8 ms·

Write to Escape Your Default Setting

407 points by kolyder 2y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
I find that, once I write something down, even if I never look at what I wrote, I often don't need a reminder. If I don't write it down, I forget.
- randcraw 2y ago
  And if you literally write it down, with pen on paper, supposedly that's more memorable still. I need to experiment with this. My memory needs more assistance now that my spring chicken days are behind me.
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    I've found I can barely write anymore. 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!
    - 0_____0 2y ago
      I think you're still capable, just with that interval between use, you're perma-rusty at handwriting. My own experience is that I have retained the ability to learn scripts well into adulthood. 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.
      - randcraw 2y ago
        Yeah, my father had lovely printed penmanship. I've planned on practicing to develop that as I return to reading more (in retirement), both to take notes as I read and learn, and because otherwise my notes will be illegible. My current hand printing or writing is atrocious.
    - makeset 2y ago
      Oddly my handwriting is aesthetically better than ever in old age, but I find I just have no patience left for it. Halfway through scribbling a word my brain is screaming "come on already!" for a keyboard, and by the next word it's completely checked out of whatever thought I was supposed to jot down. It's like watching the most boring scene unfold in slow motion. I've been hearing the handwriting->memory argument for decades, but screw that. Give me >100wpm.
      - vonunov 2y ago
        Granted, I don't know that there's not something to the idea of some kind of special benefit or effect that only handwriting has. It does feel meaningful and important in some way. But I more strongly suspect that it's a matter of fluency. If someone types fluently enough that the act itself takes no conscious effort or deliberate attention, then maybe they can engage and form associations comparably well as if they were handwriting. Most people, I think, don't -- that is, even if their typing speed is more than adequate for whatever work they do, I'm guessing it remains a bottleneck in this sense. Handwriting is slower, typically, but I don't mean a speed bottleneck, even though speed is part of the point. I mean something more along the lines of whether the conceptual task at hand enjoys dedicated resources, or has to share mental bandwidth, attentional control, working memory, flow, etc. with the mechanical task. I get the same frustration as you, of course: I don't handwrite painstakingly, but I do it slower than I type for sure. Both are low-effort, but handwriting loses out in terms of speed. If my handwriting and typing speeds were the same, but typing were a higher-effort activity for me, it's then that I suspect handwriting would have the advantage. Then, how much faster can the typing get, while remaining high-effort relative to handwriting, before the speed advantage overcomes the cognitive load advantage?
      - jsharpe 2y ago
        I feel the exact same way. I see a lot of benefits to writing by hand, but it is just so unbelievably, painfully SLOW, compared to my typing.
- Miraltar 2y ago
  Well, same blog has an article about that too it seems : https://kupajo.com/write-to-pool-your-shifting-selves/ https://kupajo.com/write-to-pool-your-shifting-selves/
- kolyder 2y ago
  "I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it to remember it now." Not sure who said that, but I think of it often.
- vivekd 2y ago
  I also find it's a great sanity check. Ideas that seem good in my head often fail when I put them into words. Especially when I outline it in step by step format
- stronglikedan 2y ago
  Same. Copious notes in college, and never had to go back and look at 99% of them. It's like writing it scribes it into my brain.
herbertl 2y ago
> If you’re repeatedly drawn to a thought, feeling, or belief, write it out. Be fast, be sloppy. 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32628196 [2] https://thework.com/instruction-the-work-byron-katie/ https://thework.com/instruction-the-work-byron-katie/ [3] https://sive.rs/u https://sive.rs/u
- pbronez 2y ago
  Thework.com looks like a great resource, thanks for sharing.
- asdfman123 2y ago
  I absolutely hate to say it but chatbots ARE actually good at therapy, or acting as a sort of interactive journal. 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.
  - jrm4 2y ago
    I think this, along with ACTUAL therapy as practice, might be the most "your mileage may vary" thing ever. 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.
agentultra 2y ago
I heard once that, "Writing is thinking," which has stuck with me throughout my life. 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.
- ParallelThread 2y ago
  Curious as whether writing your journals (work or home) electronically vs paper/pen makes a difference. Interested in your thoughts.
  - barbazoo 2y ago
    Not op but for me what makes the difference is doing anything at all. Even if one is better than the other, writing down at all has a huge beneficial effect for many.
  - agentultra 2y ago
    I use pen and paper for the majority of my journals and a Remarkable 2 for some. 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.
heyjamesknight 2y ago
The cognitive scientist John Vervaeke describes the "4 Ps of Knowing", moving from propositional, up through procedural, perspectival, and participatory. 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.
writersblock 2y ago
Loved this article. Learning to love writing is one of my biggest takeaways from my Computer Science PhD program.
gareth_untether 2y ago
There’s a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. One of the main tasks is writing three pages every morning, called The Morning Pages. I personally find the first two pages quite quick and easy, but it’s that third page where the interesting stuff comes out. 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.
- criddell 2y ago
  Are you doing the program on your own or part of a class?
daoboy 2y ago
I had no idea how sloppy my thinking was until I started writing.
graboid 2y ago
Anecdotal: I recently found a little trick that works for me to overcome the horrors of the blank page: I turn my phone (having opened my preferred note-taking solution) into horizontal mode. The keyboard gets larger in width, making it nicer to type, and on my medium-sized phone, it covers enough of the UI that I don't actually see what I type into the textbox, until I close the keyboard again. So I just happily type away and hit save at the end.
deleted 2y ago
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senkora 2y ago
I'm surprised to not see a mention of "This is Water", the commencement speech by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College, which thesis is that the point of a liberal arts education is to help you escape your default setting. http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html 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.
- kolyder 2y ago
