Your Keystrokes Are Limited, Here's How You Preserve Them

09 Nov 2024 #misc

Preserve your keystrokes. They’re limited.

That’s a piece of advice I learned from one of Scott Hanslman’s talks about productivity.

This isn’t an invitation to write less or write shorter content. It’s an invitation to make private knowledge public.

Often valuable knowledge and lessons die in email threads or Slack channels. Apart from the original recipients, nobody else can read them. That’s how you “waste” your keystrokes.

Make those private email threads or Slack messages public by turning them into wiki entries, tutorials, or blog posts. That’s how you preserve your keystrokes.

I’m answering almost all my questions in public to preserve my keystrokes.

The other day, a subscriber replied to one of my emails with a question about writing. I replied and then turned that reply into a post.

Another day, a reader contacted me after going through my takeaways from Ultralearning. And again, I expanded my reply into a separate post.

Don’t let knowledge die in private channels. Preserve your keystrokes and share a link to a public writing instead.