Time and time again, the same quote shows up in front of me: the brain is made for creating ideas, not keeping them.

Perhaps it is handling many brands and ideas at once, or the biology that does its job with aging, I now realize that the accumulation of thoughts is not productive unless they are transferred to a notepad. We, at least I, am very prone to forgetting things, unless I note them down.

So, here is an attempt at a notepad for me, especially as my current access to lovely Threads remains restricted, while I visit my family in Turkey (now called Türkiye, as unusual as it might be even for me to say).

If you know me on a personal level, you also know that I try to keep my messages short, yet still write visibly more than an average person.

Wanna hear a funny story? Even before ChatGPT got released, people used to mention that my writing “sounds like Grammarly“. Fast forward into the age of AI chatbots/LLMs today, and that geeky comment is now considered a compliment. Who could’ve guessed?

Anyhow… Putting everything aside, why now?

Well, the answer is simple. Because I read. Because I think.. a lot… More than I can express. More than you can imagine.

(You know when you play a very GPU-intensive game and the fans go roaring to keep your computer’s temperature cooler? That’s how my mind runs. 24/7.)

Lots of thinking… Lots of reading…

Sure, reading iconic pieces like Meditations from thought leaders like Marcus Aurelius may motivate you to write more, but the inspiration for this blog comes from another person: Paul Graham.

The other day, with all the AI craze that is going on, people using artificial intelligence tools to organize their productivity workflow and other gimmicks, I wanted to list all PG’s essays and Warren Buffett’s shareholder letters to date and feed them to my Gem (Gemini’s little personal agents) to have a mentor on demand. My little method of having Paul to ask in any situation, I wonder “what would PG do“.

As I went through his writing, I asked myself, what if Paul had not chosen to write? Would this amount of knowledge be available to me? To anyone? To the.. internet – the lovely library we all have access to?

Clearly, I am not indicating that my pieces will be as insightful as PG’s. Yet, I could tap into his expertise and have my mentor accessible (even though it feels awkward without his consent), because Paul chose to write. So, I do the same now, by choosing to write.

PS: Another shoutout goes to Professor Scott Galloway. He also shared how writing can be one of the most productive habits one can have – as long as they choose to write, no matter how short it is. As long as it is consistent. So, the least we can do is to try, right?