<small>October 20th, 2026</small> One of the ways I get my [[Writing to Think|writing process]] going is by giving myself *assignments*. Assignments are basically scoped projects that have a high probability of revealing something interesting to me about the world. They can be big or they can be small. An assignment could be learning how to cook a particular dish or trying to [[My Experiments with Doing Things Daily|make some kind of music for 365 days]] or making something specific with my computer or spending 4 weeks in [[Shenzhen]]. Assignments help me learn new things, but they also help a story progress. They have a beginning, middle, and end. They have suspense because I don't always know what will happen next. And trying to complete an assignment always has its own conflicts and resolutions. When I don't know what to write, one of the most useful things I can do is come up with different assignments that could be worth working on. The moment I begin an assignment, the writing will automatically just start happening again For my long form writing projects, outside of reflection or exposition, structure could come from a series of assignments strung together in a logical order. A writing project could contain several assignments all with their own beginning, middle, and end, or a single broader assignment that is only resolved at the end of the piece, or both. I want to work on many more assignments and I think they could all be cataloged in some kind of central index since they often result in some kind of writing.