Write to Learn

Not learn then write.

Let's give the idea 'Write to Learn' some credibility; I've not just made it up on the spot.

Who else would be more credible in articulating the idea than the inventor of the Zettelkasten himself?

It is not possible to think systematically without writing. - Luhmann 1992, 53

An additional vivid example is provided by the famous and Nobel Prize awarded Richard Feynman, who made very clear that he thinks by writing. Allow me to recite a previous exchange from him with a historian.

Richard Feynman once had a visitor in his office, a historian who wanted to interview him. When he spotted Feynman’s notebooks, he said how delighted he was to see such “wonderful records of Feynman’s thinking.” “No, no!” Feynman protested. “They aren’t a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process. I actually did the work on the paper.” “Well,” the historian said, “the work was done in your head, but the record of it is still here.” “No, it’s not a record, not really. It’s working. You have to work on paper, and this is the paper.”

• Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, James Gleick, 1992, pg 409.

Sidenote: Both examples are taken from the book How to Take Smart Notes authored by Ahrens Sönke. Disclosure: The creator of Thinker is not affiliated with any referenced products.

Why is writing so helpful? Scaffold -> Uncovers biases (forming a sentence confronts you mercilessly with thinking gaps), our brain is fast in shortcutting and hopping over those fallacies, letting us believe we have figured it out already. Our brain is constraint by thinking and memory capacity.

Writing is a process of thinking.

By writing, we learn.

It should be apparent by now that writing is not the result of learning and thinking but that, in fact, by writing, we learn. Coherent writing starts with taking smart notes. So to answer the question from before, if you would like to learn effectively, you should put down your thoughts by creating connected notes. Later you can take your notes and put them into any form of text you want. It might be only for yourself, or if you choose to share it with the world, you benefit from feedback, even more so helping you understand and learn.

Writing is not what follows research, learning or studying, it is the medium of all this work.

• Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes

Let's now circle back to how Thinker can help you to write (more).