I always thought I couldn’t think in front of a computer.

I was wrong. I just started this new practice to write for insights from my friend Rami. It’s called free writing: open a blank page, start a timer, and write about the topic until time’s up.

I remember a couple of rules from Farza’s writing (a founder who built a fantastic simple text editor for this purpose):

• No editing

• Don’t stop to think or structure; keep writing

The intention is to create a stream of thought. It reminds me of David Perrell’s image that a writer’s mind is like a water tank filled with clean and muddy water.

The muddy water lingers at the bottom, so initially when you turn the tap on you only get brown slush. But the longer it runs, the clearer the water gets.

Your brain works the same. Your initial thoughts on a topic are lame and commonplace. But as you keep spinning your wheels, new insights emerge. You underestimate how much thinking is a volume game versus a quality game. The more you write, the more you think - the more you think, the better you think.

So start writing.

It’s a good practice because it removes the expectation of output. Writing like this gives you control over your thinking: it’s up to you to start the timer, open the page, and start typing. Maybe great ideas come. Maybe not. But you’ve done the job of showing up and writing.

You can deploy this practice in many areas of your life:

• to plan your day

• to think out loud about decisions

• to disentangle personal situations

• to draft a letter to friends or family

• to work through your emotions

• to brainstorm

This feels like the greatest hack. You get to turn on your brain by just starting to press buttons on a keyboard.

My favorite ways to use this for now:

• start each morning with a 15-20 minute session on a topic like this one.

• before the workday, take 10 minutes with the prompt: What am I working on today? Why is this the most important thing for me to work on?

• when I need to make decisions or to provide an educated take on something - 15-minute timer and write it all down. Then we can summarize to bullet points etc.

At the end of the day: what did I get done today? What do I think moved the needle the most?

A happy byproduct is this creates a valuable exhaust of context about you, how you think, your dreams, aspirations, envy, insecurities. You can use these as context for AI - to mirror what you’ve shared and find connections you couldn’t.

This hasn’t been too useful for me yet, but it’s probably a prompting skill issue.

Another place where this is applicable is for prompting or spec writing for new products. You want something that does not exist: describe it, explain your pain, what you want, the desired aesthetic vibe, etc. during a 15-minute session. You will have the most comprehensive document for LLMs to work with and create either a great prompt or a product spec.

You can also use it to clarify what you want. Clarity of purpose is like magic. When you have a clear outcome in mind, it often feels like the world falls in alignment with it. The difficult part is having that clarity. This exercise can give it to you.