Write to Escape Your Default Setting
kupajo.com
kupajo.com
You really haven't thought about it hard enough if you haven't tried writing it down.
I have a whole system of journals that I use to collect my thoughts across various subjects I dabble in. Algorithms: there's a journal for that. Abstract algebra? There's a journal for that. Etc.
At work? I use bullet journal... I add sections in for projects I'm working on. When I'm working on refactoring an old area of the code or investigating a hard-to-diagnose error I start writing. I ask questions, get answers, and I update my project journal. It helps me clarify the issue and I find once I can explain the system or the error clearly the answers (or how to find them) becomes obvious.
It may seem quaint, eccentric, or out-dated but it's a practical, reliable tool. Ask questions and write down the answers. Eventually a coherent narrative and a full thought will form before you.
I find writing long-hand works best for me. It's slower and that's the point of it. The journey is the process and the goal. The end result is clear, well-formed thoughts. You cannot rush the process to get the end result faster: you'll end up with a jumble of short-hand, bullet points, and half-baked ideas.
I also prefer a page. I can draw diagrams when it suits me. Software forces me to switch tools and my mental context to add diagrams. And they're all clunky besides. I'd rather something more intuitive that doesn't get in my way: a pen and perhaps a ruler, slide, etc on occasion.
The Remarkable software has improved with time and with the addition of the keyboard I can get close to the best of both worlds. I tend to use it for work-focused and project-focused journals. I'll start with free-hand but use the text-conversion and clean things up from there. The free-hand diagramming is much improved now that they've introduced better drawing tools that can force straight shapes from my free-hand ones. And then you get the benefit of being able to search through your documents from a computer.
For my paper journals I have to use a bookshelf and a box of index cards to keep everything organized. For the amount of journals I produce this is sufficient but it's not as convenient as it is on a computer... but personally I don't find I need to maximize convenience in my life, I'm satisfied with some processes and tasks being manual and tedious.
I also like the paper journals because it leaves a physical legacy of my learnings, thoughts, and experiences. I like reading through them on occasion to recall some algorithm I learned years ago that I need to remember or some book I had read in order to recall the salient thoughts and quotes I found interesting. And I hope maybe some day my children or surviving colleagues will find them useful too.
Electronic obviously has the advantage of being able to edit the text in a non-linear fashion, which I think is something necessary for the notes I take for work. Being in the same 'space' as the work I do (so on screen) is also helpful, as well as being able to include things like hyperlinks/chunks of code. Since I type fast, taking digital notes also lets me dump whatever is in my head faster (this is usually relevant for other types than work notes).
Paper on the other hand I feel puts me into a different headspace when writing (might be the lack of a screen, or maybe the slower writing?) and is (usually, not always) more fitting for stuff I write about personal topics or books. Some types of notes (e.g. stuff about music) also benefit from the freedom pen on paper gives you - adding scribbles, drawings, formatting text in non-standard visual ways. Small paper notebooks are of course also much easier to take with you on trips and write on a bus, train, park bench or w/e (I've heard some people use phones but I can't imagine myself writing proper notes on a smartphone keyboard).
https://notes.joeldare.com/handwritten-notes-on-the-kindle-s...
This is so true for me too. It’s basically rubber ducking with oneself. Or in preparation for rubber ducking _with_ someone else, writing down my thoughts often helps me figure it out myself.
Exactly, and I also feel like the act of "transferring" one's thoughts to visual symbols (writing, coding, diagramming) helps a lot with mental defrag and garbage collection.
Two days or years later you may skim your past thoughts, and there is some chance that it connects back to whatever is in your working memory right now. Then you can swap it all back in, and you have a chance to make a really non-trivial connection between related topics. Or you may notice that you are going in shallow circles around the same topic every few months, and now you can either put the topic to rest, or swap all instances back in and give them some serious thought and connection.
Since it stores everything as markdown files in folders, I can use ripgrep to search for things.
I think the internet generally makes way too much out of which tool you use. Use whatever works for you and what allows you to do it consistently.
I prefer it myself for several reasons. First, it forces me to filter the present jumble of ideas in my head into a linear progression on the page. Second, it helps me resist the temptation to edit myself before I have finished. I tend to be more mindful and focused when writing long-form.
Writing digitally, which I often do, comes with the temptation to edit and succumb to distraction before I've finished a thought. It allows me to explore many branches quickly... but quantity is often not what I'm after.
