Further resources:

Find a note-taking app you like. Download it across your devices.
Write one goal you want to achieve this week.
At the end of the week, reflect on whether you achieved your goal. If not, why? What were the bottlenecks?
When you come across advice that you find useful, write it down.
When you notice a thought that you want to remember, write it down.

http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html
https://slab.com/blog/stripe-writing-culture/
https://www.levelshealth.com/podcasts/78-a-deep-dive-on-written-communications-sam-corcos-david-perell/
https://review.firstround.com/an-exact-breakdown-of-how-one-ceo-spent-his-first-two-years-of-company-building
https://koolaidfactory.com/writing-in-public-inside-your-company/

I write to process how I’m feeling, think clearly and capture ideas that will be valuable to my future self.

I write to remember important advice that I want to apply in my life. Stored in a ‘Novelty Index’, I score the advice based on how much it stood out to me at the time.1

I write a weekly update for my therapist. This is a useful forcing function to reflect on my personal life. When I’m feeling my best, what do I notice? When I’m feeling my worst, what do I notice?

Much of my time at TCLA is spent writing, whether it’s an update before a meeting, strategy planning or tackling a problem that I don’t have the answer to. We are building a ‘writing culture’, with each team member producing a weekly check in to reflect on the past week and establish their goals for the coming week. The long-term view is to build an internal system so robust that anyone in the team has the information they need to perform any task to a successful degree.

I believe more people would benefit from developing a writing practice and building a system to capture information.

The process has taught me how to be more intentional about the way I live my life and how to hold myself accountable to my goals. With more information, I am better able to think for myself, which couldn’t be more important as the online world becomes filled with more advice and ‘content’.

How do you get started?

The key is to start simple. As with many habits, make the barriers to begin exceptionally low and you are more likely to be consistent.

Here are my suggestions:

That’s it.

The beauty of having a digital system is that it’s editable and searchable. Over time, you will build a backlog of useful thoughts, notes and lessons, which you can draw upon at any moment.

An idea borrowed from Julian Shapiro