Writing is the highest form of thinking
How it all began
A little introduction
Writing — that’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Even as a child, I was fascinated by the work of an author who managed to tell entire stories over hundreds of pages and create a variety of characters and landscapes. As a child, I read mostly fantasy novels. After reading books like Eragon, I also wanted to write a fantasy novel. However, it never came to that.
Now, almost 20 years later, I read mostly non-fiction and scientific articles, and when I write, it’s mostly scientific articles. That’s because I now work as a research assistant at a university. My field of activity is electrical power engineering. My second passion is economics, which I was already immersed in even before studying industrial engineering.
During my studies I noticed that I had a lot of fun working out and writing down term paper topics. Unlike my fellow students, I also enjoyed writing my bachelor’s and master’s theses.
Today, as a research assistant, I can do exactly that. I work out topics and write down my thoughts on them.
At the moment, I’m writing a book on the side about our monetary system and the economy of the future. During a telephone conversation, a friend told me that books will play a lesser role in the future and that he rather suspects that portals and short texts, such as those found on Medium and Substack, will be the future. In this context he also mentioned: “Writing is the highest form of thinking”. That’s when it “clicked” with me, and I started thinking about this sentence. Subconsciously, I was aware of this fact, but I had never actively thought about it.
If I now think of the term papers, theses, scientific articles, or the book, I had to understand the topic in a first step.
But often one finds that one has understood the theory fundamentally and can understand it. However, being able to reproduce a fact or explain it to someone outside the field requires a completely different level of understanding.
This is where writing comes in. Writing represents exactly this process. You explain a topic in text form. This requires thinking about a structure and content. This structure and content must then be reproduced in one’s own words. However, this is only possible when I have fully understood the topic.
Education system
This trains our minds to think clearly and in a structured way — a quality that is important for our whole life. For this reason, “free writing” should be encouraged more already in school.
What would I like to write about here in the future
The world is currently facing many different problems: Climate change, pollution, famines, wars, loss of freedom, etc.
For me, there is one common denominator in this context that can be both the problem and the solution, and that is economics. As mentioned above, I am interested in economic issues. These can be both microeconomic and macroeconomic in nature. That means I will write about topics like the monetary system, economic policy, investing money, changes in society and much more. In this context, I would also like to always, if possible, refer to current developments in the world. That means, questions will be pursued such as: How are climate change and economics related? What to do in a world where the state is becoming more and more encroaching and restricting freedom? How do I find my place in this world? How can I fight against such systems on a small scale or how do I stand up for something better? At this point I would like to note that I myself still have a lot to learn and have to find out a lot for myself. Therefore, I don’t want to write so much like a teacher, but rather write about my experiences and ideas. Writing should help me to look at topics from different perspectives and maybe inspire someone or make them think through different angles.
See you soon
With that in mind, I’m excited to see how my thinking will change as a result of this writing activity.
I appreciate your feedback, whether you agree with me or not, so please comment, highlight or clap.
If you’re interested in the books I’m reading, check them out here (I update the list regularly):
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