reasons to share

There are plenty of reasons to write this blog and share your perspective.

Recently, however, I had a few experiences that really reinforced the benefits to me.

My writing has always reflected what I spend my time thinking about - which of late has been a lot of engineering as I learn a new skill.

At lunch the other day a friend remarked regarding my blog:

1. It’s great that I’m writing about what I’m learning
2. A lot of it’s very basic

Don’t I know it.

Still, I happily write about the basics and I do so for a few reasons, most notably:

1. Basics do not imply that everyone understands it. Take my recent post about .preventDefault(). I didn’t even know it was an option until I came across an instance where I wanted to stop my forms from reloading the page on submission. Now I do. Writing it down a) reinforced the lesson and b) meant that I now have a reference to it (that’s, hopefully, more polished than my notes).
2. It’s amazing how quickly we forget what we used to not know. Once you learn how to ride a bicycle, you don’t really think about it. You just do it. If you can’t recall what it was like to not know, then it’s pretty hard to teach. After all, you wouldn’t even know what to teach!

I’ve also been having a lot of conversations with new folks - a by-product of that’s what coffee chats and interviewing will do!). That’s given me an opportunity to talk about things that I like and has shown that not everyone spends as much time reading about / experimenting with productivity enhancements as I do.

Yesterday, as an example, I was able to recommend Cal Newport’s book Deep Work to three different people who had never heard of Cal or Deep Work.

Cal’s work has literally changed my perspective on life and the way that I operate, so it’s a little difficult for me to envision that others haven’t heard of him (he’s not exactly an unknown quantity either - he’s a NYTimes Best Seller). Yet, here I was, faced by smart people who had never crossed paths with the ideas.

Even when you think there’s no point, because everyone already knows, you may be surprised by what you can teach just by putting your thoughts out there.