[chao-]

I write the words that I hear in my head, as though I am speaking. With the exception of timed, in-class essays, I always turned in papers far in excess of any minimum during high school.

In college, I took a constructive writing course because I thought "Hey, easy A!" After the second or third week, the professor told me that, while the class had a word minimum, I would also be given a separate word maximum. She said I needed to learn brevity and simplicity, before anything else.

The point being: I was able to cruise through high school with my longwindedness as a cheat code, never stressing about minimum lengths, despite my writing being crap in other ways.

Although I have regressed in the two decades since, it helped me a good deal. I am grateful to that professor for doing that.

[Swizec]

I write a lot and have on several occasions tried dictation as an initial draft authoring step. It was trash every time.

Good for thinking through a concept but unsalvageable in the edit phase. Easier to throw away and rewrite now that you know what to say.

Nowadays I like conversation as an ideating step. Talk to a bunch of people, try to explain yourself until they get it, see what questions they ask. Sometimes in HN threads like this :)

Then write it down.

You get super high signal writing where every sentence is load bearing. I’ve had people take my documents and share them around the company as “this is how it’s done”

It can take weeks of work to produce a 500 word product vision document. And then several months to implement, even with AI.

[chao-]

Hmm... when I really care about the quality of something, I basically write what I think/speak, then try to edit it down by half. I don't find it unsalvageable, but the editing does require an order of magnitude more time than the initial draft of thoughts vomited into the keyboard.

[Swizec]

> I basically write what I think/speak

Me too. Try speech to text one day, you may find that you'll use 2x the words than you do with a typed vomit draft. I was surprised

[skirmish]

> It can take weeks of work to produce a 500 word product vision document.

Don't you get dinged as a slow performer? Management expects x5 speed on everything now that AI is available.

[Swizec]

> Don't you get dinged as a slow performer?

No because the document is not the work. Management wants someone to figure out the solution to their problems. The document is just a step in solutioning.

Without the doc, others would have to re-do all that work if you get hit by a bus. Or you’d be stuck in endless meetings conveying the vision instead of figuring out the next problem.

Document length is inversely proportional to the quality of your thinking/insight. When you create fluff, everyone can see you didn’t do the work.

[bumblehean]

It's going to depend on the type of team and environment you work in. Probably on how senior you are as well.

If your boss asks you for specific documents and expects a quick turnaround, and you regularly take 3 weeks or whatever to produce them, then yeah probably.

If your boss generally leaves you alone to find and solve problems on your own, then probably not.

[xoxxala]

I design boardgames and it's easy to write a lot of rules. It's more difficult to write concise rules. Most of my time is spent editing rules to their absolute minimum.

"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had time to make it shorter." - Blaise Pascal

[Geezus_42]

Reminds me of how I document procedures. I spend a significant amount of time thinking about how to write things so that I provide enough information for a Jr to understand each step (and hopefully learn something) without over explaining. Organization is also important.

[user_7832]

I ctr-F'd to search for this quote and am happy to see it mentioned.

Brevity is an art, and it is hard.

[aDyslecticCrow]

I had the opposite issue. Writing was agony and every section would be written, reviewed and rewritten to get my point across; only to be tortured by a miminum word count that was 20% away after saying all i cound think of saying.

I've gotten better at phrasing myself adequately in one go. Rute mechanical memorization has also made writing itself cheaper. (read my username)

I can now yap quite adequately over text, yet i regularly find AIs at a minimum 2x as verbose as my preferred phrasing after manual word mashing.

[amoss]

feels like this comment could be shorter

[lynguist]

But how is your writing fast enough that you don’t pause and drown the hearing in your head?

[chao-]

When writing on paper, either I will pause thinking enough, or will sometimes lose where a thought was going. I am much faster at typing than writing, so I end up with more, then edit/delete afterwards (if I feel like writing well). I am much worse at writing long-form thoughts than I was back in college, now that 99% of what I do is type.

An odd tradeoff of my verbal-based writing seems to be that I am a fairly slow reader. I read aloud in my head, albeit a bit faster than I could speak, but I still hear the words as an internal monologue.

When discussing this a few times with friends, I've learned how different everyone's experiences are when bridging thoughts=>speaking, thoughts=>writing, thoughts=>typing, and text=>thoughts (or even text=>understanding).

[Exoristos]

I'd like to see touch-typing at >60 wpm a standard attribute of adulthood again.