Hello Fellow Codenewbies 👋,
Do you find that writing about your learning like this helps to cement the knowledge?
I received that comment when I shared my blog posts on Twitter a few days back.
And that's what inspires me to write this article.
A Little Something About Me
I am a conservative person. Let's say that physically writing on paper with a pen gives me great satisfaction.
And I always take notes whenever I learn something.
I love writing about anything that interests me.
Writing gives me joy!
The Reason
The initial reason for my web development journey was that I wanted to create and style my website. A place where I could write and share the ideas in my mind and share my photography hobby.
I've read many technical writings and motivational posts along my learning journey. Honestly, they often tickle me to transfer my notes and share my journey publicly.
But impostor syndrome did a great job holding me back.
I'm not an English native speaker. Let alone in English, writing a technical article in my mother tongue is very challenging.
There are plenty of great posts about the same topic I want to write about. Would people even read mine? What would they think about my post? What if it doesn't interest anybody else but me?
Will people understand my English? And if so, can they receive the message I want to deliver clearly? Would it help them in some way, such as those posts that have helped and motivated me?
The thoughts lingered in my mind for the whole period of my journey, which is why I held myself back for so long.
Start To Write
One night my daughter had trouble sleeping. So I couldn't learn anything because she woke up every half hour.
Instead, I published my first post: How I Got Into Learn To Code. And it felt good because I could finally beat the impostor syndrome. Also, I did one of the things I originally wanted to do (even though it is not on my website yet)!
I wrote a couple more articles on a little more technical topics afterward.
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)
I was then drawn back to the learning process. I didn't have time to write in public until my beloved community Virtual Coffee threw the initiative to do NaNoWriMo as this month's challenge. We wanted to accomplish 50,000 words as a group.
Personally, it is one way to get back to writing again and beat the impostor syndrome that sneaked back in.
I finally found my initial reason for learning to code, which motivates me even more, to go further in my journey.
Does Writing About Our Learning Help To Cement The Knowledge?
What I find most crucial in cementing our knowledge is by practicing what we learn.
Create a simple mini-project after we learn about a topic. If you don't know what to build, don't get discouraged.
Redo what you just learned and see if you can replicate and understand the syntaxes and the flow.
Then write the process down, and document everything. From the trouble you face, the parts that make you pull your hair, the steps you need to take, the new information you gain, everything.
Writing things down on a piece of paper with a pen helps me retain knowledge.
Whenever I encounter something and get lost, but I've written it down before, I somehow feel familiar with the topic or the problem.
And most of the time, that would be when I would get back to open my notes and find out that I've encountered it before, mostly along with the steps I took to achieve the result.
So YES, in a way, writing helps to cement our knowledge.
Writing is also a medium to share our knowledge. It can help some fellows who go through the trouble we went through. It can even help our future selves because we have documentation to return to whenever we get lost.
Writing is not your thing because you prefer to share your knowledge verbally?
You can create video content or start a podcast to deliver your knowledge if that's more convenient for you.
Conclusion
Start to write now and don't wait!
Don't let anything that worries you hold you back from writing. No one creates something good for the first time. Like any other skill, practice is also needed to improve your writing.
Don't overthink how people would react to your post. Write for yourself and the future you first. The rest will follow.Don't make it a big deal if you realize that you published a post that has mistakes or lacks some pieces of information in the content. You can always edit and update it later and point out the updates. People make mistakes.
Documenting our knowledge cements what we've learned and could help other people and our future self. And we won't even know that perhaps our journey could motivate someone else. Sharing is caring.
So what are you waiting for? Start it today, or even better... start it now! 😀
Thank you for reading!
Last, you can find me on Twitter. Let's connect! 😊
Top comments (2)
Great post, Ayu, thank you for writing it! :)
Thank you for reading, Stephanie! :)