Writing Is Objectively Superior to Speaking as a Communication Method (2020)

That being said, some easy/mindless tasks (such as doodling in this example) can actually improve focus, which might be mistaken for multitasking: https://university-relations.umn.edu/blog/2021/07/16/doodlin...

I can imagine that background noise, like a podcast, might not hinder some people's focus; it may even improve it. However, if they are not focusing closely on both the podcast AND on the other task they are performing, I would not call that multitasking. For example, I listen to the radio when I drive long distances because it stops me from feeling bored or fatigued, but I don't consider it multitasking because the driving itself is mindless in this scenario. As soon as I need to focus more actively on driving, I stop paying attention to the radio.

I am extremely introverted, I struggle to identify facial expressions, I am highly adept at reading, and I'm also a bit hard of hearing (what I think may be a verbal processing disorder in my brain, because I have had several hearing tests and they have not been able to find anything wrong). You would think this means that I agree with the author of this article.

Yet I find verbal communication still very valuable when it is paired with facial expressions and body communication (especially hand gestures). Some concepts are extremely difficult to get across without these additional elements.

There have been many times that I've read extensively about a topic and struggled to imagine what they are describing, then watched a YouTube video of someone simply standing in front of a camera and describing the topic, and only then does it finally click for me. It goes the other way, too, of course (hearing it first without understanding and then reading it to have to click), but it suggests to me that both are valuable for understanding.

If I had to choose only one, I would choose reading. However, being limited to only reading would reduce my ability to learn about complex topics.

As other commenters have said, it ends up more like a stream of consciousness and not something well thought out. My word choice isn’t as good. The prose just kind of sucks. I don’t learn much about myself from these sorts of entries.

This is something I’ve simply accepted will happen because I do this on days that I don’t have time to sit in front of a keyboard for 30m. Maybe having more well defined prompts would help improve the quality of these entries. I’m not sure.

It usually goes something like this.

"I am A Very Smart Person. I do not understand the point of Thing X. Therefore, Thing X must be useless and anyone that cares about Thing X must be an imbecile."

The core issue here is that the only thing this kind of argument does is portray the person making the argument as incapable of even conceiving the idea that there can be other points of view and other ways of interacting with the world than their own. In this case, to the point that after making a fully subjective argument, the author claims that their point is "objective" seemingly due to lack of self-awareness.

I am aware that the author is autistic and that autism usually comes with a certain difficulty when it comes to putting oneself into other peoples' shoes and a certain lack of self-awareness, but the self-aggrandizing tone of this little essay is simply very tiring.