My Advice to a New Grad

I was asked recently to provide advice to a new college grad. Here is the core of what I wrote.

My advice to you is to write. Your writing doesn’t need to have a specific structure, and you don’t have to write for a specific audience, but getting your ideas down on paper is a service you can render to your future self. The important thing is to write with some regularity, even if not often. Find a way to make it easy for you to write, so that you never have an excuse not to write. Use a small notepad, a blog, or something like notion.so.

Actually though, any hobby — however casual — that requires you to produce a “tangible” product of some kind (a document, a video, an audio file, an image, etc.) will fit the bill. There’s something really rewarding about looking back at the things you’ve produced and observing the progression over time.

I guess what I’m recommending is that you periodically project snapshots of your brain into the world through creative expression.

Good luck, man.