Why Write

Daniel Church

26 Oct 2023 — 3 min read

Introduction to DT

Welcome to Daniel Thoughts. It is like Crede Thoughts from The Office, except Daniel's. This publication will be sent every week and can cover anything. It is a vehicle for me to clarify my thoughts, but to the extent other people find reading interesting, all the better.

The first thought seemed fitting to be why I desired to write anything in the first place. These are my primary reasons.

Thinking

Enjoying thinking is the core of everything here. If I didn't enjoy sitting around playing with ideas, the rest would be worthless.

When I have a multifaceted idea, I can't think through it without writing it out. Once the idea flows down on the paper, assumptions or implications that previously weren’t considered begin to pop up. I never realize how unrefined my thoughts are until I write them. After iterating, I better understand the topic and feel closer to second-level thinking. This frequently leads to new ideas and is a neat way to see compounding in action.

Communication

To set expectations, I have always struggled with communication. Here are a few facts about my life:

The only humanities class I took in college was Spanish
I frequently received Cs and Ds on papers in high school, and the only "papers" I have written since then are lab reports
English was my lowest ACT score (by an embarrassing margin)

I was the kid in high school who was frequently told he was “math-brained”. I clung to that title as an excuse not to take writing seriously, which I now regret. I am terrible at communicating my opinion in a clear and orderly manner. Instead of a linear thought process, I take a scattershot approach as things pop into my head. When writing for myself, I can leave things scattered around and make sense to me, but when I try to talk to someone else about it, I find it hard to communicate. Writing will help me clarify my thinking into one coherent opinion instead of 10 tidbits that may go together.

Information Overwhelm

Curious people have a similar problem. They consume lots of information but rarely do anything with it. The information keeps accumulating. This has led me to feel an odd feeling of overwhelm. Something I used to enjoy, like reading, now leads to stress. Ideas were rolling around that I needed to take time to think through instead of just continuing to cram more and more into my mind. Writing is an answer. It enables you to think through ideas one chunk at a time and package them. Once they are thought through and written out, it is much easier to put them to the side for the moment and revisit them later.

Make Something

I have an internal desire to make something. Working in a services business is challenging. The feedback loops are so long that it is hard to feel like you are doing something significant. Last year, I tried to get into drawing as a creative outlet to have something to point to and see how far I have come. While interesting, I struggled to find the internal motivation to continue. Writing, on the other hand, seems much more enjoyable since it complements my other interests.

Focus

I want to know everything. How the world works. How people work. All of it. This is unachievable, but rather than picking a lane, I spread myself too thin, attempting to learn about everything I learn nothing. When choosing a specific topic and doing a deep dive, synthesis is motivating and helpful to understand how the pieces fit together. I get so caught up in consuming ideas that I never use them because I forget them or don't think deeply enough about them to internalize them.

Conclusion

The act of writing is the benefit. Writing for my brain is like exercise for the rest of my body. It applies a strain, makes me work through my thoughts, and refreshes me. The cadence is meant to create a practice where I am continuously emptying my brain to have room for new ideas. It also prevents me from being a perfectionist. Spending time working on this made me want to re-read On Writing Well before publishing, but in the end, theory only gets you so far. The hardest part is always the beginning.