Before we start
Takeaway(s)
I was pleasantly surprised, I found my takeaway at the start which is: Don’t be fooled by the idea in your head, it is not complete!
This comes from the quote by Paul Graham in the beginning of the article:
Ideas can feel complete. It’s only when you try to put them into words that you discover they’re not.
Writing is important, it helps us think, reflect on our thoughts and staring at our written word gives us a sneak peak on how we actually think. All these are only possible when we write, which begs a question: WHEN do we write?
With the takeaway in mind, I’d remind myself that the ideas in my head is not complete so I should write about it before committing to it.
Others
As a side note, I feel that the facade of a complete idea in our head comes from over-consumption of information. We get a nice feeling when reading something dense or insightful and we stop there. Just superficially picking phrases or words which sounds cool but never really internalize or understand it.
Moving along, here are some parts of the article that stood out to me:
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Not all writing help the author think, we have to approach it in a right way.
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I’d expect writing itself helps us point out flaws in our ideas or thoughts, but I guess pointing out its flaw doesn’t mean thinking about why is it flawed.
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Describing how writing on paper makes our ideas rigid, which prevents it from adapting a fluid form which happens in a conversation where people can say “I didn’t mean it like that”
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I loved how he said: What seemed right in my head fell to pieces on the page
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Taking inspiration from mathematical proofs to make his writing more precise
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Stretching your writing thin — rigorously question on what you wrote its like trying to break your own writing or finding flaw in our guesses or assumptions we’ve made while writing
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Progress is still progress regardless of the outcome (right/wrong)
Overall feeling, it’s another jab on why writing helps us think. I like the examples and tips but felt like more can be given.