Write for others but mostly for yourself (2022)
jack-vanlightly.com
jack-vanlightly.com
I just started writing an email with our goals, what the obvious options were, how the options mapped onto the goals, what other contingencies might arise, etc. Through the course of writing the email it became pretty clear what the best option was, and what the fallback option would be in the likeliest contingencies.
As I was describing the situation to my kid the next day, I told her that sometimes when we write things down in emails or letters, it's just as much for distilling our own thoughts as it is about communicating with others.
Here are a bunch of things I've learned in no specific order.
* Writing engages the pre-frontal cortex and suppresses activity in the amygdala. Net psychological effect of this is you become more rational, more methodical, more relaxed, less anxious/fearful
* Cognitive behavioral therapy has the best evidence for efficacy among the "talk therapies," and it's pretty much just a framework for writing down your negative assumptions and analyzing them, this helps you figure out which ones are correct and which ones aren't
* Certain software tools are essentially just environments which lower the friction of working with text buffers, emacs is probably the purest example of this philosophy, any code editor is an example, so are the 'second brain' apps like Obsidian or logseq, arguably a terminal is also an example
* Things we write when transformed to the correct format can change the outside world, e.g. you wrote down a piece of information and then later formatted it as an email or a blog post or as some code which you deployed and now the world outside is closer to what you want it to be, these transformations are potentially macros that you've written in text and versioned somewhere.
It's a radically different approach to thinking and computing than the mental model most people are walking around with in their head. Thinking as writing and writing as execution. Everything starts in the brain, write it down and loosely organize it, over time transform it into your work products, communication with others etc. We are simply moving thoughts down the pipeline from brain to reality, all through the same process, same simple set of tools etc. It is very very powerful for producing high quality ideas and outcomes in my experience.
I find my initial writing almost never aligns with what needs to be done. But the process of writing it - in a reactive state or not - helps clarify that decision and slow it to the right (or a better) outcome.
It derives from David McCullough's quote, "Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard."
In order to arrange the right words in the right sequence to convey the right message, you're required to organize your thinking, and also consider how it might be consumed.
To bring it back home, I suppose the same could be said of writing code.
---
As an aside, McCullough wrote my favorite biography, John Adams.
.;''-. The lessons I was taught about the things of my thoughts
.' | `._ is that if I write until I quit then my thinking becomes quiet.
/` ; `'. I write.
,'\| `| | I write to think.
| -'_ \ `'.__,J I write quite a lot.
| `"-.___ ,' I write almost as much as I've thought.
'-, / I write until I quit.
} __.--'L I write to get the thing out of my head.
; _,- _.-"`\ ___ Which let's my thinking go on to my next thought when I step out of bed.
`7-;" ' _,,--._ ,-'`__ `.
|/ ,'- .7'.-"--.7 | _.-' Because there's only so much room up there.
; ,' .' .' -. \/ .' In that little cramped space inside of my hair.
\ | .' / | \_)- '/ _.-'``
_,.--../ .' \_) '`_ \'` Sometimes the thing I think about has taught me a lot about thought.
'`f-'``'.`\;;' ''` '-` | And sometimes the thought I have about the thing taught me nothing at all.
\`.__. ;;;, ) /
/ /<_;;;;' `-._ _,-' But I am grateful for the lesson it bought.
| '- /;;;;;, `t'` \ I don't think I could think without writing my thoughts down.
`'-'`_.|,';;;, '._/| Which gives me a new thought:
_.-' \ |;;;;; `-._/ Do I think to write?
/ `;\ |;;;, `" Or do I write to think?
.' `'`\;;, /
' ;;;'|
.--. ;.:`\ _.--,
| `'./;' _ '_.' |
\_ ` `) /
The first level is to be exposed to some kind of summary. The second is to attempt to read and investigate the details. The third is to use a hands-on mechanism of engagement, which doesn't necessarily mean "write software" for software development, it means priming yourself to be involved, which could mean writing notes, creating art or attempting to teach what you just learned. All of those things create facets of understanding that aren't accessible in a passive context, and the more modes of that you access, the more likely it is that you have a good grasp on the knowledge.
My approach to developing has grown more consciously iterative as I've caught on to this. I copy things back and forth between paper and the screen manually, and I just spent an hour today designing some personal versioning/project organization(a micro-project for an audience of 1 - start by applying Syncthing's sync and versioning, then add a script that tracks and clones subdirectories in a CSV - add comments, auto-logging and tags to taste in the CSV format, edit that file manually for all fine adjustments, and you are good to go in under 100 lines).
I realized that I didn't need "version control" so much as "iteration control" - sometimes I have a branch that has ambiguous relationship to an existing repository because it's rewriting stuff or is a different kind of artifact from code. Writing a blogpost is very much that kind of thing since it refers to work you did do, but it isn't a code repository.
― Ted Chiang, The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling
This quote really stuck with me when I read this story (which, as is usual for Chiang, is fantastic). It does a great job of putting into words how amazingly powerful writing can be.
