Why Write?

The art of habit, travel, and writing

Hey! Just picked up a great new habit that I’m excited to share.

A few days ago, I decided to begin writing every day (for 30 minutes - 1 hour) at 8AM.

Here’s why:

• Consistent writing → clearer thinking → life gets wildly better…🧐

• I’ve consumed tons of great content lately, but haven’t shared (or reflected) nearly as much as I should. That’s changing.

Writing also honestly sucked for me growing up…but it’s recently grown on me a lot ;). I’ll explain more in a sec.

So for anyone interested, I’ve posted my three latest pieces here. They’re titled “My dumbest story yet” (from Saturday morn), “The future of money” (Today), and “Peaceful Consistency” (Friday, which you can check out below 👇🏼).

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Peaceful Consistency: a hack to life

Habit is everything. As James Clear says, “You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of systems.”

If I’m being honest, my habits slipped up quite a bit while traveling. When you’re bouncing around hostels and unsure of where you’ll be just a day or two from now, it becomes much harder to sustain a level of consistency that promotes real growth.

And once habits slip, so can mental consistency (+ peaceful clarity). I’ve found that the single best daily habit for growth is writing. What baseball/football practice was for my athletic performance, writing is for my intellectual performance.

When writing becomes less frequent, thoughts and ideas lose their traction. They dissolve into the back of your mind and lose their value. When writing becomes consistent, healthy thoughts naturally seem to rise up to the top of your mind.

When writing is daily, so is mental clarity. A core principle I’ve always believed in is that “thorough reflection brings about clarity.” Clarity drives peace, and reflection can take place in many ways. It can be done through conversation, writing, meditation, or even just a walk outside.

Life requires balance. And when the mind is packed, it needs time to reflect. When it’s empty, it needs great new stuff to take in.

Another reason why writing is such an important habit? Retention. I’ve spent lots of these last couple years taking in all sorts of interesting, great new information through youtube vids, podcasts, audiobooks, etc. Unfortunately, however, there have been times where nearly all of this seems to have been forgotten.

The root cause of this? Poor systems of reflection. When you don’t retain, you can’t implement. Therefore, IT’S JUST AS IMPORTANT TO REFLECT AS IT IS TO EXPAND.

Expansion is incredible. But not without reflection. What’s the point of learning stuff if you’re not enjoying it?

So that’s why I’ve started my new habit of writing every day at 8 AM. (Weekends, I let that slide to before noon.) When this action becomes a habit, life just gets less complex. So during all of my traveling, this is maybe the most important lesson I’ve learned so far.

Constant clarity requires consistent writing.

Another pitfall of inconsistent reflection? Overthinking. When you focus too much on expansion, reflection gets lost and you can easily get caught up in INFINITE LOOPS OF THOUGHT.

The antidote? REFLECTION. (Couldn’t say it enough.)

So even during this train of thought right now, I’ve learned a lot. First you write fast, then you edit slow.

Good writing requires two steps:

1. Creating Content (writing fast)

2. Refining Your Writing (editing slow)

Before, I’ve always struggled to put out quality content because I ignored the order. As a natural perfectionist, it becomes very easy to overthink the details first. BUT THAT’S THE WORST WAY TO WRITE.

Peaceful consistency should be the motivator—and daily writing should be the habit.

Before, I worried about how each word sounded. I was a hyper-perfectionist. And this ironically steered me away from perfection. Before, I cared about how I sounded. The ACTUAL IDEAS held less weight than how I figured others would perceive them.

“Your mistake is that you’re writing to be read.” — Naval Ravikant.

Putting pen to paper—or probably just typing on a computer instead—requires INTRINSIC desire. Extrinsic rewards are the biggest trap on the road of personal growth. They steer us away from what really matters.

I’ve come to realize that our minds are essentially wired with two magnets.

• The “wisdom magnet” attracts EXPANSION and REFLECTION for internal rewards. This magnet liberates the mind.

• The “distraction magnet” pulls us towards our irrational biological tendencies (social approval and status being the biggest ones). This magnet confuses and clutters the mind.

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This “stream of consciousness” writing is amazing so far. It’s the first time I’ve ever done it and I now see how someone like Sahil Bloom can crank out one of his whisky ramblings on a sunday night on twitter without sounding like a complete idiot. The magic is in consistent writing. I’ll say it again: what physical practice does for your athletic performance, mental practice (aka writing to reflect) does for your intellectual performance.

Consuming without feedback is like practicing without a coach. But being your own coach is also problematic in the first step of the 2 step process. Remember: first you perform, then you can coach.

It also does something else though: You begin to think how you write—and as you become a better writer through practice, you also become a better thinker.

When writing is constant, the gap closes between how you live and how you write. THIS IS ESSENTIAL.

Like anything, writing is a skill and it can only get better with more practice (+ thoughtful iterations). Even right now I feel like my thinking has rapidly accelerated and the neurons are connecting much more precisely. (Hell yeah), writing is the best habit out there.

In January, I was in a random zoom seminar before my digital marketing internship in Spain...

My biggest goal for 2022 was PEACEFUL CONSISTENCY. Now I’m getting there and I’ve found my hack: daily writing. Not only does it make life better in the short-term—with clearer thinking and less mental clutter—but it also has MASSIVE implications for long term growth.

I’m convinced that my single greatest flaw was this: poorly directed attention. And this was simply a byproduct of two things: 1) perfectionism on the unimportant things, and 2) a failure to reflect (consistently).

While I was walking dogs with Tina, I had the solid reflection period on a 3-times-a-week basis. I also had (inconsistent) writing habits. But I didn’t fully understand what things would be like without consistency. Now I do.

So if you come away with anything here, hopefully it’s this simple 2 step recipe for better thinking:

1. growth and expansion

2. reflection, clarity, and retention

   - and make time each day to write

(Think i just figured out something massive.)