I’ve been writing on twitter more lately. Sometimes when I’m trying to express and idea, to generate progress I’ll think “What’s the shortest sentence I can write that convinces me I know what I’m talking about?” This is different from “What’s a simple but no simpler explanation for the reader?”
Starting a twitter thread and forcing several tweet sized chunk of ideas out are quite helpful for that. It helps get the concept clearer in my head, and then I have something out there and I can dwell on how I’d turn it into a consumable for others.
I’ve been writing A LOT on twitter lately. It’s been hella fun.
One thing that seems clear. Twitter threads are not the place to hash out deep disagreements start to finish. When you start multi threading, it gets chaotic real fast, and the character limit is a limiting force.
On the other side of things, it’s feels great for gestating ideas, and getting lots of leads on interesting ideas.
1) Leads: It helps me increase my “known unknowns”. There’s a lot of topics, ideas, disciplines I see people making offhand comments about, and while it’s rarely enough to piece together the whole idea, I often can pick up the type signature and know where the idea relates to other ideas I am familiar with. This is dope. Expand you anti-library
2): gestation: there’s a limit to how much you can squeeze into a single tweet, but threading really helps to shotgun blast out ideas. It often ends up being less step-by-step carefully reasoned arg, and more lots of quasi-independent thoughts on the topic that you then connect. Also, I easily get 5x engagement on twitter, and other people throwing in their thoughts is really helpful.
I know Raemon and crew have mentioned trying to help with more gestation and development of ideas (without sacrificing overall rigor). post-rat-twitter / strangely-earnest-twitter feels like it’s nailed the gestation part. Might be something to investigate.
I’ve been writing on twitter more lately. Sometimes when I’m trying to express and idea, to generate progress I’ll think “What’s the shortest sentence I can write that convinces me I know what I’m talking about?” This is different from “What’s a simple but no simpler explanation for the reader?”
Starting a twitter thread and forcing several tweet sized chunk of ideas out are quite helpful for that. It helps get the concept clearer in my head, and then I have something out there and I can dwell on how I’d turn it into a consumable for others.
I’ve been writing A LOT on twitter lately. It’s been hella fun.
One thing that seems clear. Twitter threads are not the place to hash out deep disagreements start to finish. When you start multi threading, it gets chaotic real fast, and the character limit is a limiting force.
On the other side of things, it’s feels great for gestating ideas, and getting lots of leads on interesting ideas.
1) Leads: It helps me increase my “known unknowns”. There’s a lot of topics, ideas, disciplines I see people making offhand comments about, and while it’s rarely enough to piece together the whole idea, I often can pick up the type signature and know where the idea relates to other ideas I am familiar with. This is dope. Expand you anti-library
2): gestation: there’s a limit to how much you can squeeze into a single tweet, but threading really helps to shotgun blast out ideas. It often ends up being less step-by-step carefully reasoned arg, and more lots of quasi-independent thoughts on the topic that you then connect. Also, I easily get 5x engagement on twitter, and other people throwing in their thoughts is really helpful.
I know Raemon and crew have mentioned trying to help with more gestation and development of ideas (without sacrificing overall rigor). post-rat-twitter / strangely-earnest-twitter feels like it’s nailed the gestation part. Might be something to investigate.
See this for the best example of rapid brainstorming, and the closest twitter has to long form content.