You really haven't thought about it hard enough if you haven't tried writing it down.

I have a whole system of journals that I use to collect my thoughts across various subjects I dabble in. Algorithms: there's a journal for that. Abstract algebra? There's a journal for that. Etc.

At work? I use bullet journal... I add sections in for projects I'm working on. When I'm working on refactoring an old area of the code or investigating a hard-to-diagnose error I start writing. I ask questions, get answers, and I update my project journal. It helps me clarify the issue and I find once I can explain the system or the error clearly the answers (or how to find them) becomes obvious.

It may seem quaint, eccentric, or out-dated but it's a practical, reliable tool. Ask questions and write down the answers. Eventually a coherent narrative and a full thought will form before you.

I couldn't agree more here! A friend has wanted to start a writing/journaling habit for a long time, but didn't know what to write about. I told him, don't think to write—write to think [1].

Show up to an empty page, without knowing, is totally acceptable! So is writing things down that make you feel embarrassed, confused, etc.

When I'm journaling, I often find prompts/frameworks helpful for guiding this escape.

I really like Byron Katie's framework, which she calls The Work [2]. After you notice and draw to mind a stressful thought, answer these four questions:

Q1. Is it true? Q2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? Q3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? Q4. Who would you be without that thought?

Then, invert the thought. She writes, "Turn the thought around. Is the opposite as true as or truer than the original thought?"

Derek Sivers also shares some really great questions for journaling for reframing [3].

I also show up to the page

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32628196

[2] https://thework.com/instruction-the-work-byron-katie/

[3] https://sive.rs/u

I’m nine weeks into the twelve week program and it has taken me on an incredible journey of self discovery. Memories from childhood, dreams and hopes for the future. All of them uncovered to explore.

There’s something beautiful about writing with a fountain pen and paper. Setting aside time every day to dive deep and see what comes out.

http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x4280.html

I think the title of this post may be a reference to "This is Water", since I haven't seen the term "default setting" anywhere else, but I could be mistaken.

I never fully solved that problem, but I found a workaround that helped: I started writing notes and drafts by hand in cursive with my non-dominant hand.

Writing by hand, by itself, calmed me and focused my mind, whereas writing in a word processor almost always caused a spiral of distraction and increasing agitation.

Increasing the difficulty of the literal, physical writing process helped me, I think, in a few ways. It became much costlier not to commit to a single version of a thought, so I had a strong incentive to pare away some of the noise surrounding it and state it in its most direct, least objectionable form.

I'm also convinced, though I can't prove it, that dramatically slowing the physical act of writing improved my working memory.

That being said, I strongly agree with just about everything this piece says, whether or not one writes by hand. And I would add that writing also forces people to use a wider range of faculties and forms of reasoning. I doubt one could overstate the value of this as intellectual exercise.

The same is true with writing — and our modes of writing.

I agree that writing to think is important, and that putting ideas on paper makes an ephemeral idea "real".

However I disagree that "writing things in a blog post / paulg narrative format to be shared with other internet readers" is the best way to turn ephemeral thoughts into solid ideas.

I think using pen and paper, sketching, drawing, scribbling, writing short-form jot notes, writing on the shower glass while steaming away in the shower — I think those forms of writing are how good ideas get captured and solidified.

The paulg kind of writing is merely an exercise in peacocking to the other HN crowds.

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For designers, the best way is to draw things. If you have a hard time "imagining" a user flow, draw the screens in a flow diagram. If that's hard, draw all the interfaces, cut them out, and put them on a table. Put the pieces on top of each other to approximate how the interface will flow.

It's like the vast differences between relaxing alone at home, caring for your partner, hosting guests, going to work, taking kids on vacation...

What's helpful in either case is the ritual of entering that domain: you pull yourself together for work, dissolve on the couch, and put on a happy listening face for the kids. The more consistent you are in your rituals, the more quickly and deeply you enter and exit that domain.

That's how to escape mental defaults: have a huge variety of them, widely-spaced, so you can introspect their difference and play their respective lights against their shadows.

Most of our thought is propositional: we see a thing, know the thing, and move. Writing moves us up that hierarchy. And sharing that writing—ideally within the context of shared dialogue—moves us even further.

Especially in the age of generated written word, the act of writing it yourself _cannot_ be more important.

You can look at them and see them clearly. And often you aren't so happy with what you see!

And that's great, because now you can do something about it.

I completely agree with this. Often, I think I understand something, but when I try to explain it to others, I quickly realize where my understanding is shaky. The gaps become even more apparent when I attempt to write it down because I have to structure my thoughts logically and precisely. Writing goes a step beyond speaking because it forces me to re-read and refine my ideas, whereas spoken words often disappear without deeper reflection. Oh, even this comment that I'm writing now was edited a couple of times before submitting it. The second half of the comment was added after re-reading the first half.

