Writing is Thinking

I decided to start writing a blog. Why? I’ve been journaling on and off and noticed how much it helps me think. Writing is thinking. The thinking you do in your head by yourself doesn’t help you progress your thoughts nearly as much as writing or talking to someone else does. Surely you have all experienced this before in writing or talking to someone. Those ‘aha’ moments that progress our thoughts happen much more frequently in dialogue and writing. It helps us structure our thinking and creates a feedback loop that is much harder to create when we try to do it all in our heads. Our thinking gets much more sophisticated when we write or speak to others. We get much closer to ‘the answer’ insofar as there is one. I think of it as a complicated math question. You get the parameters of the question and to figure out the answer you need to do many calculations each with its own answer or ‘aha’ moment to reach the final answer. Try doing all that in your head. You get the point. Then I thought: “If I see value in the things I’m figuring out in my writings, surely there will be others that would benefit from reading it, right?”

Another reason for posting this blog is my hope to create conversations around the things I think about with more people and get more perspectives on the topics I write about. Getting your thoughts out into the world opens them up to judgment, and that’s something very useful. It is the most effective way to figure out what you might have gotten right, and more importantly, it can tell you what you might have gotten wrong. I would rather figure that out sooner than later. The idea that I’m likely very wrong about something that I now see as a core idea and the foundation of my thinking, is very scary. Opening up my thoughts to more opinions than only those of the people I talk to regularly seems exciting to me. It makes me curious. On top of that, those who judge my content I might connect with and build relationships with that otherwise would have never occurred. It will be a great way for me to find like-minded people without having to have superficial conversations with lots of people in hopes of progressing some of those to deeper level conversations that could potentially lead to meaningful connections. I tell my stories once and potentially have good conversations with more people that have similar interests, faster.

As I said before: if I find value in the things I write about, that I’m trying to figure out, there have to be others that can benefit from these posts. The idea of potentially triggering a thought in someone that leads to their next step or a breakthrough in something they were stuck on is exciting. The thought of potentially being the reason someone gets inspired to try something new, gets the courage to do something they know they should do but couldn’t yet, realises there is another way, or gets introduced to a new idea that brings them value is very exciting. Introducing someone to a new idea or perspective is potentially life-changing. I would love to try and do just that. And there is the other side. Life is great, but also hard. If we can help each other figure things out, why not take that shot? Posting these blogs and centring my social media posts around them seems much more exciting, helpful and interesting than what I have done so far. Which has mostly been superficial showings of ‘Insta worthy’ moments I’ve experienced. I stopped posting a while ago but felt I wasn’t using the potential of the social platforms that way.

Now that we know the why, let’s talk about the how. This is an experiment for me at the moment. I recently discovered Google calendar (such a great app, who knew…) and planning in general, works wonders! And so I love the idea of doing these posts on schedule, monthly, bi-weekly, weekly even? I don’t know yet. It might start out a bit all over the place until I find my groove. I will write about different topics that are relevant to me at the time of writing. A conversation, a book, a podcast or a video often spark these thoughts. At some stage, I would love to get suggestions on cool ideas and concepts to dive into and write about as well. I want to address very clearly that these blog posts are mostly based on my thoughts, experiences, findings and opinions. I’m thinking of incorporating some research based stuff as well, but I would make it very clear if that is the case. So please keep that in mind while reading. Let me repeat: these are my opinions and thoughts, not facts. I won’t ever claim to know the truth or suggest that my way is ‘the’ way. I’m figuring these things out as I go, constantly adapting and changing my beliefs. I think writing helps this process and I encourage everyone reading to have an open attitude, willing to challenge their beliefs on the subjects. If my thoughts on a post change, I will update the post and try to make it clear how and why I changed my stance on it. I’m looking to keep these posts concise for now. Meaning the reading time will likely be somewhere between 5–10 minutes. I will try to add some sources to my posts that played a role in forming my views on the subjects so you can dive deeper into the ideas if you would like to and do some research for yourself.

I hope you have found this a fun introduction and will read some of my posts in the future! I’m looking forward to the feedback on this and all future posts. Please feel free to reach out to me! If this post somehow really intrigued 1 person and gets them to consider some form of writing and possibly share that, well, I’ll consider that a major win! Bye for now :)