I think what you consider sufficient has more to do with your personal process and what you hope to achieve with your writing, if that makes sense.
1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-writing-by-ha...
As a teenager I got wound up in the narrative of productivity, note taking, and all that. Since then, I've had to unlearn that writing (well, note-taking) just for the sake of organizing some information nobody will go back to is not the best use for my time. I've discovered that having the best notes doesn't magically make me better prepared to get something done at work. The best way to create something new is to JustDoIt tm (and fail, and do it again, ..). To me, it's important to trust your brain to do the magic. Your job is to help it do it's magic. Paper doesn't think. It may help YOU think, but IT doesn't think.
However, I'm in my 20s, and I do keep a journal and I write frequently. But I've shifted my writing from productivity to emotions. I've found that expressing my own emotions and non-productive thinking on paper helps me understand myself.
It's been happening with social media already, but having non-human entities take over "written thought" for many is probably going to have pretty significant consequences. I'm finding a lot of utility in LLMs, but at the same time I'm concerned about what parts of my cognitive faculties it'll cause to atrophy when overused.
Then again, maybe this is just yet another inevitable (albeit much bigger than the ones before) step on the same path we've been on since the onset of cognitive tradeoff [2] in early humans?
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-02-07/we-re-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_tradeoff_hypothesis
I don't have instagram, but I sometimes overhear it while relatives are using it. It's a shocking experience. A series or random, wholly unrelated noises play in rapid succession, often ranging from harsh loud screams to the latest pop hit. From the outside looking in, it seems obvious that subjecting yourself to that daily would be cognitively deleterious.
If you talk about oral culture in the sense of having shorter messages, then it doesn’t necessarily have to be so much worse I think because there is a certain elegance to having clear and short messages. Like Forrest auto reviews on Youtube [1]. It’s so short that it allows more people to watch reviews for many cars. The information density is really high.
What I think is the problem is playing into emotions and especially fear. Once fear and anger kick in it’s really hard to keep thinking logically.
Recently I discovered a lecture about technical writing in academics (from my "writing to think" folder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIzMaLkCaM) that drove this point home: If you're an academic, your default mode of writing is "writing to think", and you have to make a conscious effort to avoid this mode when you communicate.
I think it also goes the other way: If you mostly write for others (or read what they write or say in public), then you need to make a conscious switch to "writing to think", which is a different skill where you worry less about being misunderstood and more about connecting to your personal knowledge.
Absolutely. Thinking isn't knowing. Cognitive scientists have the term "illusion of explanatory depth", the experience we all have where we think we know more than we do. It's not until we try to explain something that we find our understanding is much more limited than we believed.
I couldn't agree more here! A friend has wanted to start a writing/journaling habit for a long time, but didn't know what to write about. I told him, don't think to write—write to think [1].
Show up to an empty page, without knowing, is totally acceptable! So is writing things down that make you feel embarrassed, confused, etc.
When I'm journaling, I often find prompts/frameworks helpful for guiding this escape.
I really like Byron Katie's framework, which she calls The Work [2]. After you notice and draw to mind a stressful thought, answer these four questions:
Q1. Is it true? Q2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? Q3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? Q4. Who would you be without that thought?
Then, invert the thought. She writes, "Turn the thought around. Is the opposite as true as or truer than the original thought?"
Derek Sivers also shares some really great questions for journaling for reframing [3].
I also show up to the page
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32628196
I try to put my thoughts in as clearly and concisely as I can, and it rephrases it back to me and points out angles I hadn't thought of. Plus, I know not only does it not want to judge me, it's literally incapable of judging me unlike a human therapist.
Again I hate how dumb this sounds but I was surprised.
Ultimately (I'd say unlike perhaps other professions that try to fix things about you) -- therapy is 100% coaching. Which is to say, the therapist can't DO any of the meaningful work, they can only do their best to try to present you with ideas that spark you into following them.
Otherwise also related to the concept of inversion[1] and more generally, counterfactuals[2].
That book is really helpful to me. Thank you for the link!
I’m nine weeks into the twelve week program and it has taken me on an incredible journey of self discovery. Memories from childhood, dreams and hopes for the future. All of them uncovered to explore.
There’s something beautiful about writing with a fountain pen and paper. Setting aside time every day to dive deep and see what comes out.
I need to experiment with this. My memory needs more assistance now that my spring chicken days are behind me.
