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Love this bit: “The act of transforming ideas into words is an amazingly efficient way to solidify and refine your thoughts about a given topic.”

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At some level, it's the same as rubberducking. The act of articulating slightly fuzzy thoughts in linear language clarifies the thoughts - often to the point where you solve the problem while you're expressing the problem.

I agree with you that articulating your thoughts helps you to identify gaps in your mental processes. But in my experience, nothing beats writing in this aspect. Sometimes I start writing about a topic and I end up discovering flaws that I didn't even know could exist. If you only "talk" it's very easy to skip these points, but I guess one doesn't always have time to write all their thoughts and mental processes.

Compare[1]:

> Pretty soon, I figured out that if Caroline [Rose, the author of the original edition of Inside Macintosh] had trouble understanding something, it probably meant that the design was flawed.

[1] https://www.folklore.org/Inside_Macintosh.html

Thanks, that is some delightful lore!

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