Why does writing matter in remote work?

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Talk to anyone who has an active blog and I bet they’ll tell you it’s been valuable to them. Maybe it’s opened doors. Maybe it’s got them a job. Maybe it’s got them a conference invite. Maybe they just like the thrill of knowing people have read and responded to it. Maybe they learned a lot through its creation and maintenance.

Khoi Vinh said:

It’s hard to overstate how important my blog has been, but if I were to try to distill it down into one word, it would be: “amplifier.”

But what about other kinds of writing? Just day to day writing? Is that important for web workers? “Especially now”?

Tim Casasola:

In remote work, we communicate primarily through writing. We send messages in Slack. We document projects in Notion. We send meeting invites with a written description of the purpose. We’re writing all the time.

It’s just so damn important for team work of any kind, particularly when you aren’t next to each other physically.

While writing forces people to think clearly, writing also forces teams to think clearly. In my experience, having a clearly written thing makes it easy for folks to collaborate with me. This is because people naturally enjoy poking holes in arguments, adding points that were missed, or mentioning any risks that weren’t taken into account. I’ve found it helpful to use this human tendency to my advantage. Extra opinions and poked holes are hard to surface if you didn’t write something in the first place.

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