Writing down unfiltered thoughts enhances self-knowledge

A lot of people suffer a lot of anxiety around writing, and it seems like trying to lower the stakes helps: https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/on-writing-or-not

From the article:

> What if you just can't think of anything?

Just write about your day if you need to. What you did, what you read about online (including reflecting on news if you read that), what thoughts you had over the course of the day.

When I have good writing habits I can easily write 500-3000+ words about my day, and I don't have what most people would consider an interesting life. I just work from home, work on my hobbies (mostly gamedev), read articles, go to one or two social events a week (often just a family party or casual game night or meetup, nothing crazy), go to a few conventions throughout the year, and take one weeklong trip.

One year I managed to write 120,000+ words with this approach, and it likely would have been higher if I hadn't skipped a decent number of days (maybe not a lot higher, I sometimes made up for the skipped days by reflecting back as much as I could).

I'm not currently that good about it, though. In general it's been a bad year for me for writing these things. Maybe this article will help me get back into it.

> Writing What Pops into Your Head

I believe this is what I usually do when placing comments on this HN forum.

Bonus: enhanced self-knowledge and in a lot of cases, instant feedback!

Fill-in in what sense? Like a physical journal but digital?

It’s my preferred method of communication but persuasion is popular. Self-help rhetoric propagates quickly through large groups.