The Huberman Notes · Follow
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Every once in a while, we get a notification from California to upgrade our devices. The new operating systems look slightly different and presumably work a bit better.
Wouldn’t it be grand to have a similar upgrade to the most powerful device we have — our brains? A whole industry of nootropics, brain-enhancing technology, and smart-this-and-that work five(+) days a week to satiate that need.
I applaud those businesses — and if you’re selling, I’m buying. I sit squarely in your market. And as you were intrigued by the headline, chances are you and I are much alike; we’re kindred contributors in the positive-sum-game of capitalism.
As I feel my empathy for you growing by the second and we continue to cultivate our bond — I’ll let you in on how I made an upgrade to my mind.
This upgrade is free and always available. It does not require frequent maintenance from Silicone Valley. It’s also less Californian and more substantial, I’ll argue.
And it’s located right at the end of your fingertips.
The act of writing may strike you as archaic and mundane. It has been around for thousands of years, and it’s by no means the latest in tech.
Some may also dismiss it as irrelevant, as they don’t identify as a writer. Nor do they have any interest in showing their prose to anyone.
People, in general, have a very limited idea of writing. They see its utility for grocery lists, keeping records, and answering emails. They assume writing is only about communicating and recording thoughts you’ve already had.
In other words — you think, and then you write.
The shift I’d like to introduce flips the direction of that last sentence: you write to think.
Use writing as a means to think! Writing and thinking happen simultaneously and synergistically. For all intents and purposes, they are the same: writing is thinking given form.
Kevin Kelly, Co-Founder of WIRED and an overall interesting guy, shares this sentiment:
Recording and communicating remain essential functions, but the most potent use of writing comes from its ability to activate your mind and enhance your ability to think.
Let’s take a closer look at how this works.
A crashed, or poorly performing computer is often easy to diagnose. You forced it to do too many things at once.
This picture maps on to our cognitive faculties as well. Not closing down your mental tabs and running too many operations at once will not do wonders for your brain’s performance.
Like computers, our minds have working memory capacities. The demand on that capacity is what psychologists call “cognitive load.” It’s the amount of information that we ask our conscious minds to process at any given time.
When that load surpasses our working memory, we can’t process anything more — as hard as we might try.
Most of us tend to overestimate the amount of cognitive load we can handle. For a long time, it was believed that we can hold up to seven things in our heads before it becomes too much. That number came from Princeton psychologist George Miller, who published his classic paper in 1956.
Since then, other researchers have suggested that seven may be too high. Some scientists today believe we can only think about three or four things before our brain overloads.
This doesn’t sound too impressive — but if it’s what we have to work with, we better optimize.
How? We write things down.
When you commit words to paper, you reduce the cognitive load and free up your brain’s capability. It’s the equivalent of increasing your computer’s capacity by closing tabs and shutting down programs.
A quirk with your perception can be leveraged with great benefit. We respond differently and with more ease to stimuli in our environment than our internal thoughts.
Our minds are simply better at handling information when it’s outside our cranium rather than roaming around inside it.
This perceptual shift presents us with an exceedingly powerful tool to augment our ability to think. By converting our internal thought process to an external form, we get more options.
When we reinstate the same information, our brains relate to it in a new way.
With more flexibility, we can draw on additional cognitive resources and process the same information in a new and different way.
To appreciate this subtle shift, you may look back to your previous experience. With the right search query, I’m sure you can think of a time when merely talking about it solved a problem. Perhaps your counterpart never uttered a word, yet you found yourself with more insight and an easier problem to solve.
A vague obstacle can bounce around and grow in your mind — only to deflate into nothing or hit you on the head with a solution once your mind perceives it differently.
And even if an externalized problem remains a significant challenge, you’ll be more capable of dealing with it.
Reading and consuming information is highly recommended. Famously, the materially most successful people in the world read way above average.
Even if reading is universally prescribed, it has a lack that can produce a sense of false confidence.
Reading and consuming information is essentially a passive act. The messenger talks at you, while you remain a quiet recipient. It’s a monologue where it’s too easy to lean back and not engage.
It’s one-way communication that breeds passivity.
I’ve closed several insightful and practical books with a feeling of understanding. I got the gist and enjoyed hearing about the strategies and ways of thinking.
Yet, a depressing number of these strategies and insights remain only a faint memory, at best. My passive understanding failed to translate into actions or tangible insights.
Engaging with information through writing and ‘thinking on paper’ doesn’t permit you to stay inactive.
Writing takes you from being a passive recipient to becoming an active participant.
You enter into a dialogue with what you’re learning about. Writing enables you to personalize the understanding and formulate the insights in your language. The knowledge gets customized to the particulars of your situation and context.
This passive/active distinction is a crucial one. Author James Clear touches on a related point worth mentioning:
Reflection is best facilitated through writing.
Writing engages you on a much deeper level. It fosters a form of ‘involved knowing’ that permeates the way you live your life.
To further investigate some of the psychological, creative, and cognitive benefits of writing, you can take a look at these articles:
If you’re done passively receiving information and would like to use writing to activate your mind, I suggest you head over to Templates for Thinking.
Templates for Thinking is designed to make you think through writing.
You’ll find templates on nearly any topic that might interest you, from behavior change and emotional learning to business and entrepreneurship.
Each template includes just enough background information to get you started, plus questions and prompts to start your thoughts.
Writing is the cognitive upgrade you need in the 21st century, and Templates for Thinking will help you take full advantage.
Begin immediately, and you’ll start to find answers at the end of your sentences.
