5 ms·

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 writ

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.
- dzjkb 2y ago
  I use a probably similar workflow (writing about everything, multiple journals - work projects, personal projects, notes taken when reading books, random thoughts, relationship topics etc.) and I feel like electronic vs paper/pen definitely makes a difference. I use both types for different things. 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).
- codazoda 2y ago
  I find that writing with pen and paper is best for my mind. But, I’m a technologist so I love digital. I use the Kindle Scribe to cover both bases. I’ve written about it here: https://notes.joeldare.com/handwritten-notes-on-the-kindle-scribe https://notes.joeldare.com/handwritten-notes-on-the-kindle-s...
barbazoo 2y ago
> 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. 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.
hakaneskici 2y ago
> "Writing is thinking" 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.
- nlawalker 2y ago
  The technology metaphor I've always used is serialization, which I think still makes sense for the action, but I really like defrag and garbage collection as the metaphor for the actual value in the activity, so I'm going to keep that, thanks!
  - Matumio 2y ago
    For me the metaphor is DRAM and swap. To hold data in DRAM you have to pay the occasional refresh cycle, or else it may fade away. You swap your thoughts to paper (or disk) to get rid of that nagging feeling that you're about to forget something that could be important. This frees up brain cycles (and memory) to focus on the next thing. 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.
tmaly 2y ago
I still have a leather bound journal, but these days I also use Obsidian to make my writing easier to search. Since it stores everything as markdown files in folders, I can use ripgrep to search for things.
- criddell 2y ago
  My digital strategy is to use my iPad for notes. I can type, record audio (or, I guess, video), or write by hand and all of it is indexed, searchable, and can be shared. If I want to write on paper, I can do that and then "scan" it into the iPad (ie take a picture of it) and again the built-in OCR will index it. With a paper-like screen protector, writing on it is decent.
WhyNotHugo 2y ago
Writing is a great technique to better understand subject. When you try to explain it, you start to find all the gaps that need reinforcing. You go read, and come back to continue writing.
taw1285 2y ago
I want to get better at taking project notes for work via Obsidian. I'm curious if you have a different page per project or do you just put everything in the same giant log? I like the idea of organizing it, but it takes me a bit of time to find out which notebook it should go under.
- sixtyj 2y ago
  Agentultra was talking about paper notebooks imho.
- Slow_Hand 2y ago
  The beauty of Obsidian is that you don't have to file under a single notebook/directory. If you have a note that belongs to more than one category you can tag or link to both relevant notebooks.
HackerThemAll 2y ago
Does it need to be a handwriting, or computer writing is sufficient?
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
  Personally, I've found computer writing is perfectly fine for note taking; but, once I actually want to compose something that I've really thought through, I'll turn to handwriting for complete sentences. 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.
- triyambakam 2y ago
  There is definitely something about writing by hand that seems to have unique cognitive and memory benefits. But strictly only writing by hand is unnecessary and of course inefficient.
  - jrm4 2y ago
    Ha, people didn't like that "of course," did they?
- agentultra 2y ago
  It doesn't have to be. I don't think there are sufficient empirical studies to suggest writing by hand is better in some dimensions than typing. 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.
  - viciousvoxel 2y ago
tvcx 2y ago
How much productive writing is too much productive writing? 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.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- physicles 2y ago
  I think this is spot on. I’ll add that having journals from different stages in life will be invaluable later on when you want to know how you’ve changed (and, depressingly, how you haven’t changed). For me, stretches of months without journals or photos are simply lost to time.
  - notdiaphone 2y ago
    As I age, this is one of my great regrets: not having written my about life more. Most of the past is just this vague smear. Writing is the only thing that I've been able to think of that answers the problem. I wish I'd known earlier.
- aqueueaqueue 2y ago
  Work is a different beast! Sharing RFCs can be useful. But it is say 2% of my time. Most is indeed just do it, TM. Writing to organise the things you just wanna do.
lxgr 2y ago
And a corollary to this: There is probably an intellectual cost of returning to oral culture, which seems to be what's happening at the moment at a large scale [1]. 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-completely-re-wiring-the-logic-engine-of-the-human-brain https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-02-07/we-re-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_tradeoff_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_tradeoff_hypothesis
- voidhorse 2y ago
  Yes. It's time to return to McLuhan. The medium is the message and our current media are a mess. 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.
  - vacuity 2y ago
    What shocks me is how addictive everything is. It seems like people of mostly any age or persuasion can get into some kind of slop media or another. For video in particular, I refrain from going out of my way to watch any, but sometimes when I happen to see a friend engaged in watching, I start watching too and find it hard to escape. I can't speak to the cognitive effects confidently, but we agree on the vibe that it causes harm.
- huijzer 2y ago
  > And a corollary to this: There is probably an intellectual cost of returning to oral culture, which seems to be what's happening at the moment at a large scale [1]. 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. [1]: https://youtube.com/@forrestsautoreviewsofficial https://youtube.com/@forrestsautoreviewsofficial
LeroyRaz 2y ago
I don't this is a quaint or antiquated practice. Writing (preferably physically writing) and or typing long essay is extremely standard amoung certain Silicone Valley and Tech circles. Paul Graham is also one of its most vocal advocates.
cratermoon 2y ago
> You really haven't thought about it hard enough if you haven't tried writing it down. 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.

