How Writing Leads to Understanding

There is no shortage of content online advising people to read more books.

I’m in favor of spending more effort reading relative to what most people do today. Books are like blog posts but with one-hundred times the effort involved in their creation.

My claim is that reading is over-rated and writing is under-rated with respect to gaining understanding of a new subject. This is because reading promotes awareness, but rarely deepens understanding.

Why Reading only Broadens Familiarity

Casual reading is a fantastic way to gain familiarity and exposure to new ideas and concepts. But the effect on understanding is marginal. You can’t materially increase your understanding of a concept by pumping up your familiarity.

We need to actually shift direction to break through familiarity. For non-intellectual activities, this is obvious. You can’t learn how to surf by reading about it. You need to be in the water to begin to develop understanding.

But there’s a whole category of other, sometimes less physical pursuits like economics, art, philosophy, programming. Books enjoy a monopoly as the store of knowledge for these domains. And so you read and consume information, but never feel like you actually understanding what you’re reading well enough to eloquently tell your friend about.

Writing is Different

When it comes to understanding and forming ideas, writing is the act where growth occurs.

Distilling ideas from what we read into our own words exposes the areas where what we imagined was understanding only stood sloppy familiarity. It’s uncomfortable. But similar to most other things worth achieving in life. You can try it whenever you read a passage you find striking: close the book, and write what the author’s point was. You can’t open the book back up until you start writing. It’s not fun.

Similar to Physical Strength, we gain understanding through the uncomfortable process of challenging ourselves beyond what is familiar.