Write! Even if wrong

A little more than a year ago, I wrote a small New Years resolution of sorts on Twitter.

I almost forgot about this, but I guess what one chooses to declare to the world on Twitter might actually be pretty salient because I don’t typically make internet proclamations (anymore, since my xanga days circa 18 years old). 16 months and a whirlwind first year at Clover Health later, I am actually on track to feeling like “Oh yeah, I think I did do more of that”.

I have said things that I have later changed my own mind on (usually in a 180 degrees fashion) or discovered that it was frankly factually erroneous. I have pitched things as hypotheses and opinions. I say “I don’t know” a lot more readily. I ask, “Tell me more about that,” or “Can I grab you later to talk through this?”

In various forms of uncertainty, I have made myself feel a lot more comfortable with sharing first draft ideas and not worry too much about always presenting perfectly.

I let the uncomfortable feelings of somewhere between total ignorance, to embarrassment, to a blank neutrality slide past — and instead poke around the edges of what I do know until they form deeper contours of knowledge. I ask “What do you mean?” directly instead of save up the words to google later, because it’s faster and between learning about healthcare and being in a startup and diving through unfamiliar engineering domains I really do not have enough time to pretend like I know things that I don’t, and I don’t have time to not short-cut that learning path.

So, in that same spirit, I am starting this new adventure — not just saying more first-draft thoughts, but also writing them down to sift through, to record my own change of mind — vacillations towards discovering a more durable truth.