Here’s how writing every day helps me, and maybe it could help you too

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Writing every day is improving my thinking.

Several years ago, a colleague shared with me a great article with a very intriguing title, “Do You Talk to Think or Think to Talk?” The author explains how some of us have an internal thought process before expressing ideas. But instead, that process happens in the open for others, talking aloud and refining ideas.

I instantly knew my tribe! I talk a lot, to think.

Understanding each other across types.

I learned that it is hard to understand the two groups.

To the talker, the thinker seems secretive, wanting to control the process and only share when there is no other option. To the thinker, the talker sounds like a lunatic that can’t make their mind on anything. Once the two are aware of this difference, communication becomes manageable again.

I shared that link very often in the past years.

Here’s the thing, though: I never talk to myself

I heard that some of us have an internal dialogue with words.

I know that others talk to themselves easily out loud, which, I read somewhere, is characteristic of great intelligence. I have never done the latter, nor the former. It makes me extremely curious; I often wonder how it would be to have an internal dialogue, which language, which voice I’d use. But in my mind, ideas and logic remain abstract concepts until I express them with words. They are ethereal blobs. Symbols with multiple simultaneous roles and meanings. Almost like quantum thoughts.

Until I crystallize them by saying words and their shape stabilizes.

I write so I am not unbearable to my entourage.

All this means I need to talk a lot.

My family, friends, and colleagues will testify. I can’t, though, be constantly speaking because I’d gladly keep some of them around me.

So I started writing every day.