LessWrong's 'Don't Edit Before Creating' method cuts drafting time by 10x

In a widely discussed LessWrong article titled 'Don’t Edit Your Ideas Before Having Them,' the author Hide presents a counterintuitive writing strategy: abandon all standards during the first draft. The core insight is that editing is far easier than generating raw material, so trying to produce 'perfect' sentences from the outset dramatically slows output—often by a factor of 10. Instead, Hide advocates for a stream-of-consciousness approach: write bullet points of every thought regardless of quality, then sequence them, then flesh out subsections starting with the easiest. Crucially, the writer must never read back anything until the entire first draft is complete, because re-reading is a form of editing that disrupts creative flow.

Hide provides a concrete example: a 90-second unedited stream produced the working title and several alternative ideas for the very essay. The method reduces mental friction, allowing the brain to generate prose that is often surprisingly good without prolonged deliberation. After the first pass, editing becomes a simple matter of removing fluff and fixing awkward phrasing. Hide reports that they frequently keep much of the original stream-of-consciousness wording in the final draft. The post resonates with anyone facing writer's block or perfectionism, offering a practical, low-stakes way to boost writing speed and quality simultaneously.