9 Reasons You Should Write All the Time

Writing is a powerful habit that can improve your performance in several ways. It also makes you smarter, more relaxed, and more disciplined. Here are 9 reasons you should build a writing habit of your own.

I write. A lot. Emails. Blog posts. Books. More books. Articles. Tweets. I’m surprised I don’t have full-on carpal tunnel syndrome. Writing is draining, laborious, frustrating, and tiring.

You should write too.

What?!?! Mike, you just said a whole bunch of negative things about writing. Why are you telling me to write too?

There are 9 great reasons you should write regardless of your role or occupation.

1. Writing improves your vocabulary. When I write, I tend to be precise with my words. When I don’t know what a word means but it sounded cool when I heard it, I look it up. When I use new words in written form, it solidifies their meaning and use in my vocabulary. I’m then more comfortable using those words in conversation. That enables me to express my ideas more clearly and intelligently than I could with a limited vocabulary.

2. Writing clarifies your ideas. When you write about a concept, the vague becomes clear. Writing forces you to take the generalities and amorphous or ambiguous thoughts in your head and put structure to them. It solidifies ideas. It generates new insights and understanding of your thoughts thereby making them more concrete concepts that can be acted upon.

3. Writing alleviates stress. When I write, I set aside all the stressors that are typically swirling in my mind. Believe me, there are plenty of them. My writing pushes those thoughts aside – albeit temporarily – while I focus on the topic at hand. That timeout from my stressors gives my nervous system a break from being overloaded.

4. Writing creates business opportunities. I get calls and emails all the time from people who say “I read your book/post/article and loved it. Would you be interested in teaching/coaching me on that topic? Because I have a pile of money I want to throw at you.” Um, yeah. Content marketing 101. I’ve had opportunities to travel to Greece, China, Florida, Utah, California, and other great places because of my writing.

5. Writing makes you more marketable. When you write a resume, cover letter, networking email, or any other missive designed to get you hired, the quality of your written words will impact – positively or negatively – your job prospects. A poorly written resume that’s unoriginal, unclear, or intellectually lazy always ends up at the bottom of the pile.

6. Writing builds discipline. Writing is a habit. Having deadlines for yourself for blog posts, books, articles, or other documents builds muscles that enable you to stick to a schedule. You learn to deliver great products on time because you better understand planning, deadlines, and meeting expectations. Those skills can then be applied to other areas of your life or career.

7. Writing helps you be more convincing. Think about the last recommendation you made at work. Was it approved? If so, the quality of your writing likely had something to do with that. If not, the quality of your writing likely had something to do with that.

8. Writing expands your knowledge base. Many times when I write, I write about new topics or old topics from new angles. I’m constantly on the lookout for new ideas and concepts that I can incorporate into my writing. Sometimes they’re “new to me” topics that I never knew about but when I’m inspired to write about them, I go research them first and, in the process, expand my understanding of our world.

9. Writing makes you sharper. The ability to quickly form an idea and share it in an understandable way is not a gift – it’s a skill developed over many years. Writing accelerates how quickly you can build that skill. For example, this blog post took exactly 12 minutes to write. I said “I need a post. I need a topic. Okay. 9 ideas about writing. Go!” Why 9? It seemed like an appropriate challenge. Why the topic of writing? Because I have a lot of writing to do these days. I have a few blog posts due and I just signed up with my publisher to write another book. I’ve already written 10,000 words of it and the contract was just signed last week. Years ago this post would have taken me 45 minutes to an hour to write. Now, I think in a much more structured way and the ideas flow more quickly – as do the words. Years of writing practice built that skill for me.

There you go. 9 reasons to build a writing habit. Try it. You might like it. If you’re interested, feel free to submit a guest blog post and we’ll look at carrying it here. Drop me an email if you’d like the guest post parameters. Good luck with building your own writing habit.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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Photo: medieval writing by Hans Splinter