How to Use Writing to Sharpen Your Thinking | Tim Ferriss

I'm gonna talk a little bit about how to use writing and why you should use writing to improve your thinking so I would credit much of the success I've had to whatever extent I've had success to learning how to write and to practicing writing and the reason for that is that without writing it's very hard to freeze your thinking on paper so that you can sharpen it so that you can see where for instance using words that aren't well-defined where you're saying things that don't need to be said all of this will help everything else I remember in college for instance when I took a class with John McPhee an incredibly gifted writer and teacher all of my grades and every other class went up because every extraneous bit of information that was hurting instead of helping me was taken out so to sharpen the salt a couple of different approaches number one is write anything anything whatsoever stream-of-consciousness essay doesn't really matter let's just call it one two three pages something along the lines of morning pages and Julia camera and the artists way popularized this and there are a number of folks like Brian Koppelman very well-known writer screenwriter co-creator of the show billions swears by morning pages so that is an easy way to ease into the practice of just moving a pen I recommend freehand so that you can see your thinking on paper that accomplishes two things number one it takes the anxieties and nebulous worries in your head puts them down in a freeze frame so that you can kind of trap them in the printed form so you can get on with the rest of your day the second thing it does is it allows you to see where you are sharp and where you were dull in your thinking now if you are drafting as I do for instance right now once a week writing if you are looking for a proofreader and you do need a proofreader if you can't find a professional writer because we can't all find professional writers talk to friends who have any type of legal training or you could even hire a lawyer to do this or a paralegal someone with a law degree they are trained to look at language very very carefully because in a dispute in a negotiation and a disagreement arbitration it's going to come down to the wording of contracts and I have found that when I do not have access to professional writers it is oftentimes just as good or even better to get lawyers or people with legal training to read my writing so that would be a workaround that I accidentally discovered this is very powerful few things to keep in mind when you are then doing revisions because writing is in fact rewriting your gonna vomit out your first one or two pages and my mantra of sorts which I borrowed from someone else who is a career ghost writer is to crappy pages to crappy pages per day and very often you're going to exceed that and then write more but so that you set the game up in a way that is winnable to copy pages is your minimum and it can be just rain vomit it can be worthless but got to get two pages all right once you have those two pages you can approach revision in a few different ways and you can revise yourself say in three rounds like my friend Neil Strauss who I think has seven or eight New York Times bestselling books at this point when he does his first edit he edits for himself alright so he's editing just for his pleasure for his enjoyment for what he thinks is good then the second round of edits he will edit for his fans the people he thinks will really love this material the third round is for the critics the people who try to tear it apart to find little niggly points that they could twist and so on and that can be a helpful framework for revising what I do with proof readers and you can do this also with people who are not trained writers at all and in fact you should have some lay people so to speak people who are not writers as a craft very simply what I will ask people to do is read and highlight anything this could be in a Google Doc a word doc on paper that is confusing people can like what you write they can dislike it they can love it they can hate it but it should not confuse anybody that's the first thing I will do is I'll ask people just highlight anything that is confusing or unclear alright that's that step one anyone can do that the next is if you notice your mind wandering while you're reading this please note that alright so if something is slow maybe it can be taken out note where your mind starts wandering alright the dictum there is when in doubt take it out just be like I don't know if I should take I don't know if I should keep this or not take it out at least as an experiment the other question that I posed to proofreaders because you can train people to be very good proofreaders is the 10% rule and it's not really a rule but a guideline that I like to use so I'll say please indicate the 10% I should keep no matter what if there is 10% that I should keep no matter well what is the strongest 10% like there's 10% I have to keep please indicate that and if I had to cut 10% or even 20% in some cases all ask people please indicate what you would cut if you had to cut something even if this is an essay or a blog post that is a page or two long and what you'll find if you approach writing systematically in this way and revision systematically in this way is your cognition your analysis your awareness of how you use words how you use explanation how you use questions will become so much sharper that it will transcend this type of exercise and begin to positively affect just about everything in your life so for fulfillment for excitement for professional success for personal success I find writing to be arguably the most important practice good luck you

Channel: Tim Ferriss

Views: 848,702

Keywords: tim ferriss, 4 hour workweek, 4 hour body, 4 hour chef, timothy ferriss, entrepreneur, author, writer, angel investor, ferriss, tim ferriss blog, timothy ferriss speaker, Tim Ferriss Podcast

Id: 65U5byDZ55M

Length: 6min 8sec (368 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020