Why write a blog at all?

If because "too many other" people are already doing something makes you think you shouldn't, you have a broken view of life

“Without writing, there is no thinking.” — Hannah Arendt

Maybe we can encourage more of you to start writing today outside of social feeds, if you don’t already. It doesn’t need to be public, although if you can get comfortable with that, I’d encourage it.

I found the above graphic recently and loved it, perfectly illustrative of any real motivation for writing. In a way writing lets you ‘save the game’ of ideas, experiences and metacognition. Over time, you’re creating a personal knowledge base to build upon ideas, improving them and adding as you go. The humble hyperlink makes this effort better than a physical journal and is an incredible and underrated innovation.

Writing is a process that keeps moving as long as you’re still breathing. You develop much further by coming home each day (or waking up early) to spend time archiving inspirations and reflections instead of keeping them locked inside where they’ll assuredly be lost. Podcasting is similar, although certainly higher lift and time consideration (also more difficult to go back and reference particular points). And the written word is a very different process than speaking, so you should write too, even if you already have a podcast.

Any people who might talk you out of doing something like this because ‘you’re late’ or ‘too many people are already doing that’ are lost to nihilism and cynicism. And anyway, none of this should be for validation. I compose plenty of music I never share with the world (in addition to that which I do share). The quest for constant external validation is something to overcome. Share what you want to, not because you feel you have to.

We should have more public figures encouraging young people to write instead of, say, become political activists (basically joining cults). Most of the people I personally look up to and view as high status regularly spend time writing: this really just means better thinking.

Some additional notes on this topic…

Writing challenges you to consistently be generative

Just like you must challenge your body to go to the gym, you have to challenge and train your mind to organize thoughts and put ideas down regularly. Do this long enough and you’ll start to look at the world differently. You’ll encourage your brain to form fresh connections and be metacognitive about life in a way that’s deeper than short form social media. You’ll become mentally calmer and stronger. Reclaim long form, reflective ideas and more fleshed out concepts and it is assured you’ll start thinking better. Note if you just let AI take the wheel, your risk atrophy and are making the exercise as pointless as sending a robot to lift weights for you. Really think about this one if you use something like ChatGPT to generate all your posts.

A book that unfolds slowly over time

I’ve written easily over 5,000 blog posts of varying length since I started writing long form online in 2004. Many upwards of 2,000+ words. If on average 400 words per post, that’s around 30 books. All during my free time. There’s a set of themes I gravitate towards and continue to build upon and sharpen. If you’ve been a subscriber for a decent amount of time here or on my other sites, you know the themes I explore and my worldview well (and for those who comment here, reply personally or respond on your own site, I enjoy getting to know you too). Many professional authors state they enjoy sharing ideas online even more than writing physical books, and I understand why. Writing on the internet through a publishing platform like Substack is like writing an open, social book, bit by bit with real-time feedback on ideas.

Writing improves communication, brings you closer to interesting people

By getting into a consistent blogging routine, all your communications will not only have a marked improvement, you’ll network with and learn from other motivated humans in your industry. This is not the reason you should do this, but it is an ancillary benefit. Again, you shouldn’t require external validation. If you fully do you’ll succumb to audience capture, and soon your ideas might not be entirely your own. If you listen critically (and have a strong moral compass) feedback is helpful to sharpen critiques, understand why you were wrong or learn the other side of an issue, even if you still don’t personally agree. The world is at least some percentage broken because most people refuse to do this.

Just like you can tell someone the benefits of working out yet they’ll never make it to the gym a day in their life, I can tell you the benefits of writing and you may still never write a day in your life. That’s up to you, however I think this analogy is a clear explanation for why it’s beneficial.

Lots of people are now physically and mentally obese. I stopped writing for a period and felt this way. But everyone has agency to change this. Maybe you’ve found something that’s not writing, but helps you similarly. That’s great too. Just do something to not spend life as a passive consumer or even over-optimizer (creative time is inefficient, that’s the point).