  You couldn't be more correct. I wasn't actively thinking of DFW when I wrote this post, but his stuff is everywhere in my notes. A DFW post I wrote: https://kupajo.com/david-foster-walleye-sic/ https://kupajo.com/david-foster-walleye-sic/
  - senkora 2y ago
    Thanks! Really enjoyed that post as well.
tolerance 2y ago
To present a counter perspective. I like to believe that I possess a fair crop of sane defaults here and there upstairs. 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.
- deleted 2y ago
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- 0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago
  Another perspective is that Latin and Greek would make a person smarter. Have fun sketching.
firefoxd 2y ago
I had this insight that I thought was evident. "AGI is an interface problem". It made sense in the context. But when I decided to write about it, my initial idea and example were pretty weak. The more I wrote the more I found counterpoints. In fact, writing forced me to think through those arguments and see if the idea can still stand. Many times, my ideas fade into darkness after a good writing session. But that's how you form a strong opinion.
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cyberlimerence 2y ago
Love it. Your whole website is great. I recently started writing down whatever passing thoughts happen to me in a small notebook. Only a couple of entries now, but it's a start. Unfortunately I was terrible at, or perhaps terrified of, writing at school and college, so I never learned how to be any good at it. I also find that nothing reveals more about what you know about a given topic than looking at an empty page or a blinking cursor. Even writing this comment makes me feel queasy, huh.
globnomulous 2y ago
I found when I was working on my dissertation that I struggled make progress on the actual writing. No matter how much work I did, I wound up rewriting, editing, re-thinking, deleting, and starting over. 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.
- notdiaphone 2y ago
  One of the more interesting observations here, thanks.
magicmicah85 2y ago
I picked up handwritten journaling as a way of processing my life. It has been therapeutic through a few incidences in how I'm feeling whether it's about work, family or more personal thoughts. With each stroke, I am challenging myself to write more cleanly and appreciating the subtle beauty as the pen strokes create letters, words, sentences, ideas. I feel more at peace as I let my most challenging thoughts live on paper.
r3trohack3r 2y ago
pg explores a similar thought in his meta essay about essays: https://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html https://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html In the essay, pg explores the idea that an essay helps him explore ideas.
yawnxyz 2y ago
First we shape our tools, then our tools shape us. 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.
- grvdrm 2y ago
  Agree. Maybe another way to say it: write when you feel the urge but without worrying about form, time constraints, structure, etc. 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.
Gys 2y ago
I noticed that writing prompts for my 'code bot' gives more structure to my thoughts. I sometimes even delete a prompt because just the writing already gave me new thoughts.
- bitwize 2y ago
  Which LLM do you use for your code bot? The scare quotes suggest it's the one between your ears (the best one)...
  - Gys 2y ago
    As my 2nd brain I use the paid version of Sourcegraph Cody ;)
paulorlando 2y ago
Has anyone noticed that once they lose the writing habit that their thinking suffers?
w10-1 2y ago
Writing is quite different as a discipline and in its effects when it's for self-discovery, self-analysis, messaging others, etc. 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.
alexashka 2y ago
Just be aware that once you escape your default setting, you'll come to realize everybody else hasn't. 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 :)
adityaathalye 2y ago
Writing about writing is in the air! I just published a post with a tongue-in-cheek reference to the A-Team [1] :D 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-engineering/ https://www.evalapply.org/posts/writing-practices-to-10x-eng...
4b11b4 2y ago
This needs to be the default way we instill in young people and to think about learning, as if, "escape your default setting" is akin to "exploration". Especially in the age of generated written word, the act of writing it yourself _cannot_ be more important.
sudosteph 2y ago
I've kept a journal of some sort for the past 10 years. Sometimes they're mostly used for capturing work tasks and working out architectures and designs, but occasionally I'll brain dump a random essay/poem/song/business ideas there, and those can be fun to come back to. I just moved into a new place unpacked them, so I've been paying through them as I get a chance. It's fun to see all the ways that I've changed, but it's actually more interesting to see some of the ways I haven't changed at all. I enjoy the act of writing because it makes me feel like my sense of self is less ethereal. Having something concrete that I made and like, even if it's just for me, is just satisfying.
andai 2y ago
I think the main benefit of writing is that it makes the implicit explicit. It makes your ideas "solid". 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.
TurkishPoptart 2y ago
I'd like to ask the author how they made this amazing, clean blog site.
- kolyder 2y ago
  Kind of you to ask! Just WordPress + a stack I've been using for eons. Easy for me to replicate and portable.
megadragon9 2y ago
> Writing reveals what you don’t know, what you can’t see when an idea is only held in your head. Biases, blind spots, and assumptions you can’t grasp internally. 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.
2color 2y ago
> Writing expands your working memory, lets you be more brilliant on paper than you can be in person. So true!
benatkin 2y ago
I think there's something missing if you just write to yourself and it doesn't get read. The Amazon style meetings need to happen more. https://x.com/EdwardTufte/status/1735612294820733170 https://x.com/EdwardTufte/status/1735612294820733170
gunian 2y ago
need to go back to stone tablets fr fr
dartharva 2y ago
Am I the only one here for whom writing ends up having the opposite effect? 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.
- parasti 2y ago
  Writing it down is the part where you process it. I've found that if I don't have a need to revisit or continue what I've written down, I am done with it.
CHB0403085482 2y ago
I wanna write like this: 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.”
JackMorgan 2y ago
Writing is perhaps the most profound tool I have for self improvement. It sharpens my mind. It heals my trauma. It expands my creativity.
sach1 2y ago
This has been very top of mind recently, to the point where I have started forcing myself to write with a blindfold on so I don't start self-editing before that part of the process. If it's dumb but it works.... Anyway, I put the process (quieted typing) up literally yesterday: https://quietedtyping.fyi 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.
arnestrickmann 2y ago
How often do you write? Do you have something like a routine around it?

