Writing down unfiltered thoughts enhances self-knowledge

The problem I have with this is that my thoughts come 10 or 20 times quicker than I can write them down. And while doing this writing exercise I’ll have meta-thoughts about the writing and the exercise. The thoughts hopelessly outrun the writing, and also the train of thoughts will be wildly different from what it would be when not attempting to write it down. I guess one still learns something from the exercise, but it’s quite a frustrating experience.

There’s a black mirror episode in the future about how LLMs trained on people’s discarded drafts start outing them for having disfavored opinions.

Maybe through people’s digital AI ghosts (AIs made from people’s content after they die) start spouting racist stuff.

So people are surprised to learn their friends and heroes were racist/capitalist/nickel back fans/etc

Ends up being a programming error that didn’t properly account for boundaries.

That’s the end of my expected story idea. But I best google and Microsoft are training off every character written, not just what makes it to your final 3,000.

> Just write about your day if you need to.

In past, I had the habit of laying in bed and not being able to fall asleep because I was pondering about "bad" things that happened that day, or pondering about things going to happen the next day where I didn't feel confident about the outcome, or my role (or similar).

I kept this a little vague, I think the kind of events that keep you away from sleeping may be different for everyone. And if you have the habit of being in bed awake for longer time, you know why that is anyway.

To get to the point: Doing a daily writing basically wiped out the problem entirely for me. Nowadays, when I can't sleep, it is because I ate too much too late.

I do my writing once per day, usually close to bed time. I write about relatively noteworthy things ("another day of being too lazy to progress on hobby thing XY" is a pretty common one), then go a bit on a tangent maybe, why that is and if it's actually that bad. I try to be mostly gentle to myself here and keep it positive. If things happen that annoy me (neighbours annoying, cashier rude, big train delay, whatever), I of course write them down too, and also go on a tangent. Can I do something about this? Are there maybe good reasons for it, which I didn't think or care of the moment it happened, etc?

Basically, do the thing you would do while laying in bed and pondering things - the difference is, when you are not in bed, and writing, you do it in a more constructive, brief way. For events the next day (difficult meeting etc.) nail down the worst case, the way it will likely go, the things you for sure do not wanna do/say.

And it weeds out the desire to unwrap all that crap once more as soon as you lay down. Which is the whole point of the exercise, basically.

Do I read these things ever again? Most often not, honestly. But I maybe change my opinion on that, and if so, they are available.

FWIW, I write these on computer, not pencil and paper. Lowers the friction for me, and is fine. Most often it's in the range of 150-400 words, roughly guessed.

I think a lot of people put too much pressure on themselves when it comes to the advice "writing your thoughts down". Perfectionism, or the memories of being forced to take notes in school, kicks in and you start to look for how-to:s, format and guides.

Very similar to meditation. The best meditation advice I got was to just sit down, focus on doing nothing and be OK with being bored. Not some breathing techniques, how to focus your mind, posture etc. That comes later, very naturally, after you get curious about improvements.

Same goes for writing down thoughts. Just take a blank A4 paper from the printer and write away. Not sure what to write? Write about that, the fact that you're not sure what to write. Throw the paper away if you don't like the thoughts you see, or at least do it with that mindset. It's not about writing something novel, just as meditating is not about reaching some enlightenment

Good to hear my livejournal was more than just bad teenage poetry