I have always believed that writing things is the easiest way to think clearly, or to expose how unclear your thinking was in the first place. My mind is full of blog post titles and ideas that “feel” developed, and yet never leave the confines of my head. In the rare case that my ideas start to hit paper, the words usually start to taper off after a paragraph.

I have also felt that my ability to communicate clearly has atrophied over the past 18 months. I am afraid that if this trend continues, I will soon forget all of the good blog post titles and ideas that I have, and then I will no longer have any of the communication skills necessary to come up with new ones, let alone write about them. In order to address these concerns head on, I’ve committed myself to writing every day for at least 30 minutes. I hope that many of the things I write about will see the light of day, but I can’t promise all of them will.

My effort here is part of a broader effort I’m taking to “just do things.” I recently transitioned out of the military. Most of the last 5 years of my life was built on the idea of “you CANNOT just do things.” I enjoyed working in the military, and I loved the people, but I spent almost everyday yearning for the freedom to be able to do anything I wanted to do. On the other side I’ve realized I didn’t spend anytime thinking about what those things are.

I’m not actually fond of the phrase “you can just do things.” It kind of functions as a euphemism for agency, but it lacks direction and clarity. I also think that most of the people that say “you can just do things” are probably picturing “the thing” as b2b saas.

What kind of things do I want to do? Why do I want to do them? What does the first step look like? I’m not naturally a planner, and I agree that bias for action is the right way to go. In the military (don’t let me fool you, I did absolutely nothing cool or noteworthy) I believe the phrase people use is “developing the situation through action.” But in order to do that, you need to find yourself in a situation to begin with. How do I get there? These are the questions I’m trying to answer.

I also believe that there is a broader trend of “convergence” happening right now that I’d like to avoid. In this case, I am specifically referring to the “convergence” of ideas and thoughts of individuals who are frequent users of the information firehoses of Twitter and TikTok, or who regularly offload their thinking to LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude. Agency and clarity have always mattered; however, I believe they will matter even more moving forward. By forcing myself to write, I hope to recognize my own mindless opinions and lazy thoughts.

That’s all for now, my 30 minutes is up :)