407 points by kolyder 2y ago

I find that, once I write something down, even if I never look at what I wrote, I often don't need a reminder. If I don't write it down, I forget.

randcraw 2y ago
And if you literally write it down, with pen on paper, supposedly that's more memorable still. I need to experiment with this. My memory needs more assistance now that my spring chicken days are behind me.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  I've found I can barely write anymore. 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!
  - 0_____0 2y ago
    I think you're still capable, just with that interval between use, you're perma-rusty at handwriting. My own experience is that I have retained the ability to learn scripts well into adulthood. 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.
    - randcraw 2y ago
      Yeah, my father had lovely printed penmanship. I've planned on practicing to develop that as I return to reading more (in retirement), both to take notes as I read and learn, and because otherwise my notes will be illegible. My current hand printing or writing is atrocious.
  - makeset 2y ago
    Oddly my handwriting is aesthetically better than ever in old age, but I find I just have no patience left for it. Halfway through scribbling a word my brain is screaming "come on already!" for a keyboard, and by the next word it's completely checked out of whatever thought I was supposed to jot down. It's like watching the most boring scene unfold in slow motion. I've been hearing the handwriting->memory argument for decades, but screw that. Give me >100wpm.
    - vonunov 2y ago
      Granted, I don't know that there's not something to the idea of some kind of special benefit or effect that only handwriting has. It does feel meaningful and important in some way. But I more strongly suspect that it's a matter of fluency. If someone types fluently enough that the act itself takes no conscious effort or deliberate attention, then maybe they can engage and form associations comparably well as if they were handwriting. Most people, I think, don't -- that is, even if their typing speed is more than adequate for whatever work they do, I'm guessing it remains a bottleneck in this sense. Handwriting is slower, typically, but I don't mean a speed bottleneck, even though speed is part of the point. I mean something more along the lines of whether the conceptual task at hand enjoys dedicated resources, or has to share mental bandwidth, attentional control, working memory, flow, etc. with the mechanical task. I get the same frustration as you, of course: I don't handwrite painstakingly, but I do it slower than I type for sure. Both are low-effort, but handwriting loses out in terms of speed. If my handwriting and typing speeds were the same, but typing were a higher-effort activity for me, it's then that I suspect handwriting would have the advantage. Then, how much faster can the typing get, while remaining high-effort relative to handwriting, before the speed advantage overcomes the cognitive load advantage?
    - jsharpe 2y ago
      I feel the exact same way. I see a lot of benefits to writing by hand, but it is just so unbelievably, painfully SLOW, compared to my typing.
Miraltar 2y ago
Well, same blog has an article about that too it seems : https://kupajo.com/write-to-pool-your-shifting-selves/ https://kupajo.com/write-to-pool-your-shifting-selves/
kolyder 2y ago
"I'm not writing it down to remember it later, I'm writing it to remember it now." Not sure who said that, but I think of it often.
vivekd 2y ago
I also find it's a great sanity check. Ideas that seem good in my head often fail when I put them into words. Especially when I outline it in step by step format
stronglikedan 2y ago
Same. Copious notes in college, and never had to go back and look at 99% of them. It's like writing it scribes it into my brain.

