THINKING / PERSONAL

Why I Started Writing Before I Had Everything Figured Out

Soon Heng Wee · 5 min read · October 2026

I used to think you needed to know what you were doing before you started talking about it.

Have the answer first. Build the expertise. Get the results. Then write about it.

The problem is that life rarely works in that order.

Most of the things I have learned came while I was still figuring them out. Through work, mistakes, conversations, moving countries, changing jobs, dealing with pressure, trying different things, and occasionally wondering whether I actually knew what I was doing.

So I decided to start writing anyway.

This was never meant to be a polished personal brand

Isasoonthing started as a pet project. There was no grand five-year content strategy, no carefully designed creator funnel, and no plan to become a thought leader.

I simply wanted somewhere to keep the ideas that kept following me home.

Sometimes they came from work. A client asks a question and I keep thinking about it two days later. Sometimes they came from books. A sentence makes me stop because it explains something I have been experiencing but never knew how to describe. Sometimes they came from stress. A difficult week forces me to notice something about confidence, pressure, expectations, or how I respond when things do not go according to plan.

And sometimes it is just curiosity. Something catches my attention and I want to understand it properly. This site became a place for those things.

I am not really a book person

This part matters because I do not want this site to become something it is not.

I have never considered myself a bookworm. I was always more of a sports person. Move first. Try it. Learn while doing. Figure it out along the way.

Reading became more important to me later. Not because I suddenly wanted to become someone who reads fifty books a year. Life just became more complicated. Different environments. Different jobs. Different expectations. Moving countries. More pressure. More uncertainty. And naturally, more questions.

That was when books started becoming useful. Not as an identity. As a tool.

Sometimes you find the book because you need the idea

One example was The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest.

I was not looking for a book to post about. I was trying to understand things like stress, self-sabotage, change, and why we sometimes make life harder for ourselves even when we know better.

The value was not in repeating what the author said. The interesting part was asking: Does this explain something I have experienced? Where does it match real life? Where does it not? What would this actually look like at work? What happens when pressure is real, expectations are real, and there is no neat quote to solve the problem?

That is usually where my thinking starts.

Most ideas are borrowed before they become yours

I do not think every idea needs to be original. That would be unrealistic. Most of us are constantly borrowing from somewhere: books, people, work, clients, podcasts, colleagues, sport, the internet, things we agree with, and things we strongly disagree with.

What matters more to me is what happens after you borrow the idea.

Borrow the idea. Test it against real life. Form my own opinion.

That final part matters. Repeating someone else’s framework does not automatically make it useful. The idea becomes interesting when it survives contact with reality.

Work gives me a useful testing ground

A lot of what I write will probably come back to sales, marketing, strategy and human behaviour. That is simply where I spend a lot of my time.

I speak with businesses. I listen to growth problems. I pitch ideas. I get objections. I make assumptions that turn out to be wrong. I see what sounds impressive in a presentation and what actually matters once money, targets, people and expectations get involved.

That gives me a useful filter. Something can sound brilliant in theory. Then a client asks one uncomfortable question and suddenly you realise how much of the idea you actually understand. I like that. It forces you to think better.

Writing helps me notice what I actually believe

There is another reason I wanted to start writing. Thinking in your head is easy. You can hold two contradictory ideas at the same time and never notice.

Writing is less forgiving. You have to choose the words. You have to explain the connection. You have to decide what you actually mean. And sometimes halfway through writing something, you realise: I do not agree with my original point anymore.

That is useful too. I do not want this site to become a record of things I was always right about. I would rather it become a record of how my thinking changes.

I do not know exactly what this becomes

Maybe that is the point.

I could have waited until I had the perfect positioning, the perfect content pillars, the perfect audience, the perfect design, and the perfect reason for someone to care.

But waiting for clarity before starting usually means you never collect the experiences that create clarity in the first place.

So I am starting from here. With the things I know. The things I am questioning. The things I am testing. And the things that make me think for a little longer than usual.

No promise that every idea will be profound. No promise that I will always agree with myself six months later. Just a place to think in public, and see where it goes.