Every time I think lately, I feel thinking should be put into writing as much as possible.
People often say write worries on paper including the thought process — and I think that's right. (For me the barrier is lower on a PC, so the benefit may be relatively smaller, but I still write things out on a PC.)
The kinds of things I scribble on this blog are also what I vaguely think about every day.
Putting thoughts into writing organizes the points, so you don't go in circles in your head.
Say the brain has a fixed capacity of space, plus a temporary thought processor used "only for thinking now." Using that already limited space to keep looping over something vague is a waste.
Better to write it down, organize it, and archive it quickly.
Not the idiomatic use, but like a lizard dropping its tail: detach part of the thought, and free the space that had vaguely occupied the whole for other thinking.
That said, even when I intuitively know writing would help, I sometimes slack off.
Deep down I probably think that keeping vague thought going might birth a new perspective.
But that's just rationalizing — with the temporary memory device above, better to spend it on new processing than repeating the same thought. Performance of that device rises too. (Thankfully the brain ages if it only does the same processing, and performance rises when you give it new stimulus.)
From writing various thoughts on this blog, my sense is: until I finished a post I'd been looping on that topic, and after writing it down I no longer stew over it. Not that I forgot — more that something organized including the logic became available to reference anytime.
That said, unless the thinking is deep enough to be worth referencing, archiving may not be needed. It's presumptuous to say, but I do try to publish only things that reached fairly deep thought.
There was a period when I tried writing down every morning what I'd thought — but it was a hassle, and days of "I have to do XXX" stacked up with little variety, so it never became a habit. You have to be careful not to compromise on the thinking itself.
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