March 20, 2015
Why should bother I spend my time sitting in front of a computer, when I can spend it sitting in front of a computer?
- To explore ideas - you have to set your arguments out logically, think through more details.
- To understand ideas - through trying to explain ideas to others, you have to understand them yourself. So as you try to set out the explanation, any holes in your understanding should become clear.
- To facilitate introspection - (To help to understand yourself and the decisions you make, what your dreams and goals are, what your fears and short comings are) Again, you have to set out your point of view, and even this is good for you - to help you understand what your view even is. Also, somethings are not open for discussion (due to a variety of reasons), and writing gives you a place to explore these topics.
- To document/curate ideas - My memory is crap, luckily we have computers and the internet, and I can save my needs-further-development ideas for future investigation.
- To boost your ability to remember details - the knowledge that you are going to write about something later, or are currently writing about something, helps/motivates you to pay more attention.
- To help motivate - Writing about your progress on bigger and more abstract problems or goals can help you monitor your progress toward solutions and achievements, whether or not you have solved the problem or achieved the goal. Thus it can help fill the motivation gap that so often occurs when tackling large complicated issues.
- To inspire - often people find it hard to force themselves to do what they want, I think that you shouldn’t have to force anything. Forced work is caused by a lack of inspiration. So writing about the possibilities and rewards of achieving your goals should help to inspire you.
- To sort good ideas from bad ones - when people (if they ever do) read this blog, hopefully they will call out bad ideas and praise good ideas.
I guess there are also some more traditional reasons such as;
- To teach others potentially useful things (they learn from you instead of having to spend the time making the same mistakes, or your way of looking at something helps someone understand it or your ideas are have some value and can be used by others). e.g. experiences, advocacy, math explanations, business ideas…
- To make money