taking note of a memorable conversation: I tend to confuse two modes

* journalist taking notes for potential publication use. This mode often provides active recreation, and keeps my vocab and my mind active, even improving.
* taking personal notes for my own review

In my 30’s, I would take a critical view on my friends (like Chonglei.Qi) who had unique, sometims incisive, observations on many topics. I often say “commit to writing down your observations and get them published.” That would lead to more meaningful discussions and create more value-add.

For some years, I also had a dim view on private diary (in contrast to public blog). I would insist that it was important to review the content with other people. But now I wonder how important.

Over the decades since, I have realized that 1) a reputable (serious) publication, or 2) a real review with a friend, all entail huge amounts of time and energy.

In reality, personal diary/blog + some email discussion is the only reasonable compromise I can have. Without peer review, it’s not solid, complete, balanced, but still it is a valuable deep-dive, exploration. (I have left out the therapeutic blogg that is often intermixed with my general blogging.)

Note all of these activities can (and did) take up sooo much spare time, that they often become the primary energy-sink of the year

Writing vs reading.. Scope here is non-fiction, including current affairs,,, I always feel most people, across education levels, don’t read as much as is good for them (due to different priority or available leisure time). Among those “lifelong” readers, I believe most don’t write nearly as much as I do. Nothing wrong, but I feel if you are seriously reading some topics, then you must have your personal observations. Writing (later reviewing) them is an excellent practice to enhance understanding. That includes clarifying, deepening, correlating, comparison, pattern-finding, correcting mistakes, finding appropriate phrasing… So I always feel if you are serious about some reading topic, then you had better work on improving your understanding. If you don’t use writing, then what can you use?