herbertl 2y ago

> If you’re repeatedly drawn to a thought, feeling, or belief, write it out. Be fast, be sloppy. 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32628196 [2] https://thework.com/instruction-the-work-byron-katie/ https://thework.com/instruction-the-work-byron-katie/ [3] https://sive.rs/u https://sive.rs/u

pbronez 2y ago
Thework.com looks like a great resource, thanks for sharing.
asdfman123 2y ago
I absolutely hate to say it but chatbots ARE actually good at therapy, or acting as a sort of interactive journal. 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.
- jrm4 2y ago
  I think this, along with ACTUAL therapy as practice, might be the most "your mileage may vary" thing ever. 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.

agentultra 2y ago

I heard once that, "Writing is thinking," which has stuck with me throughout my life. 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.

ParallelThread 2y ago
Curious as whether writing your journals (work or home) electronically vs paper/pen makes a difference. Interested in your thoughts.
- barbazoo 2y ago
  Not op but for me what makes the difference is doing anything at all. Even if one is better than the other, writing down at all has a huge beneficial effect for many.
- agentultra 2y ago
  I use pen and paper for the majority of my journals and a Remarkable 2 for some. 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.

heyjamesknight 2y ago

The cognitive scientist John Vervaeke describes the "4 Ps of Knowing", moving from propositional, up through procedural, perspectival, and participatory. 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.

writersblock 2y ago

Loved this article. Learning to love writing is one of my biggest takeaways from my Computer Science PhD program.

gareth_untether 2y ago

There’s a book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. One of the main tasks is writing three pages every morning, called The Morning Pages. I personally find the first two pages quite quick and easy, but it’s that third page where the interesting stuff comes out. 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.

criddell 2y ago
Are you doing the program on your own or part of a class?

daoboy 2y ago

I had no idea how sloppy my thinking was until I started writing.

graboid 2y ago

Anecdotal: I recently found a little trick that works for me to overcome the horrors of the blank page: I turn my phone (having opened my preferred note-taking solution) into horizontal mode. The keyboard gets larger in width, making it nicer to type, and on my medium-sized phone, it covers enough of the UI that I don't actually see what I type into the textbox, until I close the keyboard again. So I just happily type away and hit save at the end.

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senkora 2y ago

I'm surprised to not see a mention of "This is Water", the commencement speech by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College, which thesis is that the point of a liberal arts education is to help you escape your default setting. http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html 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.

kolyder 2y ago
You couldn't be more correct. I wasn't actively thinking of DFW when I wrote this post, but his stuff is everywhere in my notes. A DFW post I wrote: https://kupajo.com/david-foster-walleye-sic/ https://kupajo.com/david-foster-walleye-sic/
- senkora 2y ago
  Thanks! Really enjoyed that post as well.

tolerance 2y ago

To present a counter perspective. I like to believe that I possess a fair crop of sane defaults here and there upstairs. 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.

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0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago
Another perspective is that Latin and Greek would make a person smarter. Have fun sketching.

firefoxd 2y ago

I had this insight that I thought was evident. "AGI is an interface problem". It made sense in the context. But when I decided to write about it, my initial idea and example were pretty weak. The more I wrote the more I found counterpoints. In fact, writing forced me to think through those arguments and see if the idea can still stand. Many times, my ideas fade into darkness after a good writing session. But that's how you form a strong opinion.