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.
dzjkb 2y ago
I use a probably similar workflow (writing about everything, multiple journals - work projects, personal projects, notes taken when reading books, random thoughts, relationship topics etc.) and I feel like electronic vs paper/pen definitely makes a difference. I use both types for different things. 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).
codazoda 2y ago
I find that writing with pen and paper is best for my mind. But, I’m a technologist so I love digital. I use the Kindle Scribe to cover both bases. I’ve written about it here: https://notes.joeldare.com/handwritten-notes-on-the-kindle-scribe https://notes.joeldare.com/handwritten-notes-on-the-kindle-s...

barbazoo 2y ago

> 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. 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.

hakaneskici 2y ago

> "Writing is thinking" 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.

nlawalker 2y ago
The technology metaphor I've always used is serialization, which I think still makes sense for the action, but I really like defrag and garbage collection as the metaphor for the actual value in the activity, so I'm going to keep that, thanks!
- Matumio 2y ago
  For me the metaphor is DRAM and swap. To hold data in DRAM you have to pay the occasional refresh cycle, or else it may fade away. You swap your thoughts to paper (or disk) to get rid of that nagging feeling that you're about to forget something that could be important. This frees up brain cycles (and memory) to focus on the next thing. 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.

tmaly 2y ago

I still have a leather bound journal, but these days I also use Obsidian to make my writing easier to search. Since it stores everything as markdown files in folders, I can use ripgrep to search for things.

criddell 2y ago
My digital strategy is to use my iPad for notes. I can type, record audio (or, I guess, video), or write by hand and all of it is indexed, searchable, and can be shared. If I want to write on paper, I can do that and then "scan" it into the iPad (ie take a picture of it) and again the built-in OCR will index it. With a paper-like screen protector, writing on it is decent.

WhyNotHugo 2y ago

Writing is a great technique to better understand subject. When you try to explain it, you start to find all the gaps that need reinforcing. You go read, and come back to continue writing.

taw1285 2y ago

I want to get better at taking project notes for work via Obsidian. I'm curious if you have a different page per project or do you just put everything in the same giant log? I like the idea of organizing it, but it takes me a bit of time to find out which notebook it should go under.

sixtyj 2y ago
Agentultra was talking about paper notebooks imho.
Slow_Hand 2y ago
The beauty of Obsidian is that you don't have to file under a single notebook/directory. If you have a note that belongs to more than one category you can tag or link to both relevant notebooks.

HackerThemAll 2y ago

Does it need to be a handwriting, or computer writing is sufficient?

beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
Personally, I've found computer writing is perfectly fine for note taking; but, once I actually want to compose something that I've really thought through, I'll turn to handwriting for complete sentences. 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.
triyambakam 2y ago
There is definitely something about writing by hand that seems to have unique cognitive and memory benefits. But strictly only writing by hand is unnecessary and of course inefficient.
- jrm4 2y ago
  Ha, people didn't like that "of course," did they?
agentultra 2y ago
It doesn't have to be. I don't think there are sufficient empirical studies to suggest writing by hand is better in some dimensions than typing. 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.
- viciousvoxel 2y ago

tvcx 2y ago

How much productive writing is too much productive writing? 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.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
physicles 2y ago
I think this is spot on. I’ll add that having journals from different stages in life will be invaluable later on when you want to know how you’ve changed (and, depressingly, how you haven’t changed). For me, stretches of months without journals or photos are simply lost to time.
- notdiaphone 2y ago
  As I age, this is one of my great regrets: not having written my about life more. Most of the past is just this vague smear. Writing is the only thing that I've been able to think of that answers the problem. I wish I'd known earlier.
aqueueaqueue 2y ago
Work is a different beast! Sharing RFCs can be useful. But it is say 2% of my time. Most is indeed just do it, TM. Writing to organise the things you just wanna do.

lxgr 2y ago

And a corollary to this: There is probably an intellectual cost of returning to oral culture, which seems to be what's happening at the moment at a large scale [1]. 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-completely-re-wiring-the-logic-engine-of-the-human-brain https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-02-07/we-re-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_tradeoff_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_tradeoff_hypothesis

voidhorse 2y ago
Yes. It's time to return to McLuhan. The medium is the message and our current media are a mess. 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.
- vacuity 2y ago
  What shocks me is how addictive everything is. It seems like people of mostly any age or persuasion can get into some kind of slop media or another. For video in particular, I refrain from going out of my way to watch any, but sometimes when I happen to see a friend engaged in watching, I start watching too and find it hard to escape. I can't speak to the cognitive effects confidently, but we agree on the vibe that it causes harm.
huijzer 2y ago
> And a corollary to this: There is probably an intellectual cost of returning to oral culture, which seems to be what's happening at the moment at a large scale [1]. 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. [1]: https://youtube.com/@forrestsautoreviewsofficial https://youtube.com/@forrestsautoreviewsofficial

LeroyRaz 2y ago

I don't this is a quaint or antiquated practice. Writing (preferably physically writing) and or typing long essay is extremely standard amoung certain Silicone Valley and Tech circles. Paul Graham is also one of its most vocal advocates.

cratermoon 2y ago

> You really haven't thought about it hard enough if you haven't tried writing it down. 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.