If you've created content for more than 3-6 months, this story probably sounds familiar to you.

Any time I:

• read a book

• listen to a podcast

• watch a YouTube video.

I'd think: great, this would make for a wonderful piece of content, so I store it "somewhere."

Later, when it comes time to write, it doesn't hit the same. I forgot what it meant and why it inspired me to begin with. I try to digitally regurgitate what I remember, but it feels incoherent and uninspired.

In short, my writing sessions devolved into frustrating hamster-wheels of trying (and failing) to remember what and why I wanted to write, before I put a single word down.

I get lost in the sauce and instead of cooking I burn the whole house down.

This how it's been writing the first 10 newsletters of The Polymathletic.

At first, I thought I was just overthinking (and I was).

But I soon realized: my process straight up sucked.

But after hours on YouTube and books, I came across a new way of thinking about writing for myself that made pumping out this newsletter fun and easy.

I'm hyped to share it with you.

Whether you're a student, content creator, or anyone who writes a lot, this will make your writing process actually enjoyable. Gone will the days be of treading through the treacherous waters of a blank page.

Don’t Start with a Blank Page Ever

In all fairness, this isn't entirely your fault.

The real problem began the moment you were taught to write in school, college, and work.

Most writing education is focused on the process of sitting down to write.

You can still see this in a lot of the courses from big creators, like:

• Dan Koe

• Kieran Drew

• Dakota Robertson

But they don't tell you this part:

"Sitting down to write" is only 10%-15% of the process at best and it's the last part.

The other 85%-90% is research.

And I know that sounds boring AF, but let me cook.

First of al, people do tell you to "research," but like, what the fuck does that actually mean?

Nobody tells you how to do it. And if they do, it looks something like this:

• Read something

• "Take notes"

• Magically write something

Plus, it doesn't help there's this narrative out there that writing "should" be hard and you have to grind through it.

Writing should be challenging, but never miserable.

The key lies in the stuff that happens before you sit down to write.

Let's break it down.

Writing = Thinking

This is Niklas Luhmann.

In 1-2 years, he completed a PhD thesis and habilitation (which to us Americans, is only given to people who've had their PhD for 5-15 years)

How'd he do it?

His system.

In school and basically every writing course you ever took, you're taught this other system:

1. Research

2. Take notes

3. Magically Write

Apart from the absolute lack of clarity between these steps, there’s a bigger problem:

It presents writing as this neat, linear process where you research then write.

Wrong. Here's how it actually is:

Research = writing.

Writing = thinking.

Research is your time to think through what you're researching.

Writing is your tool to think through what you're researching.

Your notes are the physical manifestation of your thinking.

All writing really comes down to thinking.

Therefore, writing is a circular process, not linear.

Unlike what school taught, the writing doesn't begin when you "sit down to write."

It begins the moment you came across a compelling idea.

And that's why you struggle when it's "time to write", because you're shoving all the thinking towards the end, when it should've been done in the beginning.

I know it sounds like a lot of work, but...it actually isn't.

Here’s the thing, if writing is thinking, then you have to think somewhere eventually (unless you plagiarize).

And up to this point, you’re doing it “when you sit down to write.”

But it’s with the added friction of trying to remember WTF you were writing about in the first place.

So, “sitting down to write” is actually more like “try to remember, then think about it and write.”

This makes it 10x harder.

So to lighten the load, all you’re doing is shifting the thinking back to where it should be happening, so you don’t have to “try to remember”.

Even better news: that's the "hard" part.

When you finally do "sit down to write," you just need to gather, connect, and edit.

The fallacy is in thinking you "research" to create a "work" (like a book, essay, etc.)

But really, you want to think of your note taking process as the body of work in itself.

Books, newsletters, tweets are simply a curation or distillation of parts of this body of work.

That means writing your notes out like they are the product.

And when you combine them with a system that allows you to easily store and access these insights in one place, all you have to do is search for them and you can pretty much plug and play.

A Simple Way To Make Writing Fun & Easy

If this still sounds like a lot of work, I get it. You probably had red flags going off in your head the moment I said "notes"

So let me ask you something:

You know that feeling when you come across something fascinating and think "Holy shit...that's so cool!" and you're completely nerding out?

It should feel like that.

There are only 2 things you need to do to ensure this process is fun and easy:

1. Follow your curiosity.

2. Aim to solve your problems.

Operationally, it comes down to asking yourself these two questions:

• Does this actually interest me?

• Does this help me solve a problem in my life?

At every single point in this process, always ask yourself these.

If what you're researching fails any 1 of these questions, abandon it.

This isn't school.

No snobby English teacher is handing you F's for not doing shit you don't care about.

You are allowed to explore your interests as you see fit.

And if you need my permission, I'll be happy to sign your waiver.

That’s it!

Feel free to reply or hit me up on Threads/IG if you have any questions.