Regarding your first point - I once found the solution to a problem I had (I forgot what it was exactly) by starting to write a StackOverflow question. Similar

Regarding your first point - I once found the solution to a problem I had (I forgot what it was exactly) by starting to write a StackOverflow question. Similar to a blog post, this forces you to explain the problem to yourself first before explaining it to others, and that leads to better understanding.