You need to write in order to think well | Hacker News Reader

You need to write in order to think well

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49 pointsDantesKite24 comments

My best productivity trick is when I sit down to build something I write a note. I define the problem I want to solve, then I define the solution I have in mind. This tends to give me time to think through the different paths, and I finish the note up with a rough list of todos so that I have a way to get started immediately.

I find writing all these things out as if Im explaining it to someone else allows me to get all my thoughts in a line. Also gives a good foundation for the PR when im done.

It's important to keep the problem definition stage entirely separate from the solution definition.

I do like you but on an iPad. I'll just sit down in a quiet place and think on "paper" until I have a good idea of where to start. I'll usually make a few quick and dirty mockups with Notability, and then get started.

I have a problem with both how absolutist and now moralistic this statement is. Granted, it doesn't say that writing is sufficient for "thinking well" it does seem to imply it. Why does it need to be one thing? Why can't "thinking well" be supported by a variety of methods with people choosing a different recipies depending on who their audience is and what they themselves are like? Would you accuse Stephen Hawking of not "thinking well" because he doesn't write?

The moralistic part is why I'm quoting "thinking well". So what exactly is "thinking well"? I would suspect that most of the greatest minds in history would have, at some point, been accused of not "thinking well".

I had this same reaction, but I also felt it wasn't wrong entirely. Some of the other comments helped me work out what I believe is the key to this claim.

> More like, being able to serialize your thought process well fosters interoperability with fellow human beings. Written word lasts longer and goes further.

> It's more than that. Reifying your mental symbols affords better and more complex symbol manipulation. It's the same principle behind writing down equations instead of doing them in your head.

> And writing/editing helps to serialize your thought process.

So if you're trying to have people act based on your thoughts or even trying to clarify your own ideas, then I buy the claim.

The act of serializing your thoughts forces you to follow through on threads and scrutinize connections that may seem obvious but unable to articulate. It also gives you the opportunity to poke and prod at pieces instead of needing to manipulate whole, like fixing a solution to a math problem instead of rewriting it after a mistake.

I'm split on my feelings about it.

One the one hand, trying to put a lot of thoughts on a topic together without writing them down is like trying to ladle water with a colander, but implying that you become unable to think without a systematic process of writing down your words is patently untrue.

For instance, the Greeks relied more on the bardic tradition and oral communication than the written word, and few people would claim they were unable to think.

Any process that can be used is useful, both oral tradition and written tradition's uses are a matter of training and application.

It wouldn't surprise me if we found someone who effectively thought in emojis after all. Our brains are pattern recognition engines, anywhere we can establish a recognizable pattern to offload memory is usable.

More like, being able to serialize your thought process well fosters interoperability with fellow human beings. Written word lasts longer and goes further.

And writing/editing helps to serialize your thought process.

It's more than that. Reifying your mental symbols affords better and more complex symbol manipulation. It's the same principle behind writing down equations instead of doing them in your head.

I thought it was more that the human brain "stack" is very small and thus unsuitable for complex operations with many variables.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus...

I am interested in the counterexample from the past: was everyone during the time before writing was invented poor thinkers?

Rather than whether pre-writing humans were poor thinkers, it feels easy to assume they struggled to build on past knowledge.

Also tbh for myself its hard to imagine a time pre-writing if we include all kinds of writing including pictography.

That they needed to continuously communicate knowledge in new ways and repeatedly to be able to build on previous knowledge. It can also highlight the importance of storytelling, fables, singing, etc.

It's misleading to compare two contexts this different. The millennium during which writing slowly evolved was optimized for orality in a way ours is not. People learned to memorize a lot more, for example. As an approximation you may consider yourself exempt from OP's generalization if you're illiterate.

I believe there was an oral tradition in place to keep track of important events in certain cultures.

No you don't.

Finally someone says it.

I agree that intuition and thinking often precede speaking and writing. However writing is a great tool to clarify and elaborate our thoughts. The point is not to be a talented writer but to take the most of our ideas, to make them stronger before we can convey them to others and this can be done using a different medium.

The fact that you don't see a need to offer any justification for that statement ... proves PG's point.

It proves, perhaps, that writing is important to communicate and persuade others of your thoughts. But some people already know the truth i’m pointing at. I don’t need to justify it to those who know, and didn’t intend to convince those who dont - so i understand if you are not convinced ;)

the way its communicated is crap, it feels self-help author/marketing guru.

but, it's true. writing stuff down allows you to consolidate the various thought fragments and pieces of information, potentially elucidating things you already knew, but didnt know you knew because the pieces weren't connected together in the "big picture" so you missed the correlation.

braindump on a topic, all the relevant details and bits of information you recall about it. organize it into a outline/bullet points and then narrate it to yourself as you go through, filling in the gaps between your bullet points.

its not really the writing that does the magic, its consolidating thoughts, fragments, memories in an ordered fashion to be presented to someone else that doesn't have the same context you do in your own head.

basically defragmenting your brain.

I would be interested to hear examples of important conclusions that PG was able to come to only though writing.

> Curiously enough, this essay is an example. It started out as an essay about writing ability.

http://paulgraham.com/smart.html

Some of my best thinking happens when I write out of order.

Care to elaborate? I don't disagree, but you caught my attention with the out of order bit.

I was just making a play on words. My mind is pretty non-linear and order tends to come with time and revision, as opposed to happening and being expressed “in order”.

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