I love reading. I also happen to watch a lot of Youtube. What I've noticed is that I don't stumble upon insights on Youtube the way I do on random blogs or books. This is weird since I usually spend (an embarrassingly) more time on Youtube than reading. Given the sheer amount of exposure, you would expect that I've learnt more from Youtube. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

My theory is, people don't spend as much time thinking about what they are presenting on Youtube as they do writing. Don't get me wrong - Youtube is a lot of work. But to present on the camera means forgoing a well-crafted script to sound natural, and to perhaps replace deeper insights for the sake of algorithms. Meanwhile, when I sit down to write, I am forced to think and rethink my sentences, to write, then delete, then attempt again. Whatever point that could take a person speaking 5 minutes to say, I need to try to do that in 1 sentence. Reading is much harder than watching, after all.

Because of this, unrelated points get sieved out. Insights crystallize. So even though the entertainment value drops by a few points, the real value increases.

This is the first part of creating insights. Writing is an act of introspection, first and foremost. When we write, we write first for yourself. When we talk, we talk to an audience. Writing allows us to immerse in our own thoughts a lot better than speaking does.

But then again, some of my best insights come from talking to others. Hearing another perspective opens a world that I was previously unaware of. I think this value comes from feedback - discovering something the person said, then making the connections with my own context, and sharing this to get more information. We know this when we engage in a meaningful conversation - where one idea gets discussed, dissected, and strengthened as two people take turn to examine it. This is probably the second reason why Youtube falls short as well - we are listening, but we aren't actively creating the connections with our existing context. So even if the person said something insightful, the brain doesn't have enough time to absorb and connect it to the existing network, thus we fail to create meaning.

So insights come from retrospection and feedback. It is a cycle of yin and yang: We think deeply about something, then we throw it out to the world, our neighbor or friend. That insight gets molded and connected with other information, which then becomes the source of information for us to engage in. Then us think again, and share again, and continue on.

If that sounds unfamiliar, it doesn't. We have all encountered it before, and not even with insights. When I first get started with CSS, I was engaged in pure feedback, but no retrospection. I would copy the code and paste it in, praying that it works. If it doesn't, I would try the next thing on the list. Yet I never stopped to understand CSS under the hood. Only later on, when I was increasingly frustrated with the language, did I take time to learn how it works. And suddenly, everything starts to make sense. I could write code that I could actually understand, which I thought was impossible for a language as complicated as CSS. So even though I had plenty of feedbacks (error messages, StackOverFlow, etc.) I could never fully make sense of what I've learnt.

And vice versa, when I started writing, all of it was private. I never let anyone read what I wrote, beyond the occasional essays for my mom to post on her Facebook (it's a long story). I was confident with my ability to write, yet only when I wrote my personal essay for college did I realize how much more I had to improve. Up until then, all the writing was in my head, for myself. And I love my writing - I could understand exactly what I meant. But that means I would meander unnecessarily, and forgot other important details because they were a given to me. In listening to my friend's feedbacks and drafting the essay multiple times, I finally found a version that, while imperfect, was much better than the original. Had I kept my writings to myself, that transformation, with however introspection, could not have existed.

So to create more insight: sit with your thoughts. Write. Think. Then throw it out and listen to people, intently. Absorb everything you will. Then sit with those thoughts. Try to mold them until you get something new. Repeat the process.