Anyway, I put the process (quieted typing) up literally yesterday: https://quietedtyping.fyi

It's just taking ten minutes out of your day to do a little 'writing [as] thinking'. I have found it helpful, maybe others will do so as well.

And there are some things that I refuse to write down. They’re motivated more by a raw feeling than what can be found through their transliteration. Language of the guts gargles into scribbles and scripts.

Lest I be forced to result to pictography. You know sketch pads are also helpful.

Maybe the writer’s resort is toward the days he ain’t writing. Eventually stopping and becoming content.

Whenever I write something it's practically like archiving it on paper - the idea is set aside, now to focus on something else. I almost never happens that I go back to what I've written and process it.

Which is why journaling doesn't seem to be working for me; the only way I can have something manifest is by mulling over it for extended periods of time.

Many times, my ideas fade into darkness after a good writing session. But that's how you form a strong opinion.

So true!

It sharpens my mind.

It heals my trauma.

It expands my creativity.

In the essay, pg explores the idea that an essay helps him explore ideas.

It'll be like teenage angst at your parents, except it'll be angst at the entire species :)

Anyone that writes and asks earnest questions pretty quickly turns to spirituality, religion, philosophy or pseudo-philosophy/pseudo-science (self-help) because they end up realizing oh - I don't know what's going on at all!

The spiritual path is living with truth of don't know. Religion is choosing to have 'faith' and a set of instructions but really is about huddling with others for warmth and comfort. Philosophy is about attempting to build a logically consistent system of what's going on. Self-help is a set of quick hacks to make one feel better.

Almost all people settle in a modified default setting (self help) and choose to use thinking to do tiny little puzzles instead of asking the deeper questions. They can't handle the angst, they want that human comfort more than they want the truth :)

The OP led me to `kupjao`'s series of posts on writing, and I can't help but nod my head in agreement. I'm in the choir they are preaching to!

Little writing habits compound over time to help people (and teams) escape the gravity well of their "default" setting. It isn't rocket science. Just simple bullet-point-ing can be good enough to help a bunch of people...

- conserve personal and collective attention

- power creativity

- grow intellectual capital

- maintain clear situational awareness

- run high-trust workplaces, and

- make high-quality decisions.

etc. etc. etc. because, like I said, I'm sold on the author's premise!

[1] "Becoming a software A-Team via writing culture" https://www.evalapply.org/posts/writing-practices-to-10x-eng...

Don’t Eat Before Reading This By Anthony Bourdain A New York chef spills some trade secrets.

Good food, good eating, is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay. It’s about sodium-loaded pork fat, stinky triple-cream cheeses, the tender thymus glands and distended livers of young animals. It’s about danger—risking the dark, bacterial forces of beef, chicken, cheese, and shellfish. Your first two hundred and seven Wellfleet oysters may transport you to a state of rapture, but your two hundred and eighth may send you to bed with the sweats, chills, and vomits. Gastronomy is the science of pain. Professional cooks belong to a secret society whose ancient rituals derive from the principles of stoicism in the face of humiliation, injury, fatigue, and the threat of illness. The members of a tight, well-greased kitchen staff are a lot like a submarine crew. Confined for most of their waking hours in hot, airless spaces, and ruled by despotic leaders, they often acquire the characteristics of the poor saps who were press-ganged into the royal navies of Napoleonic times— superstition, a contempt for outsiders, and a loyalty to no flag but their own. A good deal has changed since Orwell’s memoir of the months he spent as a dishwasher in “Down and Out in Paris and London.” Gas ranges and exhaust fans have gone a long way toward increasing the life span of the working culinarian. Nowadays, most aspiring cooks come into the business because they want to: they have chosen this life, studied for it. Today’s top chefs are like star athletes. They bounce from kitchen to kitchen—free agents in search of more money, more acclaim. I’ve been a chef in New York for more than ten years, and, for the decade before that, a dishwasher, a prep drone, a line cook, and a sous-chef. I came into the business when cooks still smoked on the line and wore headbands. A few years ago, I wasn’t surprised to hear rumors of a study of the nation’s prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was “cook.” As most of us in the restaurant business know, there is a powerful strain of criminality in the industry, ranging from the dope-dealing busboy with beeper and cell phone to the restaurant owner who has two sets of accounting books. In fact, it was the unsavory side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place. In the early seventies, I dropped out of college and transferred to the Culinary Institute of America. I wanted it all: the cuts and burns on hands and wrists, the ghoulish kitchen humor, the free food, the pilfered booze, the camaraderie that flourished within rigid order and nerve-shattering chaos. I would climb the chain of command from mal carne (meaning “bad meat,” or “new guy”) to chefdom—doing whatever it took until I ran my own kitchen and had my own crew of cutthroats, the culinary equivalent of “The Wild Bunch.”