Writing can save you time. Publishing ideas on paper is how you create intellectual capital because writing is how you make your ideas permanent. Words on paper are the closest thing we have to time travel. Once you write something down, you can remix and reuse the ideas for the rest of your life.

Writing is research and development for your brain. The words you publish now are the seeds of your future projects. Every time you write down an idea, you add a Lego block to your intellectual arsenal. The more Legos you have, the more things you can build. Writing is the same. The more you write now, the more you can create in the future. As the number of artifacts you create increase linearly, the number of connections you make between them increase exponentially.

I was poking around Paul de Raaij’s digital garden when I came across the phrase “Writing things down helps build intellectual capital”, and luckily Paul linked to this wonderful article by David Perell. It such a strong and truthful idea.