Now, language is to the mind precisely what the arch is to the tunnel. The power of thinking and the power of excavation are not dependent on the words in the one case, on the mason-work in the other; but without these subsidiaries, neither process could be carried on beyond its rudimentary commencement.

writing—and reading, seriously, the writings of others—is a way to collect stepping stones: ideas that have been stabilized enough that they can carry us as we walk deeper into the thought space.

By writing something down and making sure it is solid, we can offload that thought from working memory and instead use it as a building block for the next step of the thought.

The hypothesis here is that if you work hard on a problem, you soak your subconscious with it. Wrestling with a problem helps you build a mental model of what you know and what you don’t—providing the subconscious with building blocks to work with. (You can’t have genuine intuition and inspiration in areas where you lack knowledge.) Then, once you... See more