Everyone should set aside time every day to write. Whether that be fifteen minutes at the end of the night to summarize your day in a journal, or an hour break from homework to exercise your imagination. Who knows, you might stumble upon a groundbreaking, original idea. Abraham Lincoln said in his Second Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, “Writing—the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye—is the great invention of the world.”

Writing is a stress relief.

After hours of class, homework and studying, it is a relief to be able to sit down in bed, relax and let your mind wander. You can escape from the stresses of the real world for a while and immerse yourself into a world of your own. It is just you and a blank piece of paper, and together you can explore the world.

Writing is good for the mind.

Writing is a form of exercise for the mind. We aren’t just blindly copying notes from a powerpoint or copying directly from a book, like we find ourselves doing in the classroom. Instead, we are transcribing our original thoughts onto paper. Writing is systematic when you think about it. The ideas originate from your thoughts, which come from a variety of places (movies, tv, experiences, imagination), then sometimes we put our own little spin on these items we perceive. Then, we have to take the thought from a picture form in our minds and translate it into words to the best of our ability, so if an artists were to paint a picture of your words, the image in your head would show up. Yes, it seems complex, and we do this automatically all the time, but writing and thinking are more of a mind workout than we give ourselves credit for.

Writing helps you understand yourself.

Have you ever been in an argument with someone and, even though you had so much you wanted to say to them, you just couldn’t find the words, then at the end of the day when you are laying in bed you formulate a perfectly sound argument that encapsulates exactly what you were thinking? Frustrating isn’t it? Well, sometimes it is good to think before you speak. Take some time and write down your thoughts. Sometimes you will be amazed how differently your thoughts transfer into words. If nothing else, you will be sure not to leave anything out if it is for the sake of an argument. The point is, writing helps you know how you really feel after you have regained your composure.

Writing documents your thoughts.

A simple and often overlooked reason for writing is because it documents your thoughts. Have you ever had a brilliant idea while falling asleep or driving or even in the shower that you just couldn’t recall by the time you reached a pad of paper? It is also frustrating! Even if you jot down blurbs, phrases or incomplete thoughts, it is useful, because someday you might be able to expand on those thoughts and turn them into something wonderful! Or perhaps you will be digging through your old stuff in thirty-years and come across your crazy teenage writings and realize how naive or intelligent you once were. Many of our great historic figures kept journals or a stack of writings that they probably thought nothing of at the time, but after their passing, historians have come to cherish these short blurbs perhaps more than their speeches.

Writing makes you a better person.

In the end, writing makes your a better person. Not only does it help you understand yourself, track your progress, relax you and organize your thoughts, but it also develops your writing skills. While our personal writings might not be entirely, grammatically correct, they will be written in a way that people can understand. We don’t typically sit down and write out our thoughts in the latest “lingo” or using our texting shortcuts. Thus, we create a habit for our formal writing. We tend to treat our genuine thoughts as papers we would turn in for a grade in school, because they are our own personal masterpieces. We take pride in our writings because they are in a sense, a piece of us. Writing is our minds work on paper.