Best Practise

I've said many times on here that writing for me is a kind of internal dialogue: compose a position, propose it in writing, challenge it in thought, and repeat.

I get enormous value from this approach, and have done for a long time. But in two discussions last week (Lean Coffee and a testing workshop with one of the other teams at Linguamatics) I found additional nuances that I hadn't considered previously.

First: in some sense, the approach I take is like pairing with myself. Externalising my ideas sets up, for me, the opportunity to take an alternative perspective that doesn't exist to the same extent when I'm only working in my head. It's often about the way I'm thinking as much as the content of my thoughts, and I speculate that this is a good grounding for being criticised by others when we're working together.

Second: writing and re-reading makes my position clear to me, and forces me to work out a way in which I can put it across. Since I started blogging there are numerous times in discussions that I've realised I am paraphrasing from something I've written. In the past I've tended to be a bit embarrassed by that but now I can see that, in fact, it's largely because I spent the time working it out before that I have it available to me now.

These are both things that are useful to me and that I want to get more benefit from. And, while I might agree that outside of a specific context there are no best practices, I also know that if I want to get those outcomes from my writing, I'd best practise.
Image: https://flic.kr/p/f2gYD7

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