Why you should write in public:
1. Attract friends and business partners. It’s hard to meet people as passionate about learning as you are. But when you publish your ideas, you attract people who think like you. The more niche the topic, the easier it is to attract people on your intellectual wavelength.
2. Writing helps you understand yourself. All of us have unprocessed feelings and emotions. Writing is the best way to identify what’s making you uncomfortable. By writing, you gain clarity in your life. The increased clarity you receive reduces stress and anxiety in your life.
3. Writing accelerates your learning. If you want to understand a topic better, start teaching it. The act of putting ideas into your own words tattoos them into your mind. As @JamesClear once said: “If you think you can learn a lot by reading a book, try writing one.”
4. Writing makes you more observant. Every time you write something, new parts of the world come alive. Every experience, every conversation, and everything you read becomes a potential future sentence. That’s why writing regularly wakes you up and makes your mind come alive.
5. Writing establishes expertise. Excellent essays attract excellent people. If you write well about a topic, the world’s experts will reach out to you. Since writing is a record of your best ideas, your essays will double as a resume that demonstrates your intellectual rigor.
7. Writing attracts opportunities. Every article you publish is like a serendipity vehicle. High-level people who resonate with your ideas will reach out to you with career opportunities you couldn’t have imagined. Thus, writing maximizes your surface area of exposure to luck.
8. Writing improves your thinking. Mathematicians put their ideas on the whiteboard because writing out your ideas lets you tackle harder problems. Writing is the same. By putting ideas onto the page, you can transcend the limits of scattered thinking and explore ideas deeply.
9. Writing online raises your standards. Thinking in public raises your standard for quality. When I was a kid, our house was always cleanest when guests would come over. The same is true for writing. You think better when you know you’re going to be seen and critiqued.
Why is now the time to write? It’s never been easier for average people to share their ideas. If you write well, your ideas will find their way to some of the smartest and most successful people in the world. As your reputation grows, so will the opportunities available to you.
