Last few years I’ve been giving many talks and writing a lot here on github.
I’ve realised many good effects that this practice had.
- I structure and formulate my thoughts better
- Discussions time is saved
- Thoughts’ evolution is public
- My company PR is improved
- Self-education discipline is improved
Writing articles and giving talks is the best way of training of how I formulate postulates and arguments.
The process improves logical and rational thinking and in high challenge / low threat environment improves cognitive and analytical skills too.
High challenge / low threat model is described in Mary Myatt’s book. The concept is simple: learning is more effective when your curiosity is provoked and challenged, and topics you’re learning and complicated.
I post articles on github for myself and the community, so there’s no threat for my curiosity.
Also as I’m aware that my articles will be seen by people, I’m ashamed to write low-quality content, where ‘low quality’ I define as ‘not argumented well enough’.
A good feedback loop emerges naturally — more ‘I didn’t get your point’ comments I receive, more I wish to reformulate the arguments or support them better with scientific proofs.
I used to spend lots of time arguing over pretty much the same topics again and again in chats.
It’s quite hard for me to see someone wrong and resist from jumping in and spend time on explaining why the thesis is wrong.
Many times I regretted that the discussion wasn’t fruitful even though I wanted to help.
I consider this regret or the urge to jump in to be my internal conflict.
But now it seems I have successfully resolved the conflict in the following manner:
- if I see some discussion that I truly want to participate, I write down the topic and the arguments that people have
- whenever I have time, I sit and formulate my point of view and my arguments here in github article
- I then come and ‘bump’ the discussion with an article I have prepared
- I gather counter-arguments and revisit my article then to address them
Git is a great instrument to show the thoughts process evolution in time. Revising how your thought process evolves is an essential part of self-reflection.
Many times re-reading my articles I was noticing that things could have been formulated differently, easier to understand.
Another benefit of making the thought process public is that the articles are of more value for the hiring managers than any CV.
More articles I write, better I’m perceived as a specialist (well, of course if I write something of value).
Better I’m perceived as a specialist, better my company is perceived on the market.
I didn’t even think how great would writing articles and giving talks motivate me to learn more and to share more with the community. Every single github star and every single bit of feedback after a talk charge me more and more to do more for the community.