Write well to think well

To think well, you must write well.

Some folks might flip that equation and say that to write well, you must first think well.

That's poppycock. Here's why...

Let's suppose you are a great thinker. You are unmatched in your ability to accurately perceive the fundamental truths in a situation. You correctly surmise the emotional undertones in conversation, the personal agendas in interactions, the political nuances within an organizational, and the general constraints caused by reality.

But you suck at communicating all that wonderful insight. You cannot unpack your vision, in unambiguous and actionable formats, so that all those around you can benefit from your genius. Thus, although you actually think well (inside your head) you effectively think no better than anyone else.

What if you then took all that great perception inside your head and deliberately attempted to articulate it through writing? And what if you wanted to capture all the genius of your thoughts, and leave no room for misinterpretation by us lay people? And what if you needed to make the writing accessible - consumable - by those who can't read between the lines as well as you?

In other words, how easy do you think it would be to enable others to achieve the same effective level of genius simply by reading something you wrote?

That is the crux of this message. If you can't write very, very well...then the impact of your intelligence, of your research findings, of your political philosophies is lost. It would be as though you never had such genius thoughts in the first place.

To think well - to impact the world with great ideas - you must write well.

If you cannot write well, but you still want to impact the world with your genius...YouTube might be the way to go. Imagery does carry great ideas quite well. But only if you get the imagery right...and get the audience right, and the timing, and the medium, etc. So, really you'd still have to think just as deliberately as if you were to capture your genius in writing.

So the argument remains: write well, in order to think well.