Whenever I think of writing anything on my blog, I immediately start judging the worth of what I am about to write. For a long time, I believed that writing was worth it only if I had something new to offer. Under this belief, I shied away from writing about things and ideas that I had learned about, knowing that there was someone who had already written about them more lucidly and comprehensively than I ever could.

Lately, I have experienced an advantage of writing that offsets this need for originality.

Writing about a topic is like applying the Feynman technique. In my mind, I am forgiving of the gaps in my knowledge. Soon after I start to write about a topic, I realise how little I know about it. It becomes apparent that whatever knowledge I have acquired is superficial at best. There are a lot of faults and inconsistencies in my understanding, which I immediately imagine a reader pointing out. In the end, it comes down to about being confident enough in your knowledge to be able to teach it to someone who knows nothing about it.

An advantage of publishing your writing lies in throwing yourself open to criticism and judgement. The pressure of writing something bulletproof motivates you towards learning more about it.

An approach that I find useful is to simplify what I am writing as much as possible. The topic at hand must be distilled to its fundamentals and built up from there. If I can explain something in simple terms, I know that I have really understood it.

A better way to look at the blog would be as a public notebook, or a log of my learning journey.

Hope to write more with this mindset :)

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