This article provides deep insight into how writing can change the way we think, our ability to learn, and our future. The author emphasizes that writing is more than just a means of expression; it teaches us how to think, helps us acquire quickly any skill, and develops the ability to attract readers who support our work. In particular, he explains that writing plays a key role in practicing 'thinking, learning, and distribution' skills that have unchanging value in the era of artificial intelligence and building digital leverage.
1. Why you need to write: Changed wealth rules and new leverage ๐
The author confesses that although he was not originally a writer, the habit of writing every morning completely changed his life and way of thinking. He said it helped him organize his thoughts and mind, help him find opportunities outside the traditional job market, and became the driving force behind his business success.
Today, the rules for creating wealth have fundamentally changed. Industrial age assets such as real estate, factories, and physical goods are now being replaced by digital assets (audiences, personal brands, intellectual property, content, data, and software). These digital assets are cheap to build, highly scalable, difficult to tax, and grow in value even while you sleep.
"The greatest leverage is no longer capital. The greatest leverage is the enterprise, the ability to run a great business. The greatest leverage, in particular, is a personal brand. It is having a large audience. The moment people pay attention to you, you have a tremendous form of leverage." โDaniel Priestley
The problem is that most people are still stuck in the industrial age values โโof 'School โ Job โ Retirement'. This is no longer true. While old leverage came from physical, tangible assets (houses, factories, gold, etc.), new leverage comes from intangible digital assets. Audiences, personal brands, intellectual property, data, systems and software are the means to create new wealth.
"For most people, writing is the most accessible and practical form of leverage. You can learn to code, but if you can't entice people to care about the product you create, no one will use it or pay for it. Writing is the leverage that unlocks other forms of leverage."
These digital assets do not appear on corporate balance sheets, but they account for 90% of the value of the S&P 500. You don't need millions of followers like celebrities, the author also replaced his income with 5,000 followers, and his friend earned $100,000 per month with 10,000 followers. The important thing is that we can achieve great results with much less effort than we think.
2. Four key benefits of writing: The power to reframe thinking and promote growth ๐ช
Writing goes beyond simply conveying information and has the power to fundamentally change the way we think.
"How will you know what I think until you see what I say?" โ E.M. Forster
The author says that through writing, he began to see the world in a more meaningful way. Conversations become a source of inspiration, your mind becomes filled with ideas that you struggle to understand, and you notice more details instead of the surface stresses of life.
He outlines four key benefits of writing:
2.1. 1) Writing reorganizes your way of thinking ๐ง
Writing organizes our thoughts through a key mechanism called 'forced linearity'. Even if you think you understand it in your head, writing forces you to condense your thoughts into a single flow. It's like the difference between walking through a forest with a view in all directions and driving down a confusing road. You have to decide where to go, what route to take, and how to get back if you get lost.
Writing is a tool for thinking and is like a 'gym' that trains the mind. It is easy to mistakenly believe that you understand emotions, objections, memories, values, etc. if you just think about them in your head, but in reality, this is often not the case if you do not write them down.
2.2. 2) Writing increases pattern recognition ๐
- Building an external record: As you write consistently, you build an external record of your thoughts. This helps you express your current thoughts more clearly by referring to past writing.
- Discover the depth of the world: Just as a photographer sees things from a special perspective, if you practice writing consistently, you will notice the structure of arguments, everyday metaphors, and the narrative flow of an ordinary day. Writing trains a special kind of attention that permeates everything.
- Improve your ability to capture ideas: When you have a goal to write a weekly newsletter or tweet, your mind naturally captures ideas that will help you achieve that goal. This is similar to the concept of 'psycho-cybernetics'. The mind is like a heat-seeking missile heading towards your goal, helping you become aware of the tools you need to achieve your goal.
2.3. 3) Writing helps you express your thoughts clearly ๐ฃ๏ธ
Most people believe they understand what they don't. This is not because they are stupid, but because they have never been forced to express and examine their thoughts. Writing is not only a tool to improve our communication skills, it's also a tool that reveals whether we actually know what we're talking about.
Many people fear the difficulty of writing. Instead of acknowledging that writing, like any other skill, requires effort, we hope that ideas will come to us on their own.
2.4. 4) Writing helps you learn faster ๐
The future belongs to those who can learn the fastest. Unfortunately, most people stop learning after high school, and this is evident in their lives. If you want to achieve goals other than the three that society has instilled in you (school-career-retirement), you need to learn on your own, and if you want to improve in the process, you need to write.
