What writing can do

Writing as a medium

I never have even in my wildest dream thought of what it meant to write. I have always thought that writing is nothing more than putting together some useful information for an article. Or that writing is just a way to express yourself.

Basically, I have though in clingy cliches.

That was the main reason that I have never considered writing as a side thing that I wanted to do. Writing has always been reserved in my mind for those that went and did linguistics, English language or history in the university.

I have always been put together with mathematicians and scientists. After all, I went to study economics at University. Even though it did involve some essays, most of it was about mathematics and statistics.

So, can you imagined how I was surprised when I have seen countless people pick up writing and start blogging and journaling?

I asked them, “Why not Instagram with images and videos? Why not YouTube with full vlogs?” At that point, I had no idea what they were doing and why.

At that point in my life, I preferred content in video formats, maybe because I understood it better, or maybe because I thought that only the best-written content would be made into a video. So that is the reason why I was shocked when they told me also to start writing. “You will understand once you start.” Of course, I completely ignored them.

Now 4 years later and here I am writing for you to consume information in the format that was unavailable to 90% of the population of earth up until 200 years ago.

The biggest benefit of writing and blogging, in general, is that it can seamlessly include and format out there organically. It can include photos, videos, sound and text, all together with no real friction.

In any other medium, that is impossible. Videos come close, but if you make people read something for 3 minutes straight on the video, they will get annoyed, and there will be friction.

The other most amazing things about writing is that it has a tremendous benefit to the writer.

Writing sorts out your thoughts

If you have never written anything, you wouldn’t understand this, but once you have a topic in mind and you start the writing process, countless thoughts appear in your head. They are all considered and put on to the surface for you to pick. Those thoughts allow you to continue writing and creating the article itself.

Our thoughts and brain, of course, think and process information much faster than we write. Even if you write 300 words per minute. That forces you to choose and pick the best thoughts and ideas available so that the structure is clean and balanced. What ends up happening is that irrelevant and unpicked thoughts get put into the large box that says “Irrelevant” and from then on, whenever the topic in hand gets brought up, only the used thoughts will be used. The box will remain shut.

Not only that, but they will be used exactly like you have written them down.

How is that a benefit? Well, in a word of information overdoes, having a structured thought process and balanced understanding of the topic is very hard. We all know something about everything; in reality, that is useless. Not only it makes us falsely think that we know somethings perfectly, but it also makes us thinks that we know everything perfectly.

Every time a topic gets brought up, our brain first reaction will be to share what we know about it to show off. When you try though to tell what exactly you know, instead of a good understanding, only blobs of some definitions come up. Your explanation barely scratches the surface.

Most of the time, when trying to explain a topic that we are only barely familiar with, our sentence structure is not that good, and we are not able to have logic in them.

Well, what does writing do? It forces you to understand the topic from 0% and at least to 50% of the topic. This allows you actually to know what you are talking about. Once you put something into writing, you have a clear picture of what it is and how it works.

Writing helps you being creative

If you have never done writing, you probably won’t understand, but while writing, you will be getting the best creative solutions to all of the problem you have ever had.

If something is really bothering you so much that you are not able to do anything; in my opinion, you should get a pen and paper or a text editor and start writing.

The writing doesn’t even have to be about your problem. It can be about anything. You are doing it for the process, not the outcome. You will be surprised, but while writing and being absorbed, you will think of countless solutions to your problem.

Even if you think that creativity is not your strong suit, you would be surprised how much inspiration is surrounding us. A bird that you barely saw on the street can be a head image for the brand that you are working on. A song that you heard on the radio can be the base for your hit of the year. Anything that surfaces in your head while writing is going to be gold, as long as you take and use it.

Writing lets you dream

If you think that dreams are for people that don’t get things done, then I agree with you. But while writing, we all start dreaming just like when we were young. It is a natural process to think about what we want to achieve and where we are going.

Writing not only helps us to understand our goals, but it also helps us get a full plan on how to achieve that goal.

Every time I am procrastinating, instead of doing something that obviously will take me further away from my goal, I start writing about what the goal and the task is. What it requires from me to do it. Why I want to do it and the detailed plan of small steps that I have to take.

Let’s look at the example—this blog.

I have barely coded anything in my life before this. If I were told to build this website from scratch straight away, I would have laughed to your face. It was an impossible task for me. How did I do it?

The whole process was broken down into tiny tasks, so small that I actually couldn’t even procrastinate about them. They were so obvious and easy to do that I could just do them every day, with no exception.

Out of everyday work, something great can develop. Out of this habit came this website and I am to this day very proud of that.

As with everything, many tasks require a long process of doing the task repeatedly. If you are thinking of having a better life, writing can play a major role in that. You don’t have to start huge. Start small.

Write a word, then a sentence and then a paragraph. If you don’t want to continue, no problem, stop. But make sure to come back tomorrow and do the writing again, no less than today. Over time one paragraph will become 2 and then later an article that you could share.

Start now. Get perfect later.

Klim Y