I don't think I'm the kind of person who works by talking a lot with others. I'm more likely to write, think, and sketch things out on my own before I begin.

At first I sketch ideas on Post-its. I write the core message in the center, then stick on whatever comes to mind as supporting points beneath it or pull phrases up toward that main line. I move them around, rearranging until the message feels right.

Someone watching me might think I'm just doodling the whole time.

So I use a lot of pencil and eraser. Erase and write, erase and write again. When a Post-it gets so smudged that it's no longer usable, I crumple it up without hesitation and pull out a fresh one.

It's similar when I work in Word. On one monitor I keep the document I'm writing filling the screen. On the other I spread out reference material or the headlines and core messages from the Post-its I wrote earlier.

I used to like zooming out so I could see the whole page at once. Now it's the opposite. I prefer to zoom in on the part I'm writing and focus on a single sentence.

This connects with what I wrote before about the length of thought.

When I read reports and books I often come across tidy tables of contents and neat structures. Seeing finished results all the time makes me fall into the illusion that I could form the structure in my head all at once, 0 to 1.

But in reality, that's not how it works for me.

For me it works best to look closely at small elements one by one, strengthen them, and then swap their places to build the message. Rather than finishing the whole structure first, if I stack these small pieces the structure appears before I know it.

I think each person has their own length of thought when it comes to working. Some people do their best work by seeing the whole from afar; others can only begin when they look closely at the sentence in front of them.

The length of thought for me is closer to zooming in than zooming out.

Namsan Trail sign

Disclaimer: From now on, in How I Work I will record memories of how I work by speaking them aloud, and AI will edit them with reference to the tone of the existing posts.