rise to your conscious thoughts every few minutes to worry you. That project you have due next Monday won't stress you out every hour. Write it down. Write down everything you worry about that project. I might not finish in time. The package might never show up. Ken is so unreliable. Tim hasn't answered my email yet, should I email him? I haven't written the first page yet, but I have to write 20. Maybe I can write an outline first. Can I outsource this part?

Write it down, wr....

http://www.jperla.com/blog/post/guaranteed-stress-reliever-f...

I discovered that environment where you write is important to give the initial kick to start writing. For example plain paper (or moleskine ;) works great but notepad is very bad due to the typography and risk of easily loosing content with bad undo/redo support.

Last month I found a free app for windows, ZenWriter. http://www.beenokle.com/zenwriter.html (I'm not affiliated with them). It's tremendously nice and clean full-screen app with good typography.

As soon as it pops up it gives some nice urge to start writing and makes it tempting not to stop until you have something down that you are happy with. Writing process seems like it induces a pure connection to your inner mind.

The idea that writing an idea down reduces stress is one of the cornerstones of Dave Allen's Getting Things Done. He calls the unwritten items that nag at you "open loops". One important follow-on idea that that the ideas must be written down in a "trusted system": if you aren't absolutely confident that you will be able to find it when you go looking (or, better, that it will be brought to your attention when needed whether or not you remember to look at that moment), you won't stop worrying.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done

There's a legendary book for artists called The Artist's Way about getting back your creative mojo and one of the first things the author talks about is something called your daily pages.

http://amzn.to/ieS49z

She suggests starting every day writing 3 pages, by hand, totally freestyle stream of consciousness to help get stuff out of your head and get you back into the practice of daily creation. It's not about what you write, you probably will never revisit it, it's just about the impact it has on your bigger creative flow.

http://750words.com

I just found this last week... it's really helped me get some writing done, which is usually something I dread doing. You sign in and write. It saves your text and keeps record of how much you've written each day.

by the excellent Buster Benson also creator of HealthMonth.com

Seconded. 750words also has some moderately compelling game-like mechanics as well as some analytics like word clouds and timing statistics.

I had a really good streak going for a while, but a new job with an hour+ commute every morning killed it and I never went back.

I write whatever random noise to comes to my mind in a notebook on my desk. My colleagues think it's odd that I keep such a "journal", but I find it helps me get my focus back to what's important. It's like, don't fight the thought; just observe it and let it pass.

I use write room because it really helps me focus on the page/words. Though it would be nice if you could lock it so it can't be minimized for a certain amount of time. Still best writing environment.

http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom

Read any writer's "On writing" book and they all talk about a mandatory amount of words they have to write on a daily basis. I just finished Jack London's and he had to write a 1,000 (polished)words a day. He struggled with it, but strangely, his creativity came from his routine.

I'd recommend Stephen King's "On Writing", Ray Bradbury "Zen and the Art of Writing", and "Ernest Hemingway on Writing". All have great insights into the joy and struggles of writing, but each on makes you want to be a great writer.

Best of luck keeping it up!

I went through something like that some months ago. Then I discovered OhLife ( http://ohlife.com/ ).

That's was the best I did, every night I write my feelings and forget then. It makes me feel better and less heavy.

Wow - this thing looks great. I wonder how they make profit, though, there's no ads and no paid versions?

The potential for pharma spam is HUGE.

1. Detect keywords like Depression, Sad, Lonely

2. Serve anti-depressant ads

3. No ??? Just profit.

Any suggestions on other good places to keep online/private journals?

The only real issue I've had with OhLife is that frequently I'm out grabbing dinner at 8pm (which I believe is the default), so to keep from forgetting I'll toss in a 1-2 sentence description of what happened and while it's better than nothing, it really isn't writing. Since it's entirely email based, I completely forgot that they have an option to change it - I just switched it to 11pm to see if that gives me better results.

I've had a similar surge in clarity. I spend at least an hour each day writing. But, I recently started an experiment to spend another 15 minutes each day just thinking. I have pen and paper, but the goal isn't to write. It's to think. The pen and paper just capture a few notes. For more details, see http://wayofthescholar.com/trial-2-day-1-reflecting-for-15-m... (I'll have an update coming out tomorrow).

The results have been great so far, and those 15 minutes are becoming the most productive part of my entire day. It seems like this time basically assigns problems to my brain, which it works on unconsciously while I'm walking home from the lab.

Because writing is thinking, writing is great. I wonder, though, are there other ways to think which are just as potent, or even more so?

