Writing without an output isn’t worth doing
All writing needs somewhere to end up, and the medium can vary quite a bit:
- A public blog, braindump or website
- A useful reference for me or others to refer back to
- A personal collection to reflect on
Without one of those I don’t think there’s much point writing it down.
The problem with the claim as I’ve written it is that the third option is broad enough to cover nearly everything. Almost any note can be called a personal collection to reflect on, so on that definition hardly any writing gets excluded and the claim doesn’t really do any work. If I want it to mean something then the third category needs tightening, probably to writing I actually do go back to rather than writing I might in principle.
Opposes
- Opposes
- the Feynman position, which is that the writing is where the work happens rather than being a record of work done elsewhere. On that view a page I never look at again has already done its job, and asking about the output is asking the wrong question. See the source note on Notetaking is only thinking if something comes out of it for the provenance of that quote, which is shakier than it usually gets presented.
I lean the other way, though I should be honest that Journalling is the obvious test case and I’ve never persisted with it long enough to find out. Failing to see the value in something I never stuck at isn’t strong evidence that there’s no value in it.
Bounds
- Bounds
- Notetaking is only thinking if something comes out of it. These are close enough that they’re worth keeping apart deliberately. That note asks whether any thinking happened, and the test is whether I synthesised or just transcribed. This one asks whether the thing I produced is worth keeping. They come apart in the Feynman case, where the thinking clearly happened and the artefact is still disposable.
- Bounds
- A Writing Inbox is Needed to Develop Substantial Work, which is about the machinery for getting from a fleeting note to an output rather than about whether the output is needed.
Feeds
- Feeds
- Why I Write
Sources
- Taking notes on all content you consume, makes content consumption more intentional, which links here
Cite this note
@online{hoque2026writing,
author = {Sabiqul Hoque},
title = {Writing without an output isn’t worth doing},
year = {2026},
url = {https://sabicool.github.io/Braindump/notes/20260829123132-writing_requires_an_output.html},
organization = {Braindump}
}