Writing is the only thing that matters

I find this line from Sönke Ahrens provocative and inspiring. He’s writing about life in Academia, but I think his thought applies broadly in the world if ideas. If I read or listen to something interesting I don’t learn it well enough to use it or talk about it. It takes up space in my thoughts as a ghostly shell, something that feels real but isn’t.

Writing about it, thinking it through in the writing, connecting it with other ideas through writing, fills in that shell and brings it to life.

References

Sönke Ahrens (2017). How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers.

Focusing on writing as if nothing else counts does not necessarily mean you should do everything else less well, but it certainly makes you do everything else differently. Having a clear, tangible purpose when you attend a lecture, discussion or seminar will make you more engaged and sharpen your focus.

You will read in a more engaged way, because you cannot rephrase anything in your own words if you don't understand what it is about. By doing this, you will elaborate on the meaning, which will make it much more likely that you will remember it. You also have to think beyond the things you read, because you need to turn it into something new. And by doing everything with the clear purpose of writing about it, you will do what you do deliberately. Deliberate practice is the only serious way of becoming better at what we are doing (cf. Anders Ericsson, 2008). If you change your mind about the importance of writing, you will also change your mind about everything else. Even if you decide never to write a single line of a manuscript, you will improve your reading, thinking and other intellectual skills just by doing everything as if nothing counts other than writing.