Writing

For years I have loved the idea of writing to myself. Others find my musings interesting and sometimes they tell me so - I like that. But I am pretty selfish. All these writings are ultimately from me to myself.

This post mentions Howard Marks:

The answer I think is that I was writing for myself. Number one, it’s creative, I enjoy the writing process. Number two I thought that the topics were interesting and that I wanted to put them on paper. Number three, writing makes you tighten up your thinking.

Point number three was quite clear to me yesterday, when I started writing about good and bad managers. I stopped writing it and wrote this instead. There were too many incongruences in my logic. The stepping stone, to the post that wasn’t written, was this sentence from this post:

I have seen both kinds of managers: too assertive, or too caring. They are both bad in their own way.

In my head, an assertive manager will leave a bad taste in the short term, but in the long term he is favoured. While the too caring manager is the opposite. In the short term people love them, but in the long term no value is created. But is this true? Because it creates the idea that the assertive manager is this indecipherable genius. Someone that speaks in riddles and only appreciated many years afterwards. While too caring, is this bubbly personality that everyone likes, but that doesn’t really add much up. Again, is this true? In my mind yes, until I wrote three paragraphs about it. The initial idea didn’t pass scrutiny. This paragraph is much more eloquent than whatever I can come up with:

Writing is the ultimate test of whether your thoughts make sense or are merely gut feelings. Feelings about why something is the way it is don’t need to be questioned or analyzed in your head because they feel good and you don’t want to rock the boat. Putting thoughts onto paper forces them into an unforgiving reality where you have to look at the words as the same symbols another reader will see them as, unaided by the silent crutch of gut feelings.

Honest writing makes us rethink our beliefs.