Expression over collection is a philosophy: if you want to make ideas truly your own, you must express them in your own words, not just store them somewhere. Use tools that inspire you to think and create.
Expression over collection is an appeal to all knowledge seekers: accept that collection alone does not lead to growth, and find the courage to turn others’ knowledge into your own insight.
In the long run, the ideas you express are far more important than the knowledge you collect. Your knowledge base is temporary, but the insights you create have a chance to shape you.
Ancient chefs, faced with piles of ingredients, knew that the meaning of food was not in its storage, but in the cooking. The value of a dish depended on how the chef used the ingredients, not how many they owned.
The world is filled with the wisdom of those who came before us, passed down through books, articles, and videos. These mediums are like raw ingredients. You can touch, save, and hoard them. But reading a book is like looking at a recipe—only when you cook it yourself do you truly taste the flavors.
Today, we collect digital information at an unprecedented speed, but this information rarely becomes a true part of us. It’s hoarded on our hard drives and in our note-taking apps, trapped behind highlighted passages and “read later” lists. We’ve fallen into a “digital hoarding” delusion, mistaking collection for comprehension.
As I recently realized:
Only when you try to explain a concept in your own words can you truly test if you understand it. Ideas that seem clear in your mind often reveal their blurriness and uncertainty the moment you try to write them down.
You should want to create your own ideas, not just for the world, but for your future self. You never know how grateful your future self, ten years from now, will be for the immature but honest thoughts you bravely wrote down today. Don’t lock your mind in a warehouse where things only go in, but never come out.
These days, I use an app called Obsidian to organize my thoughts, but it’s a delusion to think the app is the point. The tool will eventually become obsolete. It’s the imperfect but real sentences I write in my own words that are designed to last and shape me. Who knows if anyone will want to read them besides me, but future me is an audience worthy of the effort.
They might be simple, they might be naive, but they are mine.