How Blogging Changes The Way You Think
On the value of thinking in public — and writing 200,000 words on Medium this year
Holy moses, I wrote a ton of words on Medium this year.
Around 200,000, in fact. That’s the equivalent of writing two entire books. (Man, I hope my actual book editor isn’t reading this, lol.)
I write three times a week here — two essays plus a “Linkfest” where I collect together the best stuff I’ve seen in the last week. It’s a firehose of prose.
All of which makes me wonder: What exactly does writing that much do to you?
I ponder this a lot, because one of my long-time interests is how tools for expression affect the way we think, and thereby the way we understand the world. You can’t write that much and have it not affect you, in some way!
So let’s unpack it. In no particular order of importance, here are some year-end thoughts on How Blogging Changes You, Cognitively and Creatively:
1) Blogging encourages me to develop an idea
Like most people, my head is full of thoughts and stuff I have opinions on. I conduct enthusiastic debates in my head, and internally anyway, I’m always super convincing, right?
