Recently, Alison Jones, Director of Practical Inspiration Publishing shared a short but powerful reflection on writing, books, and the temptation to outsource our thinking to AI. Her words articulated something I’d been feeling firsthand.
For around six weeks, from late November through to early January, I immersed myself in writing the messy first draft of a forthcoming book. There’ll be much more to share about that in the weeks and months ahead, but at its heart, the book explores executive coaching, emerging leaders and the journey from self-doubt to self-confidence.
I wrote that first draft in a relatively short, concentrated period of time – and I’m genuinely proud of that achievement. But what surprised me most wasn’t the word count or the progress. It was how transformative the process itself turned out to be.
As Alison puts it:
“Write in the direction of a book, by all means. It’s a great cohesive force, it gives you a purpose, and there’s NOTHING like a good book to supercharge your reputation and visibility. But the important thing is to do the messy, time-consuming work involved with writing a book, not just to have a final manuscript in your hands. When humans write books, they grapple with structure and the expression and sequencing of ideas.”
She’s absolutely right.
Writing a book forces you to grapple with structure, clarity, and the sequencing of ideas. It requires deeper thinking than most day-to-day content creation ever does.
Although I’m only at the first-draft stage – with plenty still to refine – the ideas journey has already been profound. Thoughts that had been swirling around in my head for years are now captured on paper, on my laptop, or stored in an ideas folder. Once those ideas were outside my own mind, I could finally see them clearly.
This is where writing intersects so powerfully with leadership development and executive coaching.
Writing slows you down. It reveals what you really think, not just what sounds good in conversation. And over time, it builds depth, confidence, and authority.
In that sense, writing doesn’t just produce a book. It produces the person capable of having written it.
Whether or not you see yourself as “a writer”, my encouragement for 2026 is simple: write.
Write notes. Write rough drafts. Or speak into dictation software if that works better for you. The format doesn’t matter.
What matters is getting ideas out of your head and into a form you can engage with. Once they’re externalised, you begin to see patterns, priorities, and possibilities that were previously invisible.
And that shift from noise to clarity is where real insight, confidence, and growth begin.