Why I Don't Research

and write from experience.

Published on my blog

This post has been published as blog post at Why I Don’t Research; and Write from Experience, but gets updated here.

When I write, I deliberately don’t research. The fun of writing is to express myself and explain something in my head. Not researching something and losing focus. Recall what I read is not fun to me. I want to share my opinions.

In a way, my research is taking notes on my Second Brain, all the time, everywhere. But not to one topic, about everything, not connected yet.

When I write these notes, sometimes very old ones can make all the difference. It’s not really research in that sense, more of an idea insights creation.

My other “research” is also just in the field for two decades. Things do not drastically change in an instant, even if the media and social media make us believe so. When I do conduct research, it’s mostly for historical overviews, there, I like to use Claude with a long-form input of mine; putting it into a Mermaid, as I do with my book.

I see my goal as a writer not to recall info, but to make you think, spark new ideas, inspire at best. And also making it entertaining and joyful to read. That’s why I don’t research.

What I do as well: I try the tool and get hands-on. So rather than browsing and reading, I get a feel for it.

Know that there’s different types of writers, but that’s me. I’m a technical author for data engineering and business intelligence. Things I have done in the past—I can describe a feeling or experience much better than researching something, and recall them as if they were my words.

I am using “research” loosely here. At a high-level I mean that I just don’t read lots of specific stuff (I listen to lots of books, unrelated), and just writing from experience (or “Executable strategy for writing” as Andy Matuschak calls it).

An other name

Andy Matuschak calls it Executable strategy for writing

Maybe more correct would probably be “not doing research while writing”. The research is every day, when I read something, when I learn.

During writing, I want to be in the flow. Also why I turned off Grammarly, and any AI. Just to be focused on the task at writing. See also Will AI Replace Human Thinking .

Another reason is that if you consume too much of blogs and other content, you might write the same and be influenced by it. So not researching or reading too many others in the space, helps me to come up with other, maybe unique ideas as it’s not based on common consensus.

Books, tough, are different; I call them more refined, and actually, where I get a lot of insights myself. But usually, not books on the topics, but books that are inspiring in totally other regions of my life. But as we are human, and our brains connect ideas based on what we already know, this usually gives me new ideas for the projects I’m currently working on.

• Read my write-up about The Craft of Data Engineering Writing
• How to Write Well
• And everything about Writing on this map of content.
• Executable strategy for writing shared by David Gasquez
• An opinionated take on how to do important research

Origin: This topic was sparked when I explained to Ergest Xheblati how I write.
References: Writing is Thinking, Flow