10 Benefits That Writing Gives You
Jason Fried says in his book Rework that in Basecamp, company in which he is co-founder and CEO, one of the abilities that they are interested in when hiring people is their writing ability, no matter if they are sales people, programmers, or designers. The reason is simple: Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. Good writers know how to communicate, they make things easy to understand and they know when to leave out the unnecessary.
Does this mean that you have to attend literature and grammar classes to be more effective when carrying out your tasks? No, you already have all the necessary knowledge. You learn how to write by writing. If you get used to express this way your ideas, feelings, goals, etc., you will achieve important benefits:
You will communicate with clarity. Unlike talking, when you write you look for more sophisticated words and expressions to describe what you have in mind. This helps you build a structure that will allow you to express yourself better and communicate complex ideas in a much more effective way.
You will eliminate stress. In the same way as in GTD you empty your mind—by capturing everything that comes to it—in order to eliminate the stress that causes having many things hitting your head, writing and developing your ideas produces an amplified effect since not only you take them out of your mind but also the whole process of rationalization that otherwise would abstractly stay in there.
You will be more productive. Writing activates the neurons in your brain and gets it ready to overcome the rest of the tasks (you can use it as a kind of warm-up at the beginning of the day). In addition, writing down your tasks with the appropriate words prepares you to carry them out properly. Finally, it’s demonstrated that setting your goals in writing increases significantly the possibilities of achieving them.
You will learn more. Writing in your own words the information that you receive helps you assimilating and consolidating knowledge that otherwise you would forget soon.
You will gain awareness of your reality. If you write down what you have in mind each day, what you expect to achieve and how you feel according to this, you won’t need a psychologist to explain you who you are. You will realize yourself.
You will make better decisions. When writing you clear up your thoughts and, obviously, a clearer thinking allows you to make better choices.
You will be happier. It’s an immediate consequence of the two previous points. There is no need to write a public blog, a sort of personal journal is perfectly valid.
You will live more focused. If you constantly write about your thoughts you will never get out of sight what you want to achieve, which your dreams are.
You will overcome tough moments faster. There is some research that suggests that those that write about what is happening overcome tough moments quicker than those who don’t.
You will have a lot of written memories. If you write each day, you will have a historical record of your thoughts, probably something much more interesting than a simple photo album. And, who knows, maybe you end up publishing a book ;)
So write a lot and write every day.