[lordswork]

This sounds like great advice. In an attempt to see if it works for me, I thought I'd give it a shot, so I set a timer for 2 minutes and started typing a response without a real idea of what I was going to say. I'd say it's pretty effective, but I do tend to fill in a lot of meaningless content as I think of what to write next. I guess the next iteration of edits can trim that out though. I could have used this in the past, and could definitely use it right now for writing some documentation that I am procrastinating on indefinitely. Thanks for the tip. This has been helpful. Not sure if I should actually post this, it's not really contributing much to the conversation, but this is an anonymous account of mine, so who cares. Timer is up.

[hansbo]

Nicely done! Not sure I could tell this was not just another HN post if you didn't explicitly say so.

[skrebbel]

I love that this is a substantially nicer read than the kind of stuff GPT generates, and the amount of human effort to produce it is pretty close.

[wittjeff]

Voice dictation is helpful for this exercise even if you type fairly well.

[digitalengineer]

I highly doubt it. It is the ACT of actually writing that forces you to think what you are doing. Using a voice assistant kills that energy. In fact: even if you -gasp- use pen and paper it would be even more effective than typing. Drop the PC, the smartphone and disconnect when doing this.

[oliveshell]

> It is the ACT of actually writing that forces you to think what you are doing.

This is incorrect. Everybody is different.

As an ADHD sorta guy, I write much, much better if I can walk around and get my blood moving while dictating compared to sitting with my butt going numb and my brain screaming out in oxidative stress agony as I try to think clearly.

[jake200]

You can take it even further by dropping the pen and paper and use a chisel and stone tablet. </s> While I agree about removing distractions, I would suggest using whatever your most efficient way of communicating is to get the idea or concept out of your head.