Thinking clearly about software
You can go a long way as a software engineer without ever managing to think clearly. The feedback loop of writing and running code is so immediate that we can often get by with trial-and-error.
If you can think clearly about software, you can communicate clearly, which can lift other people up out of their confusion. If you write it down, you can do that at scale. There are few higher-leverage things you can do in an organization than writing down clear thoughts about your work.
Thinking clearly increases the rate at which you can learn. You can learn by trial-and-error, but what you learn is mostly heuristics: this kind of thing tends to work in that situation. If you can, it’s better to learn systematically, so you can understand why things work or don’t work.
Clear thought is not a binary but a spectrum. Your progress along that spectrum compounds with practice: if you’ve been trying to think clearly for ten years, you’ll be more successful than someone who’s just starting now.
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