> “As he practiced his writing, Jijingi came to understand what Moseby had meant: writing was not just a way to record what someone said; it could help you deci

> “As he practiced his writing, Jijingi came to understand what Moseby had meant: writing was not just a way to record what someone said; it could help you decide what you would say before you said it. And words were not just the pieces of speaking; they were the pieces of thinking. When you wrote them down, you could grasp your thoughts like bricks in your hands and push them into different arrangements. Writing let you look at your thoughts in a way you couldn’t if you were just talking, and having seen them, you could improve them, make them stronger and more elaborate.” ― 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-eqs 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.