Don't Skip The Good Bits
The Value of Writing as a Thinking Tool
Is it the process or the output that matters? I reflect on that question a lot when I look at why I started writing, for whom I write, and where the pleasure is. I never set out to be a writer. When reading story books to my kids when they were younger, some of the rhymes felt forced and they jarred with me. One syllable too many. Trivial yes, but when your day has been one long test of your patience from sleep deficit to broken bottles, spilt milk, endless washing and the usual round of bedtime tantrums, the tiny things can seem far more irksome than they might actually be, when you are not your normal wide awake and intellectually engaged self. I just wanted to fix the rhythm, and do it myself.
I remember the symmetry and timbre of the sentences sat with me. I would hum a tune and retro fit words rhythmically. It became a regular thing. A handful of actual children’s books emerged from that time; some built together with the kids as they chose rhyming works with me. I may publish them one day too.
Trains and Planes
Back in the business world I travelled a lot. And, not a fan of sitting still in a confined space, I found myself reaching for my pen and notebook to write as a distraction when trains stalled and planes sat, sometimes for hours on runways. I passed the time making more rhymes. The mechanism of writing became the point.
What started as a deflection became a skill and something I began to enjoy. I still enjoy it. There’s satisfaction in seeing something coming together. I used it to capture events for my team and play them back to the organisation as an end of year poem. It surprised and delighted people and soon that too became a tradition.
In all of these I didn’t start with the end in mind. I simple started. The process of writing became thinking by doing, and slowly perhaps more valuable than other outputs I had created. I was exploring something differently. I wrote to fix something as a challenge, but then I wrote to lose myself in the experience. Now I largely write to help others see differently, writing itself being one of the ways I do that myself.
No Spoilers
I am not the sort of person that reads the end of the book first and then settles in for a story that no longer holds suspense. I take the enjoyment form the whole story - build up, peak, ending. The journey through the book is very much how we absorb enough to remember the ending long after the cover is closed. Why would we skip the joy of that?
I can’t help thinking that we are doing some of that but not calling it a spoiler. I don’t mean skipping to the end of the Netflix series because you don’t have time to watch all the episodes. I mean the sort of stuff where we’re beginning to use AI as a tool.
As I’ve been writing my second book, I’ve gone to great lengths to ensure that I do the writing and not AI for the obvious reason of ownership. But when it comes to other types of written documents, a report, an overview, a performance summary, an email response, how much is too much? Is less AI, more? I don’t think everybody shares my thinking.
This is exactly where our use of AI is short circuiting thinking. That may work for mindless admin and repetitive tasks that give little joy but do we go too far?
As we race to adopt AI and drive productivity and greater intelligence, I do believe we need to preserve critical thinking alongside it. Writing builds communication and creativity, precisely the core skills we need to embrace alongside our tech journey. Strangely I don’t see the commitment to developing these skills in any way like the commitment to dive in and try AI, or to sign up and learn it formally. I don’t think I’ll be on my own in noticing that the adoption of AI challenges that very aspect of my writing that I value.
If we use AI to shortcut processes and reach outcomes more quickly, be that the year-end reflection, the poem of thanks, even the strategy document, we skip the process that makes the contents better, more refined. We miss building the thinking muscle.
Show The Working Out
AI can give us outputs, but it cannot give us the thinking, questionably not the enjoyment either if we skip to the end. These only happen when we do the work ourselves.
I see the same challenge with my kids, now grown-up using calculators for school. It’s quicker, the answer pops up, but it is hit and miss or more accurately all or nothing in terms of points on an exam that ways. I always remember having to show how I got there, gaining marks show for my working out. Again, it was learning how to do things yourself first, then automate.
It’s not that we need to do everything ourselves. I’m a huge fan of leveraging technology but not when it takes away the things that will help us exist in tandem alongside it as humans. Thinking is like any muscle, if you don’t use it, you lose it.
I believe the joy is in the journey from A to B, not just the destination. The same is true for the process of writing for me. It helps me to refine my thoughts, to sharpen my argument and hopefully to appeal to you to do the same, or at least think carefully and slowly about not doing it.
Let me know what and indeed how you think and how you protect and develop your thinking skills.
Have a great week.
Fiona
Look again. See what was always there.