It was interesting that I just simply had to nudge FA that he should write down his thoughts somewhere on the internet, and he would start doing that. It was easier in his case, because there was no need to convince or explain him, he already knew why he should be doing that. So, this was already something he thought, he should be doing, but as is the reality of this world, just desiring things or thinking that things should be a certain way, does not automatically translate into actually doing that thing. Other than reason or desire, one also needs to be agentic about actually doing that thing for that thing to be done, and sometimes, even the generally high-agency people need some sort of nudge to start doing the thing that they themselves think they should be doing. For this reason, I think, nudging people into doing something that they themselves think they should be doing is a good thing, and more people should be doing this.
Anyways, that was the preface. What I actually was thinking about, was the difference between writing raw/unprocessed thoughts and structured/processed thoughts. If you have read about Visakan's ideas about it, notably do 100 things, he leans more on the idea of writing unprocessed thoughts and just doing things which is basically a better version of quantity leads to quality thing. On the other hand, if you have read Henrik Karlsson's work, notably the essay where he explains that the conventional internet wisdom of quantity leads to quality is flawed, and Anu Atluru's work, notably Make Something Heavy, you might have impression that one should spend more time into processing his writings before publishing them.
Now that I am thinking about how to phrase what's in my mind, different frameworks are coming, so let's try them one by one.
If you actually read all these essays, you will realize there are differences in the context in which all of them are talking about. Visa is talking about doing something in a sense of enjoying the thing itself:
"Do 100 Crappy Things For No Reason, With No Agenda To Live Up To, At Whatever Pace Feels Comfortable, However You Like."
While, if you read Henrik, he is framing it completely in his own personal context of doing writing that leads him to better thinking:
"I also don’t think that optimizing for growth is a healthy way to write; a better metric for me is how much my thinking improves."
Meanwhile, if you read Anu Atluru, you realize, she is talking about creating something heavy -- something meaningful and durable, in a broader sense but around context of current internet culture running on light things, resulting in this strange feeling of unfulfillment caused by not creating something heavy. So she has framed it as sort of a counter-effect of that internet culture, however, she also hints in between on the cycles of creation process.
"At any given time, you’re either pre–heavy thing or post–heavy thing... Your gut knows what state you’re in. And the cycle repeats... No one wants to stay in light mode forever. Sooner or later, everyone gravitates toward heavy mode—toward making something with weight. Your life’s work will be heavy. Finding the balance of light and heavy is the game."
"Weight is not restricted to “work” in a traditional sense but to every arena of meaning."
Actually that incorporates both the frameworks I had in my mind which were:
- Understand the context or framework of thinking of the author and see how they apply to your own specific context, if they do.
- When an author makes a point, they are specifically framing it in context of people who are on a certain side of a specific point of reference. If you are standing on the other side of that point of reference, that specific framing might not apply to you even though the underlying concept of the author is totally valid.
If I think about my own personal context specifically regarding writing, the closest it is, is to Henrik's context. But I had been having this problem that when I intended to write processed thoughts, my mind would auto start processing those thoughts before I had the time to even write them out, and what resulted was that I would not be able to think about them in a concrete and structured way because the thoughts remained as vague pre-concepts in mind without being materialized into type. So for me, the first step was to first build the habit of being able to write down the thoughts first, because when I did that, no matter if they were much processed or not, I was able to restructure or reframe that idea in my mind later on could see the flaws where they were.
This was a reasoning behind my idea of starting to write in weblog instead of my earlier idea of writing essays. However, even for me being able to write a weblog (where thoughts being properly structured is not a strict requirement), there were some hidden intermediaries, which were my physical diary and a secret blog I had shared with no one else. Interestingly, Henrik despite being inclined to writing processed thoughts, realized that it too had its benefit:
What has delighted me about the shit blog is how abundant it has made me feel. I sit down and type as fast as I can, and the results—well, they suck, but they don’t suck that much. They have a certain breeziness and some insights, too—insights of a different kind than I have in the serious essays. Which means I have underestimated my capacity! I can actually just sit down, without energy, without ideas, and if I frame the task in the right way, I can extract something of value from myself. The sense of scarcity I felt previously—feeling that to write the actual essays, I needed hours of high energy, which is scarce since we homeschool our kids, and I work, and the 2-year-old wakes up at night screaming, and feeling, because of this, that I needed to use my limited energy on good ideas—this feeling of scarcity has, I realize, kept me from doing more and better work.