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1/23/2017: On Learning By Keyboard

· 2 min read
Patrick Pace
Patrick Pace
guy that wants to come up with a profound title

Guidelines for writing my thinking documents.

I should only have guidelines that protect me from veering into showmanship. I shouldn’t turn this into some legalistic, neurotic pursuit. I should try to remain true to what I naturally do, which is write to think. The only difference is that I’m revealing my inner dialogue to others.

So how does a person think out loud? Or more accurately, how does a person who naturally fixates on appearing like he has everything figured out think out loud and still be authentic in doing so?

  • If you don’t need it for you to understand what you’re talking about, don’t add it.
  • You don’t have to make it pretty sounding. You don’t care about that as often when writing for yourself.
  • This is not an academic paper. Editing it into sterility is not only too time-consuming, it removes the natural flow of thought that you’d like to keep intact. Mistakes, learning—these are natural processes of learning. Duh.
  • You’ll forget these or care more about your appearance at times. If that happens, it’s just another mistake that you’ll have to allow to be public! Ha.
  • Develop those thoughts that would drive you to develop them without others knowing you did. Don’t develop thoughts that you only think others would care that you developed, and don’t hide thoughts that you don’t think others would care about.
  • You’ll probably add or remove some of these guidelines later. That’s okay. You’re also learning how to post inner dialogue… In fact, by the time this is posted (see below), I will probably have gone through these a few times.
  • Here’s a fun one. When should I post this document and the document on how to edit these documents prior to posting? I know that at least in part I want to post them now to preempt all the mistakes that I will post later. Sort of a, “The mistakes you read are on purpose, and I know they’re there, and I know better than them now, so don’t think I don’t know what I’m talking about.” Kind of defeats the purpose of what you’re learning is probably better. So, post them chronologically.