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cyberlimerence 2y ago

Love it. Your whole website is great. I recently started writing down whatever passing thoughts happen to me in a small notebook. Only a couple of entries now, but it's a start. Unfortunately I was terrible at, or perhaps terrified of, writing at school and college, so I never learned how to be any good at it. I also find that nothing reveals more about what you know about a given topic than looking at an empty page or a blinking cursor. Even writing this comment makes me feel queasy, huh.

globnomulous 2y ago

I found when I was working on my dissertation that I struggled make progress on the actual writing. No matter how much work I did, I wound up rewriting, editing, re-thinking, deleting, and starting over. 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.

notdiaphone 2y ago
One of the more interesting observations here, thanks.

magicmicah85 2y ago

I picked up handwritten journaling as a way of processing my life. It has been therapeutic through a few incidences in how I'm feeling whether it's about work, family or more personal thoughts. With each stroke, I am challenging myself to write more cleanly and appreciating the subtle beauty as the pen strokes create letters, words, sentences, ideas. I feel more at peace as I let my most challenging thoughts live on paper.

r3trohack3r 2y ago

pg explores a similar thought in his meta essay about essays: https://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html https://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html In the essay, pg explores the idea that an essay helps him explore ideas.

yawnxyz 2y ago

First we shape our tools, then our tools shape us. 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.

grvdrm 2y ago
Agree. Maybe another way to say it: write when you feel the urge but without worrying about form, time constraints, structure, etc. 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.

Gys 2y ago

I noticed that writing prompts for my 'code bot' gives more structure to my thoughts. I sometimes even delete a prompt because just the writing already gave me new thoughts.

bitwize 2y ago
Which LLM do you use for your code bot? The scare quotes suggest it's the one between your ears (the best one)...
- Gys 2y ago
  As my 2nd brain I use the paid version of Sourcegraph Cody ;)

paulorlando 2y ago

Has anyone noticed that once they lose the writing habit that their thinking suffers?

w10-1 2y ago

Writing is quite different as a discipline and in its effects when it's for self-discovery, self-analysis, messaging others, etc. 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.

alexashka 2y ago

Just be aware that once you escape your default setting, you'll come to realize everybody else hasn't. 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 :)

adityaathalye 2y ago

Writing about writing is in the air! I just published a post with a tongue-in-cheek reference to the A-Team [1] :D 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-engineering/ https://www.evalapply.org/posts/writing-practices-to-10x-eng...

4b11b4 2y ago

This needs to be the default way we instill in young people and to think about learning, as if, "escape your default setting" is akin to "exploration". Especially in the age of generated written word, the act of writing it yourself _cannot_ be more important.

sudosteph 2y ago

I've kept a journal of some sort for the past 10 years. Sometimes they're mostly used for capturing work tasks and working out architectures and designs, but occasionally I'll brain dump a random essay/poem/song/business ideas there, and those can be fun to come back to. I just moved into a new place unpacked them, so I've been paying through them as I get a chance. It's fun to see all the ways that I've changed, but it's actually more interesting to see some of the ways I haven't changed at all. I enjoy the act of writing because it makes me feel like my sense of self is less ethereal. Having something concrete that I made and like, even if it's just for me, is just satisfying.

andai 2y ago

I think the main benefit of writing is that it makes the implicit explicit. It makes your ideas "solid". 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.

TurkishPoptart 2y ago

I'd like to ask the author how they made this amazing, clean blog site.

kolyder 2y ago
Kind of you to ask! Just WordPress + a stack I've been using for eons. Easy for me to replicate and portable.

megadragon9 2y ago

> Writing reveals what you don’t know, what you can’t see when an idea is only held in your head. Biases, blind spots, and assumptions you can’t grasp internally. 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.

2color 2y ago

> Writing expands your working memory, lets you be more brilliant on paper than you can be in person. So true!

benatkin 2y ago

I think there's something missing if you just write to yourself and it doesn't get read. The Amazon style meetings need to happen more. https://x.com/EdwardTufte/status/1735612294820733170 https://x.com/EdwardTufte/status/1735612294820733170

gunian 2y ago

need to go back to stone tablets fr fr

dartharva 2y ago

Am I the only one here for whom writing ends up having the opposite effect? 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.

parasti 2y ago
Writing it down is the part where you process it. I've found that if I don't have a need to revisit or continue what I've written down, I am done with it.

CHB0403085482 2y ago

I wanna write like this: 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.”

JackMorgan 2y ago

Writing is perhaps the most profound tool I have for self improvement. It sharpens my mind. It heals my trauma. It expands my creativity.

sach1 2y ago

This has been very top of mind recently, to the point where I have started forcing myself to write with a blindfold on so I don't start self-editing before that part of the process. If it's dumb but it works.... Anyway, I put the process (quieted typing) up literally yesterday: https://quietedtyping.fyi 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.

arnestrickmann 2y ago

How often do you write? Do you have something like a routine around it?