Chad Silverstein explains why writing is a powerful tool for clarity and decision-making, arguing that writing forces you to slow down, concretize thoughts, and expose irrational fears. He cites low rates of goal-writing, recommends simple practices (like pros-and-cons lists), and frames writing as a leadership skill that helps turn ideas into action.
Chapters
Writing is such an amazing tool that so many people don't value. 3% of the population writes down their goals, or maybe even 3% have goals. 1% writes them down. You know, there is power in the pen. And that term comes with purpose. Because when you're thinking about things and it's ruminating in your head and you're catastrophizing what you're thinking about, you're thinking about the future, you can't slow down. You're thoughts are just pouring in. When you write, you're forced to slow down and put down specific concrete words that are trying to pretty much encapsulate everything that you're trying to say. And I think, you know, being able to do that can definitely be considered a skill. But at Built Le, we just practice writing our down our thoughts. What are you thinking? You try to do it in a narrative, but there's power in being able to get clarity and doing it by writing things down. One of the simple exercises that you'll always hear me talk about when people are making decisions is just to do the, the common sense. Step one is make a list of pros and cons and write them out. And the power of just writing out these lists and then seeing them visually, it's so telling because you might have one thing that is an irrational feeling on the, on the, you know, on the side that's not so good. And you could have all these incredible, you know, bullets in your, you know, positive column, and you're just literally holding yourself back from an irrational fear, which once you see it on paper, it may look ridiculous. So again, leaders are writers. We write with purpose. We try to always write down what we learned and we always try to put it into action. And so just get used to seeing and hearing that about in front. Build to lead. Because that's what we do. That's why it's day two in the book. And you have to get clarity and you have to believe it and have a reason why you want to write and become a writer so that you can get clarity and stamp out an author, a life worth living.
