Why write?
I’m obsessed with free time. I’d rather be playing drums, baking, drawing, spending time with family, catching up with friends, reading biographies, running, learning pickleball, traveling to new places, engaging with art, doing hot yoga, building community, learning a new language, designing new things.
Ideal world, no constraints, I would be a full-time free-timer.
However, this is the actual world, and there are always constraints. Finding one’s way in 21st-century America means constant trade-offs for time, effort, and attention. Capitalism imposes the necessity of contributing value to the market. Knowledge workers must translate their brainpower into dollars to survive.
I’m obsessed with working smarter so I can do the things I want to do. So, how can I be a better, smarter knowledge worker?
I looked to the advice of productivity coaches, biographies of great thinkers, and the experiences of my senior leaders. I reflected on my own life lessons and my own nontraditional path into UX research. Insights began to connect, and themes began to emerge.
Writing is the through-line that connects the great minds of history with the great minds of today. It is the practice that focuses the mind, sharpens arguments, and invites collaboration. It is the skill that builds expertise and continuous learning.
“If we are to be experts, we must write.” - Blair Enns
Writing as a sustained practice is the basis of career security as a knowledge worker. It positions the writer as a communicator of value and builds trust before a proposal or sale is even mentioned. It’s also the basis of innovation and creative imagining, of expanding the possibilities of our brief time here on earth, of connecting deeply with the human experience.
Writing enables the deep life
To be a lifelong learner is to be a lifelong writer. This is proved out by any study of the great Leonardo da Vinci. By encountering Leonardo, you encounter your own passions, curiosities, and abilities. While Leonardo was a renowned learner who voraciously read all kinds of books and performed all kinds of experiments, he was also an accomplished writer who left behind over 4,000 notebook pages of musings, drawings, and insights; these notebook pages have led to inventions that touch every facet of human life.
One wonders what they, too, could accomplish by adopting Leonardo’s practices. He famously continued musing about geometry problems in his journal up until the last days of his life, driven by curiosity and documenting his thought process until he could no longer lift the pen.
What might we imagine, experience, and explore if we too adopt such a writing practice?
This is my motivation for writing. It empowers imagination, which makes for better free time. Writing leads to the next insight, the next wonder. Continual discovery keeps us young.
Writing is also powerful for building expertise, which is the core value that a knowledge worker can demonstrate to the market.
So I write. I remind myself that this is the free-time enabler, the quality-of-life enhancer, the career positioner, the fundamental necessity to being a lifelong learner.
When considered in this light, no time spent writing is time wasted. Writing to build expertise connects us with the greatest thinkers in history and engages us as better thinkers in the world of today. A worthy pursuit with immeasurable gains over a lifetime.
Why write indeed?