I mean, I can, but my handwriting is so bad I can barely read it, even if I've written pretty slowly. Like it was never good, but I could write a lot faster and still be able to read it. Now my slow and careful handwriting is worse than that, even.
It occurred to me some time last year, when reflecting on this, that I've probably averaged fewer than 50 words written by hand per year, not counting my signature, over... like more than a decade. I wouldn't be surprised if the actual annual average over that span is around 25 or 30 words, even. So, no wonder.
A big change from the days of writing several hundreds words in one hour for Blue Book tests, a few times per year!
Within the last few years I've done what I call "installing a font." I was unhappy with my printed letter forms, so I looked up architectural lettering guides and modeled my new printing based on that. I also re-learned how to write cursive, which is always a struggle any time I re-start using it after months of having not.
http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html
I think the title of this post may be a reference to "This is Water", since I haven't seen the term "default setting" anywhere else, but I could be mistaken.
A DFW post I wrote: https://kupajo.com/david-foster-walleye-sic/
I never fully solved that problem, but I found a workaround that helped: I started writing notes and drafts by hand in cursive with my non-dominant hand.
Writing by hand, by itself, calmed me and focused my mind, whereas writing in a word processor almost always caused a spiral of distraction and increasing agitation.
Increasing the difficulty of the literal, physical writing process helped me, I think, in a few ways. It became much costlier not to commit to a single version of a thought, so I had a strong incentive to pare away some of the noise surrounding it and state it in its most direct, least objectionable form.
I'm also convinced, though I can't prove it, that dramatically slowing the physical act of writing improved my working memory.
That being said, I strongly agree with just about everything this piece says, whether or not one writes by hand. And I would add that writing also forces people to use a wider range of faculties and forms of reasoning. I doubt one could overstate the value of this as intellectual exercise.
The same is true with writing — and our modes of writing.
I agree that writing to think is important, and that putting ideas on paper makes an ephemeral idea "real".
However I disagree that "writing things in a blog post / paulg narrative format to be shared with other internet readers" is the best way to turn ephemeral thoughts into solid ideas.
I think using pen and paper, sketching, drawing, scribbling, writing short-form jot notes, writing on the shower glass while steaming away in the shower — I think those forms of writing are how good ideas get captured and solidified.
The paulg kind of writing is merely an exercise in peacocking to the other HN crowds.
---
For designers, the best way is to draw things. If you have a hard time "imagining" a user flow, draw the screens in a flow diagram. If that's hard, draw all the interfaces, cut them out, and put them on a table. Put the pieces on top of each other to approximate how the interface will flow.
Big fan of shower idea in particular. Also, carrying a little notebook at gym and jotting things as they pass through my brain in between or during sets.
It's like the vast differences between relaxing alone at home, caring for your partner, hosting guests, going to work, taking kids on vacation...
What's helpful in either case is the ritual of entering that domain: you pull yourself together for work, dissolve on the couch, and put on a happy listening face for the kids. The more consistent you are in your rituals, the more quickly and deeply you enter and exit that domain.
That's how to escape mental defaults: have a huge variety of them, widely-spaced, so you can introspect their difference and play their respective lights against their shadows.
Most of our thought is propositional: we see a thing, know the thing, and move. Writing moves us up that hierarchy. And sharing that writing—ideally within the context of shared dialogue—moves us even further.
Especially in the age of generated written word, the act of writing it yourself _cannot_ be more important.
You can look at them and see them clearly. And often you aren't so happy with what you see!
And that's great, because now you can do something about it.
I completely agree with this. Often, I think I understand something, but when I try to explain it to others, I quickly realize where my understanding is shaky. The gaps become even more apparent when I attempt to write it down because I have to structure my thoughts logically and precisely. Writing goes a step beyond speaking because it forces me to re-read and refine my ideas, whereas spoken words often disappear without deeper reflection. Oh, even this comment that I'm writing now was edited a couple of times before submitting it. The second half of the comment was added after re-reading the first half.
Anyway, I put the process (quieted typing) up literally yesterday: https://quietedtyping.fyi
It's just taking ten minutes out of your day to do a little 'writing [as] thinking'. I have found it helpful, maybe others will do so as well.
And there are some things that I refuse to write down. They’re motivated more by a raw feeling than what can be found through their transliteration. Language of the guts gargles into scribbles and scripts.
Lest I be forced to result to pictography. You know sketch pads are also helpful.