This is great advice & a wonderful way to "brain dump" those nagging thoughts out of your head.

Another writing tip: When you are really upset about something and want to rip someone a new one, write them an email but don't send it. Write what you want to say, get it out of your system, the thing is say whatever you want. Then walk away for 24 hours. If you find upon returning to the email the next day that you still want to say those things, fire away, but most times you'll have cooled down by then & be able to re-write a much better and less "venting" email. This has helped keep me from burning many bridges in moments of extreme frustration.

I love writing. I love creative expression, writing down observations, focusing thoughts around an intent or story. Writing code just happens to be a form of writing that I can do for a living. You start with a draft or something already started and you shape it into something that people like to use. I love writing.

Be careful with a diary though. Especially if you tend to be self-critical. Your own worst critic. I had one for a few years in a low, workaholic phase of my life and I was depressed rereading it in moments. So many negative thoughts. Ouch. I prefer now to write positive stories. Highlight the positive, accept the negative.

I find that this helps tremendously when I'm stuck in a decision. I open TextWrangler on my MacBook, and write about the various options, why I don't like them, and, if I'm really good, what the cost of not making a decision is, and what the simplest solution that could possibly work is.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWo...

I often get stuck when I want to combine the best aspects of various possible solutions, but can't. The writing lays it out there and helps me get over my perfectionism.

I was writing about 300 words nearly every morning starting in May but fell off the wagon this fall. Thanks for kicking my butt into action this morning.

Why wait for the New Year to resolve to write every day? Things that clear your mind and make you feel better shouldn't get pushed aside because of other life things (work, errands, whatever). That's been my problem, I admit.

And the best part of daily writing is you don't need to be a "Writer" to do it.

I've experienced one major, extended depression in my life, about a decade ago. My daily outpouring of despair into a printed journal came to feel like a life line. By itself it wasn't enough to get me out, but it was enough to keep my head above water while I was going through it.

Check out this todo-list called workflowy.com. I think it adds two things to the todo-list genre:

- Allows infinite depth. This is possible in Word but not many other apps, however, I find my task-list to require atleast 4-5 levels of depth to model correctly - Allows instant focus. I have a todo-list open right now that has 23 bullet items, it's nested 5 levels deep among a whole bunch of other items.

Writing is great (even though I do it very rarely) but a todo list (to me) is the absolute simplest way to model things that are "stuck" in my mind and preventing other top of the mind shower thinking.

Congratulations, you've re-discovered blogging. ;P

In all seriousness, though, writing does help. The productivity block you're talking about was the reason I started blogging way back in the day. I don't write much personal stuff anymore because I don't need to, and when I do, it's an email to one or two people and that's it. As chrisaycock noted, sometimes all you need to do is observe your thoughts and feelings, and then they get out of your way, leaving you feeling less burdened.

Journaling existed a long time before blogging. And for me at least, the old fashioned journaling, where you just write stream of consciousness stuff that you know will never be seen by anyone else, is a lot more liberating than blogging. Not only because you know that nobody else is going to ever see it, but also because of the writing technique usually recommended (just keep writing, don't edit, don't re-read, don't critique,etc).

I always found that blogging was just one more thing for my to procrastinate and end up not doing. :-(

Stream of consciousness helps you "get it out" where you can objectify it much easier and treat it like an external item. So, it's good that you are feeling better, but you will (at some point) want to pivot those subjects so you actually feel better about them. Otherwise they will just be skeletons in the closet.

Get it out, acknowledge you don't feel good, objectify the issue, then do your best to find the good aspects in those issues so they are no longer weights.

I have also had the feeling recently that keeping a diary helps me accomplish the difficult (not playing video games) as well as deal with moods and life issues. It is nice to see this, as it is evidence that this effect may be valid.

write simple or complex depending in your mood, sometimes you'll find wonderful things in those words and letter that you have created and will heal some of your wounds or worries take it as a magnificent rest who can take you anywhere in the world or beyond it

One thing that has always stopped me form writing a journal was the glaring fact that I was never going to get around to reading older entries, and therefore why was I keeping them around to be stumbled upon. I agree that venting your thoughts is generally helpful but my original point was recently validated when a family member was hospitalized and requested that their journals be destroyed immediately. I did so without peaking, but if I were to keep a journal I would have one rule: Burn after writing.

The exact opposite is also valid. Notable examples start with Anne Frank's diary right?

Of course, but my daily gripings deserve incineration.

Agree, I would actually want to revisit the experiences of the past, human memory is very tricky and it helps to have things written out to revisit how you felt about something.

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