Dear Reader,
Do you have a therapeutic hobby? Something that you do when you are stressed or to get a change in mindset? Mine is writing. It takes me a good 3-4 hours to write a nice piece including all the research and fact finding that goes into the it.
While I don't have dreams of being a rich and famous author, research has shown that there are many emotional and physical health benefits to be gained through expressive writing. No matter what medium you choose—whether it be a public blog or a private journal—there’s a lot to be gained by getting your thoughts and emotions onto the page.
A study from the University of Texas at Austin found that people who write about personal details are healthier than those who don’t. The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, asked groups of students to write about an assigned topic for 15 minutes a day for four consecutive days. Later in the year, the pair asked the students about their health and found that those who had written about emotional topics made fewer trips to their doctors’ offices.
Similar studies have found that those who practiced expressive writing reported lower blood pressure, fewer days in the hospital, improved immune system function, and overall improved mood. One study found that patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and asthma experienced fewer symptoms after writing about stressful life events.
Writing about stressful situations may seem counter-intuitive—wouldn’t it induce stress, not relieve it? Getting negative and stressful feelings out actually helps reduce their intensity. It can also help you figure out exactly why you’re anxious, which could lead to a solution. Writing removes any mental blocks you may have, and enables you to use all of your brainpower to find answers. Another benefit of writing about stressful experiences is that you can go back and look at previous entries to see how much you’ve progressed.
In addition, writing about people you know can not only help you understand the nature of your relationship with them, but understand them better as well. If you’re angry with someone, you may want to write them a letter. Even if you never intend on sending it, simply writing out your feelings and explaining why you feel the way you do can reduce your anger towards them.
But writing does not necessarily have to be expressive. I worked at a large e-commerce technology organization that did a great job in utilizing the benefits of writing. Status, reports, updates, product launches, press releases, etc. were all formally written and documented. There were 1-pagers, 3-pagers, 6-pagers and even 12-pagers. All with an emphasis on using writing as a way to get the facts right, commit to what you write, provide sufficient detail to what you write and express yourself and do justice to the topic itself. Of course, none of these pager documents were evaluated for the writing itself but more for the purpose of documenting the content.
More and more techies are losing this important skill. And honestly, it is getting harder to convince techies that they need to write, even if it is a technical whitepaper or patent. The general notion is that the marketing team or the patent team will take care of the actual writing and the techie just needs to provide the technical information. I don't completely agree to that notion. Moreover, I've seen some techies take a turn to writing when they see the benefits of a well written technical document. So, there is definitely an advantage to writing even in technology where most people spend time writing code.
You don’t have to write a Shakespearean sonnet or a Dickensian novel to reap the benefits of expressive writing. Keep in mind that when writing as a therapeutic hobby, the end result isn’t the important part—the process is. Try to write for at least 20 minutes a day to make the most of the experience. You don’t even have to adhere to the rules of grammar if you don’t want to. All that matters is that you get your thoughts down on paper. The best way to get started is to jump right in, and write now!
I think everyone should have a therapeutic hobby. Something that is personal to them, protected by them, cherished, and something that helps them get back into the regular grind.
Until next time. Keep writing.
Jyothin
PS: Most of the information in this blog has been picked up from another article titled 'Your Therapeutic Hobby: Writing'
PS: You just got juxtaposed!