Using writing as a medium for thinking

I’ve been writing for several years now, publishing most of my work on a website called Steemit and a big part of it here, on Medium.

I’ve been writing articles about all kind of things, but mostly about self development, since that’s a subject I seem to always be interested in.

And while writing is a good way of putting your thoughts out there, it never occurred to me that writing for myself, without publishing, could be even more useful.

I started writing for myself, using a tool called Notion that I talked about in an article I published recently.

I write about my thoughts, I write about my opinions, and I write about my work.

I analyze some thoughts I have, and I analyze my work, and whether I enjoy doing it or not. I even analyze if working in a particular area gets me anything, or if it’s nothing but a waste of time.

The biggest benefit of writing about my thoughts and even about myself is that it really helped me understand some things that I didn’t before.

Thinking about yourself and about what’s in your head is a good way of exploring your mind, a good way to let your thoughts guide you to places you never imagined you’ll go to before.

But thinking is too abstract to easily get to conclusions, and to remember them.

It’s like trying to keep water in your hands. You can do it, for a while, but the water will eventually slip away, and you’ll be left with just a few drops.

Writing helps you solidify your thoughts and analyze them a lot better.

It helps you get to conclusions that make sense, and to explain, to yourself, how you got to those conclusions.

It forces you to make sense, because if you don’t, you won’t have any idea what you wrote.

It forces you to take those abstract thoughts, that you perfectly understand in your own mind, and put them on paper, which is a lot harder to do. Explaining the abstract is more complicated than you’d think.

Besides, writing about your own thoughts will eventually lead you to more and more conclusions.

It will give you more ideas to think about, and it will push you to write even more.

It doesn’t require a lot of time, and it definitely doesn’t require a lot of effort.

A few minutes of writing a day, not for Medium, not for any website, not to publish, but for yourself, is a great way to give some sort of a shape to your mind, a shape that you can recognize outside of your own abstract vision.

It gives you a bit of confidence, and, even better, it gives you clarity. Once you put your thoughts on paper (or, in my case, on my computer), it’s easier to remember them. I can let them go, and think about something completely different. I don’t need to obsess over the same thing for days and weeks, trying to understand it better.

So, if you have a few minutes that you can spare every day, you can give it a shot. Use either Notion or any other software you want, and just start writing about things you’ve been thinking about.

Try to pick a specific topic, like what your thoughts about your job are , or a certain person, or what you think about a movie, or a book.

It will be weird at first, especially if you never did it before, but it will get more and more natural in time.

There’s nothing to lose, except for a bit of time, and a lot to gain.