Maybe the writer’s resort is toward the days he ain’t writing. Eventually stopping and becoming content.
Many times, my ideas fade into darkness after a good writing session. But that's how you form a strong opinion.
Whenever I write something it's practically like archiving it on paper - the idea is set aside, now to focus on something else. I almost never happens that I go back to what I've written and process it.
Which is why journaling doesn't seem to be working for me; the only way I can have something manifest is by mulling over it for extended periods of time.
So true!
In the essay, pg explores the idea that an essay helps him explore ideas.
It sharpens my mind.
It heals my trauma.
It expands my creativity.
Don’t Eat Before Reading This By Anthony Bourdain A New York chef spills some trade secrets.
Good food, good eating, is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay. It’s about sodium-loaded pork fat, stinky triple-cream cheeses, the tender thymus glands and distended livers of young animals. It’s about danger—risking the dark, bacterial forces of beef, chicken, cheese, and shellfish. Your first two hundred and seven Wellfleet oysters may transport you to a state of rapture, but your two hundred and eighth may send you to bed with the sweats, chills, and vomits. Gastronomy is the science of pain. Professional cooks belong to a secret society whose ancient rituals derive from the principles of stoicism in the face of humiliation, injury, fatigue, and the threat of illness. The members of a tight, well-greased kitchen staff are a lot like a submarine crew. Confined for most of their waking hours in hot, airless spaces, and ruled by despotic leaders, they often acquire the characteristics of the poor saps who were press-ganged into the royal navies of Napoleonic times— superstition, a contempt for outsiders, and a loyalty to no flag but their own. A good deal has changed since Orwell’s memoir of the months he spent as a dishwasher in “Down and Out in Paris and London.” Gas ranges and exhaust fans have gone a long way toward increasing the life span of the working culinarian. Nowadays, most aspiring cooks come into the business because they want to: they have chosen this life, studied for it. Today’s top chefs are like star athletes. They bounce from kitchen to kitchen—free agents in search of more money, more acclaim. I’ve been a chef in New York for more than ten years, and, for the decade before that, a dishwasher, a prep drone, a line cook, and a sous-chef. I came into the business when cooks still smoked on the line and wore headbands. A few years ago, I wasn’t surprised to hear rumors of a study of the nation’s prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was “cook.” As most of us in the restaurant business know, there is a powerful strain of criminality in the industry, ranging from the dope-dealing busboy with beeper and cell phone to the restaurant owner who has two sets of accounting books. In fact, it was the unsavory side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place. In the early seventies, I dropped out of college and transferred to the Culinary Institute of America. I wanted it all: the cuts and burns on hands and wrists, the ghoulish kitchen humor, the free food, the pilfered booze, the camaraderie that flourished within rigid order and nerve-shattering chaos. I would climb the chain of command from mal carne (meaning “bad meat,” or “new guy”) to chefdom—doing whatever it took until I ran my own kitchen and had my own crew of cutthroats, the culinary equivalent of “The Wild Bunch.”
It'll be like teenage angst at your parents, except it'll be angst at the entire species :)
Anyone that writes and asks earnest questions pretty quickly turns to spirituality, religion, philosophy or pseudo-philosophy/pseudo-science (self-help) because they end up realizing oh - I don't know what's going on at all!
The spiritual path is living with truth of don't know. Religion is choosing to have 'faith' and a set of instructions but really is about huddling with others for warmth and comfort. Philosophy is about attempting to build a logically consistent system of what's going on. Self-help is a set of quick hacks to make one feel better.
Almost all people settle in a modified default setting (self help) and choose to use thinking to do tiny little puzzles instead of asking the deeper questions. They can't handle the angst, they want that human comfort more than they want the truth :)
The OP led me to `kupjao`'s series of posts on writing, and I can't help but nod my head in agreement. I'm in the choir they are preaching to!
Little writing habits compound over time to help people (and teams) escape the gravity well of their "default" setting. It isn't rocket science. Just simple bullet-point-ing can be good enough to help a bunch of people...
- conserve personal and collective attention
- power creativity
- grow intellectual capital
- maintain clear situational awareness
- run high-trust workplaces, and
- make high-quality decisions.
etc. etc. etc. because, like I said, I'm sold on the author's premise!
[1] "Becoming a software A-Team via writing culture" https://www.evalapply.org/posts/writing-practices-to-10x-eng...