How Writing Helps You Build a Personal Social Hive Mind Supercomputer

Writing in public helps attract ideas, people, and opportunities to like a social supercomputer.

Recently I reviewed a resume for Mindy, a 25-year-old aspiring data scientist. It was good. I asked, "What about LinkedIn—are you active there?" She said, "Well, I'm on LinkedIn, but I don't pay much attention to it."

As Julia Roberts said in Pretty Women, "BIG mistake... HUGE!" 

Writing in public is one of the best things you can do for your mind and your career. When you engage in a meaningful way, great people, opportunities, and ideas find you.

Mindy wanted to use social media but needed help. So I wrote this for her. 

What is a "hive mind supercomputer?”

Jon Bain is a lawyer, programmer, and company founder. He read my article about using social media to find jobs, The Modern Art of Job Searching, and wrote, "Cool-it’s like using social media to build your own Hive Mind supercomputer!"

I didn’t know what a Hive Mind supercomputer was, so I looked it up.

A "hive mind" is a system that works like bees in a hive. The term was first used to describe bee intelligence in 1943 and in science fiction in 1950 by James H. Schmitz. Some sci-fi interpretations of hive mind impute groupthink, mind control, or uniformity of thought. That's not the definition I like.

Another definition is offered by Wired founding executive editor Kevin Kelly in Out of Control, the New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World. He described hive minds as collaborative, creative, and generative networks:

This is the call of the internet. Keep adding players. The more they are connected, the more valuable my connection becomes.

~ Kevin Kelly

And hive mind super-computational systems help cancer researchers at Sloan Kettering understand how proteins “twist, turn, clamp, and squeeze other molecules during chemical reactions” with groups of 15,000 processors coordinating work instead of the 2, 4, or 8-core computers that were common not long ago.

Bigger hives, bigger insights, bigger possibilities.

How to build your own social hive mind: the CONNECT-READ-WRITE system

Creating your own social hive mind supercomputer is easy, free, and fun. I call it the CONNECT-READ-WRITE system.

Here's how it works.

1. Connect and follow publications, blogs, and LinkedIn groups that interest you. For Mindy, she followed author Atul Gawande, the blog Towards Data Science, and Google Chief Decision Officer Cassie Kozyrkov (

   Decision Intelligence
   ) on LinkedIn.

2. Read actively. Mindy reads every day, but actively. Active reading means as you read, you interact with what you learn. You slow down, journal, and sketch your understanding. You scribble in the margins of a book and imagine you're arguing with the author over a beer. Active reading gets ideas from your head to paper where you can see, feel, and touch them. For more, check out How to Retain More Of What You Read.

3. The last step was daunting for Mindy, and the most important: writing in public. She started small: a comment a day on LinkedIn—to quote a phrase she liked, share an exciting idea, or doubt a dubious statistic. No, "Cool post!" doesn't cut it—the key is to inject your personality. The goal is to develop the skill of writing longer, more thoughtful posts and articles¹.

4. Repeat. I told Mindy to give it a year Keep connecting. Keep reading. Keep writing. Keep noticing. Hives aren’t built in a day.

Mindy’s trail of comments and observations form what

Henrik Karlsson

calls a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox.

He's right — writing in public draws like-minded people to you like a magnet. As you gain confidence, you can tackle bigger stuff, like blogging here on

Substack

or industry blogs.

But the important thing is to do it— to cast your ideas out like a fishing lure to see what bites.

Ten quick CONNECT—READ—WRITE tips & tricks

Merely writing thoughtful comments puts Mindy in the top 94% of the LinkedIn bee hive. I know this because I checked over 500 posts in my feed—just 6% showed a modicum of effort and thought. My research wasn't scientific, but sadly, it rings true. 

But imagine — making one thoughtful comment every day in public puts you in the top 94%! Here are ten tips on how to build your own social hive mind supercomputer:

Write in public, beginning with one thoughtful comment a day. Start small and build from there.

Read one page a day, not a chapter. Active reading is different than novel reading. When you find a good source, slow down. Slowing down is hard to do but essential.

Disagree with what you read. In Meditations 1.7.3, Marcus Aurelius wrote, “I learned to read carefully and not be satisfied with a rough understanding of the whole, and not to agree too quickly with those who have a lot to say about something.”

Don’t² take notes word-for-word. Take notes in your own words, not verbatim. Restating what you learn is a like a rock tumbler for ideas - it turns brain-farts into gems.

Sketch and make metaphors. Sean Adams shows how to make metaphors in his course, Graphic Design Foundations: Ideas, Concepts, and Form. For example, when he designed the UCLA Extension School catalog, he started with 10 crude sketches that combine the idea of “extension” and “California”:

1. Board shorts and “Hollywood;”

2. A ladder and the Golden Gate Bridge

3. A surfboard that extends above the rest.

The final version is shown at right. Anyone can do this. Try it!

Edit until you surprise yourself. Edit with vigor. A clever one-line LinkedIn post can generate millions of views, so take your time. As poet Ross Gay says, “I keep writing until I surprise myself. Then I know I have something.”

Remember: you're thinking with your fingers. Isaac Asimov said, "Writing is thinking with your fingers." I love this idea: writing reveals what makes you unique; writing shows you care; writing is generous. 

CC your hive, social media style. Social media platforms let you "copy" your connections. For example, I thought my friend and podcaster Mark Freeman at

On the Mark Data

might like this article (that mention will “CC” him, meaning it will put a notification in his Substack feed.)

Notice you're 4X more creative. Studies show that writing on paper helps you produce up to 4 times more ideas with better output, especially for conceptual thinking.³⁴⁵

Have fun. Finally, writing in public is fun. You’ll meet new, fascinating people. You’ll laugh. You’ll retain what you read.

Hive minds are magnets for ideas, people, and opportunities.

Mindy started writing in public. After six months, she had three job offers. Two were unposted. She met new people. She told me, "Writing in public was scary at first, but it became easy and fun. And it's an opportunity magnet — like having a recruiter work for me 7x24!" Mindy’s hive mind is growing.

Writing in public might be the best thing you can do for your career and yourself. It’s easy, fun, free, and gets people buzzing around you. So start building your own social hive mind supercomputer today.

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For More Exploration

Watch Ryan Holiday's 3-Step System for Reading Like a Pro is one of my favorite videos on active reading:

Read How to Read and Retain More, Mark Palmer, www.techno-sapien.com

Read How to Learn New Skills, Mark Palmer, techno-sapien on YouTube:

Follow Henrik Karlsson and

Escaping Flatland

on

Substack

and read his essay, A very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox

Consider taking the LinkedIn Learning course Graphic Design Foundations: Ideas, Concepts, and Form, by Sean Adams, the only two-term president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts and author of multiple best-selling books.

And if you missed it or it’s been too long, enjoy Julia Roberts take down two arrogant Beverley Hills saleswomen in Pretty Women:

1. This point about the goal of writing in public, and the speed of reading, was added after the original posting of this article thanks to comments that the piece seemed to advocate for hyperactive, rapid posting. Ironically, this is the opposite of what it argues, although I understand where the mis-interpretation comes from. So this line was an attempt to clear up that confusion.

2. If you need the detail, use a transcription app like Otter.AI (that’s what I use).

3. The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Summary by Joanna Penn, The Journalist's Resource, 2014.

4. Is Electronic Brainstorming or Brainwriting the Best Way to Improve Creative Performance in Groups? An Overlooked Comparison of Two Idea-Generation Techniques

5. The Pen Is Mightier Than The Phone: A Case For Writing Things Out, Kevin Purdy, Fast Company.