Why I write?

Recently, I’ve been thinking about why I like writing. I’ve always enjoyed writing. That’s why I started this blog. As a little kid, I used to write stories and songs (although I did get put off the whole thing for a while in high school). But why do I enjoy it?

Paul Graham wrote an essay called Putting Ideas into Words which captures one of the reasons: it organises my thoughts. My brain is a busy place - thoughts constantly jostling and bumping into one another. Writing lets me structure them and flesh them out. This means I understand them better and can talk about them more clearly.

This is particularly useful when I’m learning something. It forces me to make notes that are coherent rather than random scribbles. This helps me to understand what I’ve been learning. It also gives me a more concrete goal when I’m trying to learn something. Hence why I have been posting about Quantum Computing.

It also allows me to keep a record of my thinking. This is useful for technical subjects as it gives me a good reference when I’ve forgotten something. Plus it’s interesting to look back and see what my thinking was even a few months ago.

I’ve also been watching a lot of Ali Abddal who recommended a book called Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon. This book made me think that if my thought process is interesting to me - it might be interesting to someone else too.

Writing is also really important. It’s one of the main ways we communicate with people and communication matters. Most of designing software boils down to communicating. You have to communicate with customers to understand the problem. Communicate with regulators to understand the constraints. Communicate with other engineers to divide up the work. It goes on.

Since it is important, I want to get better at it. To get better at anything you have to practice it. That’s why I am setting myself the goal of writing one blog post a week for the next 8 weeks. I’m not holding myself to one topic although my ideas at the moment revolve around startups, quantum computing and coffee. If you’re interested you can take a sneak peek here.