Writing

Writing is my only way to better understand the world, and restructure the events around me into concrete knowledge.

Whether it is a pen and paper, or now when writing on the computer, it always helped.

I can slow down the universe, and slow down the thoughts. I can capture those thoughts, touch them, feel them, and play with them. Without writing, I am in the hive mind. With writing, I am an individual.

Somehow, writing in English made perfect sense to me. I couldn't develop a similar capability in either Arabic nor French. I don’t like it when the language is full of fluff and complexities. I love simplicity and the resulting clarity.

There are three forms of writing that I found over the years:

1. A topic in mind: when I've an idea in mind that I want to explore, writing is extremely helpful here. I basically want to examine the idea from different angles, expand on new ideas, and see where things will go. I think this was inspired by the "Feynman technique" in learning.

2. Random topic: this is a beautiful exercise, and I wish I would do it more often: Just pick a random idea, and just go with the flow, and see where the wind will blow 😁

3. Structured writing: when I am completely blocked, or at the risk of getting distracted, having a template of questions is pretty helpful to guide the flow. So far I've not had success with this, but I believe it will be useful.