Writing forces you to clarify and put new information in context & gives you an external scaffold to build on.
Writing is not the outcome of thinking, it is the medium in which thinking takes place
In order to truly understand something, it has to fit in with the context of the other things you know. Putting the explanation of a subject into your own words forces you to draw from this poll of knowledge, to make comparisons, and to fully consider the topic at hand.
If you can’t write about something coherently and intelligibly, then your thinking on that topic or subject is vague and incomplete.
- Mark Koester, in his Plain Text Article
Writing is the best way to think, read, learn, understand, and generate ideas. Notes build up while you do those things. Understanding something is easier when you put it in your own words. Don’t take notes in a lecture by typing. You’re not having to think about how to summarize stuff, and therefore you’re not actually thinking about the stuff.
Notes on paper, or on a computer screen do not make contemporary physics or other kinds of intellectual endeavor easier, they make it possible.
- neuroscientist Neil Levy
Writing provides the external scaffolding on which the mind can build over time.