Think before you write or write so that you can think?

Sandro Sirait
2 min readJan 3, 2021

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I was thinking for some minutes before I write this article.

And it was quite lengthy for me, well, yeah I know what I consider as lengthy for myself getting things done or in this case write an article until the end.

The question in the title pops up and I think for a micro second internally that well, I guess and I believe and I would like to believe in this; it is more and more that I write therefore I think.

I mean, there are some occasions that you need to think before you write. I mean it seriously, like you want to come up with some ideas or maybe some titles or the flow or the destination of where the ideas are going.

And, most importantly, maybe, I need to think about some questions that I want to answer or just some questions that I want to ponder through the writing that I am about to write later.

That makes sense. I mean that makes a lot of sense to me.

But how about, for now, we can both agree that we are committing to write without any such long thinking before the writing itself. And if you have the urge to think for such a long time (i.e. more than 5 minutes) so you just need to think through during the writing itself?

I can agree with that. And I like the suggestion of putting 5 minutes as the high bar for me to think before the writing activities can begin. So, of course, you can think ahead for example you were thinking about the title, but don’t be thinking too much.

Think while you are writing. That’s the exercise that we are trying to do.

And while you are writing like this. You are thinking. And that thinking is necessary for your well-being and as you are seeing this, you have written quite an article and look: you are doing just fine.

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