Live threading: Twitter as a tool to 10x your clarity in thinking
Create a twitter thread, brick by brick, LIVE!
This is my first piece on writing online. More to come.
A technique that will 10x your clear thinking abilities.
Bonus: You will build your audience in the process.
Caveat: As with all other techniques, this requires practice and insightful thoughts.
Contents
The Art of Writing a Journal
What is Live Threading?
Why it works?
What are the advantages?
Conclusion
Let’s get started. But first make sure to subscribe to my newsletter to receive these essays straight to your inbox.
The Art of Writing a Journal
A constant advice one receives is to write in a journal. A personal diary, it was called. The one for your eyes only. What to write in a journal?
Your thoughts and feelings.
“Dear Diary, While walking to the school a bird shat on me… I felt triggered!”
I am not a fan of “whining in your diary” approach to writing a journal, but it is inevitable as a beginner. It is natural to start to write about feelings. It is however unnatural to persist with writing about your feelings.
This is a topic for another issue of the newsletter.
Here is how a journal writing process progresses:
Book 1: Feelings, venting, anger, tear drops
Book 2: Feelings, optimism, venting
Book 3: Optimism, feelings, fantasy dreams
Book 4: Realistic dreams, optimism, insights
Book 5: Actions, strategic plans, purpose.
and so on….
You get the point. You need to get to a state where your journal consists of plans, ideas, strategies, as opposed to bitch, moan and complain. Because actions emanating from these strategies are what keeps your feelings at bay.
This is the main purpose of writing in a journal.
As a part of those ideas and strategies, I started to write on twitter 6 months ago and discovered a technique which allows you to use twitter as a tool for writing an online journal. This technique, I have found, aids clear thinking.
I call this technique: Live threading, which I am sharing with you.
What is Live Threading?
As the name suggests, live threading is writing twitter threads, LIVE.
The process is as follows:
Write a tweet on one chosen idea which resonates with you. Tweet it.
You will get an immediate, linked thought. This thought is usually a clarification, exception, explanation or a logical inconsistency. Catch this immediate thought, convert it into a tweet.
Tweet it as a reply to the first tweet.
Repeat, until you run out of things to say.
You now have a train of thoughts as a twitter thread. Every thought translated into a tweet, each tweet linked to the previous one, until the idea is taken to its logical conclusion.
Result: Clear thinking due to constraints imposed by twitter threads.
Reasoning behind this strategy
When we speak or give advises to our friends over phone call or text messages, one idea follows another, like a chain. You might not be aware of it, but recall one of those occasions when you have advised a friend. You had a flow of ideas.
Live threading is capturing that flow and tweeting it to your audience.
Writing in your journal leads to sentences or ideas that are inconsistent, imprecise and unedited. There is no skin in the game or incentive to make necessary corrections as you do not have an audience. Perhaps you wouldn’t revisit the writing yourself.
Writing in public puts skin in the game. Now you are forced to edit and write in a consistent manner (more on this below).
Result: Clear thinking plus upgrade in writing skills as a consequence of writing live.
Why it works?
This strategy work on many levels:
Every tweet is a brick: Tweet is a building block in a thread. If you’re constructing a building of writing consider each tweet as a brick with 280 character limit. You have to formulate your idea within those character limits in a concise manner. One idea per tweet is a perfect constraint to organize your writing.
Brick by brick you build your thread: One brick stacks on top of the other and so does your writing. Every idea builds on the previous one. A link of ideas, with each idea constrained in a tweet, forms a fully developed concept. This is making your consciousness aware.
Forced commitment to take the idea to its end: Once you tweet an idea into the world, there is no going back. You are committed to the thread and hence bound to take the idea to a satisfying conclusion. This in turn will upgrade your writing skills.
Forced to think along single train of thought: When you begin to write a thread, you will be presented with multiple branches of ideas. You can note it down elsewhere or discard them altogether in the favor of a single branch. Focused and targeted development of an idea.
Instant feedback from an existing audience or building new ones: If you are writing for an existing audience you will receive feedback on your thoughts (after completion of the thread). This is an important consequence of not letting your thoughts stagnate in your head or in a journal. If you do not have an audience, these tweets form the basis for building one.
Result: Clear thinking, upgraded writing skills, faster feedback loops for the ideas and audience building.
What are the advantages?
There are many advantages to this method of writing threads.
Make randomness work in your favor: Live threading is suited when you are inspired by an idea and is applicable for "Intuitive writing". These inspirations appear out of nowhere, randomly and take a much more random turn when you build on them live. You get surprised by your own thoughts and where they take you, as more than half of the content will appear after you have begun to write.
Content generation and refinement strategy: You have content to refine and publish. The thread forms the first draft, a better one since it was published in public. It can be turned into an elaborate piece which makes for an excellent content generation and refinement strategy. This issue of the newsletter is a product of such an experiment. See the associated thread here and compare the differences.
Deep work: Live threading enables deep work. Having troubles with focus & attention? Try live threading and verify how you have gained total control over focus and attention. I have noticed enhanced control while writing threads in a manner I outline here. Give this strategy a try when you begin to doubt your ability to focus and deep work.
Time saver: You'll have your chance to correct and build on your thoughts in a separate article or thread. The main point is to have fun and make your thoughts aware. This process saves plenty of time as writing a thread takes anywhere between 30 - 40 uninterrupted minutes. Compare this to writing elsewhere, editing and then publishing a day or two later.
Cure for perfectionism: You do not second doubt yourself since you are tweeting live. You do not have the possibility to do so with this strategy. Whatever thinking you need to do, you do it for the tweet. Once tweeted you forget about it and move on with the next tweet. You do not have to iterate due to perfectionism. Further, you do not need to fear being wrong, the purpose is to write intuitively.
At the very least, you will have an appreciation for your own mental capacity, or renewed appreciation for creators.
Conclusion
The main objective is to have fun while writing and not think about being perfect or even correct. With this strategy you will use twitter as your online journal and write in a manner which is far superior to your entries in the journal. Superior in terms of conciseness and clarity. After all, the main reason for writing is to gain clarity and explore your consciousness.
Hope you liked the idea and would like to give it a try.
If you do, let me know about your experience in the comments.
Thank you for reading!
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