The best writing I've done has been taking collections of disorganized notes and assembling them into "explainer" type articles, which I can go back and reference. This is, imho, one of my "superpowers" as an engineer - being able to create docs like this for what I'm working on can really improve my ability to get things done.
I do it for "personal" stuff too - whether I'm just capturing stream of consciousness thoughts on some topic or building some reference for myself. A few months ago, I did this one on quadratic equations, which ended up on my blog. I've already gone back and referenced it once or twice since: https://epiccoleman.com/posts/2023-12-08-aoc-2023-quadratic-...
The best thing was that, as I wrote this post, and worked through my own examples, I found a few different errors in my thinking which I had to correct before everything started to add up (literally!). Doing that work means that I not only have a reference which is personally tailored to help my brain remember things, but also a nifty blog post.
Being able to coherently express yourself is a critical skill. You can not write if you have not thought something through.
Luckily some of it has gotten traction in here, but aside from that I don't really actively publish anything.
Forums users everywhere would disagree.
I'm explicitly calling "writing" the process of creating a coherent set of thoughts, editing, and publishing them. It's something that isn't generally off-the-cuff and takes significant time and effort.
- Write for yourself
- Write for editing
- Write for the audience
He recommends writing for editing, for an editor to approve or reject, as a strategy to improve one’s writing.
Writing for yourself has value in exploring and clarifying one’s thinking. Writing for editing has value, for the approval of an expert, as opposed to the approval of an audience.
The distinction being, these all have a different kind of value, and the order matters. When you do the first two, the last one takes care of itself. But if you write for the audience first, it often feels generic, bland “content marketing”.
Some of your readers will have a background similar to yours, so they will understand. Others won't and they might tell you about it. Then, you can decide whether to incorporate their feedback and adjust your explanation.
I've started using this, because I have trouble deciding how much context to include and it has made it easier to write.
I've had people tell me I'm being "unfair" for saying that someone who can't write well about their work probably isn't producing very good work (and by "well" I mean clear, concise, and relevant, not necessarily aesthetically pleasing or grammatically correct). Apparently it's unfair because "not everyone is gifted at writing." (Granted, I am an professional editor, so I could be biased.)
But writing is, fundamentally, thinking. Not being able to write coherently about a subject shows an inability think coherently about it. So why should I trust people like that?
Also, people may write poorly for many reasons besides bad thinking. Being in a rush, ESL, they're sleepy.
>The Primary benefit (aside from any financial one) is that the creation exists afterwards, and is thus available as a form of mnemonic for the creator. They can revisit and re-experience that sensation of creation that would otherwise have been transitory.
These both seem like extremely bleak, unimaginative ways to view writing.
Wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone did that?
Can you suggest a better use for writing? I love fiction for example, but people becoming less wrong (and by extension, more skillful in the world) seems like one of the most valuable ways for people to spend their time.
It is also a great way to record goals and their outcomes. I strikethrough completed life goals as a kind of version control.
>Last month, Elon Musk tweeted that Rick Rubin’s philosophy of creating something truly for yourself is how Tesla creates products.
>Rick elaborates on this philosophy in the clip below:
>“My only goal is to make something that I like… I know what I like. If I don’t like it, I keep working, and eventually we get to a place where we like it.”
>And somewhat counterintuitively, he doesn’t consider the audience at all:
>“The audience comes last… I’m not making it for them. I’m making it for me. And it turns out that when you make something truly for yourself, you’re doing the best thing you possibly can for the audience.”
>Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt a similar point:
>"If you think about the greatest products, they've almost always been designed for the benefit of the people who are actually building them.”
>Uber started out as a private timeshare limousine service for Garrett Camp and his friends. Microsoft started when Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote a Basic interpreter for the Altair so they didn’t have to write machine language to program it. Drew Houston built Dropbox to make his files live online after forgetting his USB stick. Larry Page and Sergey Brin built Google for Stanford—and particularly for themselves—with the first server in Larry’s dorm room.
>There’s of course a delicate balance here between building for yourself and talking to users—you don’t want to be “fake Steve Jobs”.
>Perhaps legendary coach Bill Campbell said it best in response to Steve Jobs’s approach of relying solely on the taste of Apple’s team members:
>“I don’t think a marketing person would have created the Macintosh, but [talking to users] would have made it better.”
if you had written something like "this advice must not be very helpful" rather than "this advice is not helpful" then it could have been more apparent that it was a joke. as it is, it looks like you're making unfounded assertions about mental illnesses that you don't have, which is incredibly disrespectful.
I'm not aware of any articles myself, only videos, but if you're open to that I have a few recommendations that you could start with.
My favorite example would probably be this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU8VmJsX6-s
It may also be worth checking this one out, which is a review of various "schizophrenia simulations" (in other words, depictions): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60n7ZP3Cj-4
There are also videos that aren't necessarily credible sources, but that I find thought-provoking regardless. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHuFSnhKG9I
I don't have schizophrenia myself, but I have DID and a few other mental illnesses, so the topic of mental illness in general is particularly interesting to me. Learning about others' experiences can teach me things about myself, too.