Writing to learn

I took a look at an essay by Peter Drucker that I have in a collection of articles from the Harvard Business Review. I wanted to reassure myself that buying the Drucker book wasn't a poor selection in my year of limited book buying. I was reassured a few pages into the article. His clear, common-sense advice on how to manage a career felt appropriate and sound. I felt the same way reading The Effective Exective. I am happy with my decision to buy his book.

Buying the book has already had an unexpected return on my investment. Part of the article that I was reading was discussing different ways that people learn and how recognizing your learning style can allow you to better manage your career. One of the ways that he mentions people learning is by writing. I remember thinking that learning by writing was kind of unexpected the first time I read the essay a couple of years ago, but this time I really started to think about my own experience with writing.

I can still recall details about papers that I wrote more than a decade ago in college. The topics of those papers, The McDonaldization of Society, Medieval Cathedral Tympana, The Wide Sargasso Sea, the origins of Kandinsky's abstract style, are some of my most vivid recollections from college. I always thought that I remembered those papers because I put some much effort into writing them, but maybe this learning by writing thing applies to me. My graduate school experience with chemistry was much different than my undergrad battles. The big difference, I wrote about my work in graduate school, I didn't just learn things for an exam. Granted, I didn't start writing about my research until I had already done well in come classes, but doing chemistry problems is similar to writing in how you interact with and work through the various issues in a problem.

I kept a journal for years, mainly as a venue to write about an interesting magazine ariticle that I had read or comment on something else that I was thinking about at the time. The hour or so that I would spend working through whatever issue that topic brought to mind usually led me to some place that I did not plan on going. It was my way to discuss the topic and work through some of the challenges that it presented to me. I would still do that now, this blog is actually just another manifestation of that compulsion to have a place to think in writing, if it wasn't for my career, family, and working on getting my waist size down or some other goal that takes up my precious alone time.

I have already thought of a few ways this I may be able to capitalize on this learning by writing idea. I kind of already do it at work, I just write presentations instead of papers. The medium is different, but I think about presentations the same way that I think about papers. What if I started jotting down a few ideas about the non-technical articles that I read? I already have a book where I collect interesting articles and such. What if I started to jot down a few of my ideas there? I did that a month or so ago and those thoughts are still accessible to me when my thinking gets on that track. I may be able to use this insight if I ever make it to law school too.

Wow, what insights will I get in a bigger book of Drucker's writing?