thinking

Writing increases your rate of revelation. This is true irrespective of the subject because writing is a process of reflection, assertion, and iteration.

Writing clarifies your own ideas. Writing begets new ideas too. Writing lets you explore ideas in depth even if you won’t have time to act on them all. Writing shows people how you think and lets ... See more

If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it. And someone who never writes has no fully formed ideas about anything nontrivial.

While we naturally understand that writing is a good way to share ideas with others, we under-appreciate just how much good writing helps us think about an idea ourselves. Writing is not only a means of communication, it enables us to practice reasoning.

thinking in categories would interfere with my ability to freely pattern-match

One of the problems with being "rational" in your own estimation is that you are probably only being rational about one dimension of a surprisingly complex situation