Thinking with my hands

The thirty-third newsletter is about why I write

I live in a perpetual daydream.

I’ve always been a thinker. A ruminator. A contemplator. I love thinking and I’m good at it too. 

Natural talent? Maybe. But also, I practice a lot. I do it all day (and sometimes all night…). I love reason, logic, and connecting dots and my first inclination is always; let’s think about this.

Thinking is necessary, valuable, and worthwhile. But there is a downside.

I never have anything to show for it. There’s no output. No empirical evidence of the time spent.

Yes, I may occasionally surprise people with a smart-sounding comment but there’s never a tangible result I can point to. It feels empty, plus, who wants to be a smart-ass.

I’ve been jealous of my girlfriend for years. She’s a crafter, making things with her hands. When she puts in a few hours of doing what she loves, at the end of it, there’s a product on the table. A beautiful, useful product that people can pick up and admire. Heck, she even sells her products online. Can I sell you any of my thoughts?

People who make things with their hands ‘have it easy’. You can touch, see, or point to the items they generate. 

This is a constant challenge for us thinkers.

But thinkers can become doers.

By writing online.

Perfect sentences

I’ve always had the feeling that writing is a fundamental life skill but I’ve managed to wait until I was almost 40 years old to really engage with it.

It’s not like I didn’t try. I remember quite clearly attempting to write every so often. Stories, prose, poems, song lyrics, journaling, I gave them all multiple shots.

But every time I started writing, half-way through the sentence I got discouraged. A deep dislike about what I had just jotted down took me over. ‘This sentence is crap’.

Looking back it was clearly perfectionism talking but at the time I thought: ‘I don’t have the talent, it’s too hard, I guess I’m not a writer (because they’re born writing perfect sentences, right?).’

The image of a ‘real’ writer combined with this crippling perfectionism led me to reject writing for a long time. I was actively avoiding it, trying to focus on other things.

Things that were easier.

Digestion vs. ingestion

For thinkers, curiosity comes with the territory. I’m always investigating, researching, and hunting down my own resources. Ebooks, podcasts, youtube, the internet is my 24-hour library.

Before I started writing, I was only ingesting. Reading, listening, watching. Consuming.

Information went in, swirled around in my mind, and that was it. I formed opinions and had theories, but they were never tested. And since nobody was challenging my thoughts (how could they, they were in my head), I stayed in my shell. Warm, safe… and hypothetical.

As Feynman said: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Of course, I did attempt to talk about my thoughts and I occasionally tried harassing my friends with my ideas. When, in the middle of my monologue, they would start staring into the distance glassy-eyed I would know: ‘Hmm, I guess I’m not making sense.’

Hearing my own thoughts out loud, and getting some (non-verbal…) feedback was a helpful clarification, but the next step had to be writing.

The power of writing

Writing something down has two parts, articulating (finding the words) and committing (choosing the words). Committing is the scary part and it’s why perfectionist-me would quit halfway through a sentence.

But when I do finish the sentence (crappy as it may be), leave it for a while, and return to it later with a fresh look and maybe change some things around (editing), I’m able to transform a vague cloud of thoughts into a distilled paragraph with a point.

Writing is a process, and it turns out we are allowed to edit our crappy sentences.

And to really take advantage of the clarifying power of writing, there’s no better way than to put it out into the world. To write in public, like I’m doing here. 

It will increase the focus and effort necessary to really get the words to reflect what you want to say and raise them to a new standard.

But it might take a little nudge.

Stepping over the threshold

Since this lingering feeling under my skin (of knowing that at some point I would have to engage with writing) was ever present, faint maybe, but present, it was as if I had been waiting for a spark to ignite the whole system and catapult me out of inaction.

That spark came in the form of ‘the writing guy’ David Perell.

David’s writing course, which actually isn’t a writing course but a personal life transformation (hence the apt name ‘Write of Passage’) helped me step over the threshold and after years of putting it off, I finally put pen to paper. Or fingers to keyboard I must say.

Through actually starting to finish my sentences, engaging with the writing process, and publishing my work, I learned the true value of writing.

Instead of leaving my suspicions, assumptions, and hypotheticals unchecked, writing online improves my mental clarity, helps me organize my thoughts, and gets me closer to my personal truth.

Not to mention, when I hit publish, I make room for new thoughts. My brain feels lighter, like I’ve just reset the cache on my internal CPU. Knowing that I have seriously grappled with this particular thought, it’s now off my chest.

The process still starts with consuming, thinking, and talking but through writing online I’m finally consolidating my ideas into output.

My thoughts have a place now.

When I step away from my laptop, walk into the living room and see my girlfriend’s newest creation, I’m no longer jealous, I’m just proud of the both of us.