Knowledge Worker Mechanics - Writing

I don’t know how many words I read or write in a day, but I know it is a lot. If I have to function in any capacity as a knowledge worker, my ability to read, process and output large amounts of text is very important. I’d go so far as to say reading, summarizing and writing are the three most important mechanics for knowledge workers. In the paraphrased words of Yuval Noah Harari - the modern order depends on all of us sending email to each other - concerted activity between large groups of humans is facilitated best by writing at this point. Communication is at the core of any knowledge worker job - including software engineering. If you want to get better at all three mechanics, you should journal.

The first part of improving writing is capacity - do I have the ability to produce 5000 words a day? A single email might be ~50 words. During the course of a work day at Google, I have easily written 50+ messages. The writing isn’t the most time-consuming part, but getting better at letting words flow would make it much easier for me to function in such a role. My goal is to be able to write 5000 words a day without breaking a sweat. Writing in a journal helps me get there - I start off the day now writing ~300 words, and in recent weeks I’ve been hitting ~1500 (precisely: 1335.9) per day without too much problem.

The next bit is expression - is the message of my writing clear, easy to understand for the cognitive context of the other person? Practicing this with yourself is fairly easy - go back and read your journal entries. Is it clear what you were struggling with? Is it too wordy? Is there enough context? What’s surprising is I often remember details about a day that I didn’t note down at the time because my focus was elsewhere.

Focus is a fascinating thing - we’re taking in stimulus all the time and responding to it in subtle ways. Our emotions are reacting to stimulus around us as well. If we’re angry or sad and no longer want to be…we should change the stimulus we are presenting to ourselves. I’ve noticed that how I feel on a particular day brings back an entirely different memory of an earlier day. The emotional tone of the memory remains the same, but the actual memory itself that shows up is different. Journals make this incredibly obvious - your brain is always indexing your memories on your current focus/mood. I’ve started to trust my instincts a lot more to bring up the appropriate memories. I’ve also trusted that when unpleasant memories come up, it is because the current situation is unpleasant in some way that rhymes.

For knowledge workers, this innate rhyming ability of memory can be enhanced enormously by chronicling - everything. Even things you want to throw away can serve a great use some time later - it can all become a part of your overflowing pocket compost.

Composting is incredibly important for being able to write effectively. If you ever watch the same rappers freestyle in different competitions you’ll notice something - they have favorite rhymes and rhythms that they lean on. Writing for yourself is a great way to build up a storehouse of useful phrases and ideas that you can then use in professional writing.