I’ve been thinking about starting a blog for a while, but here I am… sitting at Hong Kong International Airport with two hours until my flight to New York, and something just came over me, so I started typing away.

Here goes nothing.

I started this blog for three reasons:

1. Clear writing = clear thinking
2. Exploring unknown unknowns
3. Accountability

Clear writing = clear thinking

I spend the majority of my intellectually demanding time consuming content, rather than creating it.

Books, podcasts, blogs, articles, Reddit, YouTube… it’s pretty much a one way street of information input… information that has a profound impact on how I generate ideas.

Consume info → compile info with life experience → generate ideas

That’s pretty much how it works, but it doesn’t have to end there. What happens when you take it one step further?

Consume info → compile info with life experience → generate ideas → write about ideas → clearer thinking and more ideas

Translating ideas from thoughts into written words challenges us to more deeply understand what we think.

I might think I know something and attempt to write out my thoughts concisely, but I often end up serving myself a slice of Humble Pie as I realize how hollow that thinking can be.

Try it.

You had some half-baked idea in your head the other day. Challenge yourself to write it out in a short paragraph that someone else can easily understand.

It’s not necessarily that difficult, but it forces you to connect the dots and fill in any knowledge gaps.

There are other areas of life where I write… occasionally at my day job, for side projects, job hunts, and so on, but it’s rare.

Forcing myself to write more challenges my ideas and improves the depth of my thinking. Writing this first blog post is cold hard proof.

This blog is a pursuit of clearer, deeper thinking about the things that interest me.

I have a rough idea of what to write about (entrepreneurship & business, health & fitness, learning, productivity, travel/living abroad, anything else I come to be interested in), but I’m excited to see where this goes. Which brings me to my next reason…

Exploring unknown unknowns

Ideas beget ideas.

I don’t understand the brain chemistry behind this, they just do.

I don’t know what I’ll uncover by challenging myself to write more, but I know I’ll uncover something. Pumped to see what that’s all about.

Accountability

I could just write in a journal, but there’s something about posting online for the world to see. We’re not talking high stakes here, but it holds me to a higher standard.

The internet is forever, so there’s an incentive to really think through what I’m writing about… clear writing = clear thinking.

This is also a fun coding challenge!

I’ve picked up a little programming on the side, and a personal blog is a great application of that skillset. This blog is completely self-developed and hosted using GitHub Pages, Jekyll, basic HTML/CSS, and Namecheap. (September 2024 edit: my self-hosted blog is now in Blog Heaven, and this bad boy is up and running on WordPress.)

As an aside, despite having read it for some time, I only just noticed that a high school friend of mine has been running his awesome blog for the exact same reasons! One inspiration point to you, my friend.

What’s in a name?

The name’s Michaelson. Ed Michaelson.

“E Mikes”, “Eddy Mikes” and many variations thereof were quite the sticky high school nicknames. Keepin’ it rolling.

And BOOM! First blog post complete. Stay tuned for more, I hope you enjoy reading!

Thanks to Sarah for reading a draft of this post.