Writing is a form of teaching and understanding. In learning science, there is something called the 'protรฉgรฉ effect', which shows that students who are taught material remember it better than students who simply study it.
"The cognitive load required to figure out how to explain something to someone forces deeper processing, better organization, and identification of gaps in knowledge."
The author says he learned much more in the first six months he started writing online than he ever did at school. He says he learned more about the subjects he was interested in, felt his mind change, and became closer to the thinkers he admired as a child.
Finally, writing requires understanding. Even if you read something and feel like you understand it, you may find yourself stuck when you try to write about it. At this time, many people think that they are not qualified to write about the topic, but this is not true. This is when you realize exactly where your understanding is lacking, and that's when you need to get back to learning, researching, and continuing to write.
3. Idea capture and content system ๐ ๏ธ
Effective writing (or content) can be boiled down to a few key elements. To grab readers' attention and have a lasting impact, you need:
- One Topic or Theme: You need one topic to focus on for the week.
- Idea recording space: You need a space where you can quickly record your ideas.
- How โโto Capture Inspiration: You need a way to capture inspiration, whether it's a social media post, YouTube video, or Substack article.
- Creating a compelling hook/title: You need to know how to create a hook or title that people will want to read.
- Use of ideas, inspiration, and research: You must be able to effectively utilize ideas, inspiration, and research materials when writing or creating content.
These elements are organized into a system as follows.
3.1. 1) Choose a writing topic ๐ค
The author doesn't really care about 'niching down'. He sees people not as beings who die at the hands of their environment, like lions in Alaska, but as beings who learn, build, and adapt to thrive in any niche.
When choosing a topic, follow two principles:
- Importance and Shared Value: "Do I think this is important or worth sharing?"
- Filtering your ideas through your own lens creates originality and helps you attract the people who will most influence you.
- Attention-Capturing: "Is this packaged or structured in a way that catches attention?"
- A writer is an attention seeker or his writing will not be read. Today, you need to study what works well on social media and apply that structure and principles to hooks, titles, etc.
Many people insist on "real" creative writing and don't package their ideas in the way the market wants, so they end up working for someone else's dream without getting anything done. The author advises research what's working on social media before writing. Because it shows what the market already cares about. For example, when deciding on the title of this article, the author looked at a previous excellent post on the app called 'Eden' called 'The Laptop System That Saved My Brain', combined it with the topic he wanted to write about, and decided on 'The Writing System That Saved My Brain (and My Future)'.
3.2. 2) Create one project for a week ๐๏ธ
The author publishes a newsletter on Substack once a week. This long-form article becomes an He's tried it twice a week, but says it works better when he's given time to focus his thoughts and gather inspiration on one topic.
His week revolves around this topic. When you read a book or watch a YouTube video, ideas about the topic come to mind. These ideas become research material for writing, and the newsletter becomes a source of social posts for all platforms. That means he writes one article a week, and that becomes the content for all platforms.
His idea capture and content system is as follows:
- Create an idea storage space: Create one place to store your ideas each week. Authors create boards in the 'Eden' app to record ideas, paste social links, articles, videos, and even upload books as PDFs to extract ideas through AI.
The author has several boards called "Favorite Ideas," "Tested Ideas," and "Personal Ideas." Posts you like are saved in 'Favorite Ideas', viral posts are saved in 'Verified Ideas', and personal thoughts are saved in 'Personal Ideas'. All of these materials blend together to create great writing.
3.3. 3) Outline, Write, Recycle ๐
The actual writing process is extensive and will not be covered in detail, but the author summarizes his system as follows:
- Collect research: Create a board or space to store posts, ideas, and videos.
- Write an outline: Create an outline document to organize your ideas.
- Writing: Keep all the material you gathered open next to you while you are writing.
- Publish: Publish the completed article as Substack and X article.
- YouTube Video Creation: Set aside about an hour a week to record YouTube videos.
- Podcast Distribution: Upload your YouTube videos to all podcast platforms.
- Generate post ideas: Use the articles you write to generate social media post ideas throughout the week.
- Promote Substack: Grow subscribers by promoting Substack a few times a week under your other content.
Conclusion ๐
Walking, reading, and about 60 minutes of writing every day form the foundation of the skills that will best prepare you for the future of learning, thinking, and (independent) earning. This article clearly shows that writing is more than just a habit, it is a powerful tool that rewires our brains, helps us learn faster, express ideas clearly, and ultimately changes our future. ๐