Yet Another Way that Writing Will Save Us All
Silence is an important part of the effective person’s repertoire. That may sound counterintuitive, but hear me out. Effective people are intelligent — not in that they know all sorts of facts and pieces of data — but in that they understand what is going on in their immediate environment, and can realize connections and dependencies that others can’t. This intelligence, though, comes in large part from being able to listen and to think deeply.
I’ve written before about ways to listen more effectively, and those ways all involve saying less and leveraging silence for your own benefit. The more you allow others to say, the more you can gain insight into valuable things that can help you achieve your goals.
But being silent is difficult. In order to do it, you need to be able to clear your mind of all of the nagging thoughts that muddy up your ability to listen effectively. They are noise, that drown out the signal of the things you should pay attention to. Luckily, those of us that are constantly thinking and find it hard to quiet our minds in order to better listen have a great tool at our disposal: writing.
Make the Clackity Noise
One of my favorite writers on the internet has a great piece in which he extolls the virtue of “making the clackity noise” — i.e., typing on a keyboard. Y’know, writing. Dig it:
The only way I can tell I’m relearning this is I notice that the keyboard has been making the clackity noise for several contiguous minutes. I see that words have started to come out and sometimes they’re good and almost always they’re not and increasingly I’m not all that worried about it either way.
I’ve learned that my job is to just sit down and start making the clackity noise. If I make the clackity noise long enough every day, the “writing” seems to take care of itself.
Take this and apply it to thinking, with no goal to produce something publishable. To make myself clear: I am saying that the best way to clear your mind of the noise is to write about the noise. As you write, you will think, and as you think, the noise will (after a time) quiet.
With that noise out of your head, you can get back to silence. Once you can be (mostly) silent, you can listen better. Once you listen better, you can gain more insight, make more connections, and become wiser and more effective in your endeavors — whatever they may be.
A Bonus: Writing Helps you Look Better
Anyone who would be considered a “high performer” will tell you that preparation is key to success. I can’t deny that. You know what I’m going to say don’t you? Writing is excellent preparation. Literally sitting down for 5 minutes to bang out a mini-manifesto about any given topic on which you need to make a decision gives you infinitely better chances of coming to sound conclusion — one that you feel better about.
On the heels of being able to better decide on what to think and what to do about things, you will end up feeling and looking a heck of a lot better. You’ll be less frazzled and seemingly unprepared. You’ll know your own positions and plans better. You will be calmer and more collected. You will better understand what is important to you, and who you really are. All because you put some time into sussing out your thoughts by making the clackity noise.
Writing clarifies. Writing purifies. Writing makes your thoughts into roaring engines of achievement.
So go make the clackity noise.
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