I love to write. As many others have already commented, writing is one of the most, if not the most, cathartic activity once can partake in to enhance clarity of thought, explore new ideas, and open up a conduit between one's inner world and the outside world.

I write at least weekly on my blog, which includes technical topics, social commentary, how-tos, and IT-related debates. For instance:

Is IT Sexy Enough for Dinner Conversation? parts 1, 2 and 3.[/url]

At work, I write copious amounts of documentation. I find that the only way to really communicate ideas is through pictures (high level) and words (detail level). Only one or the other often results in incomplete communication and time spent backtracking/reverse engineering. I find it also helps speed up my work as a data architect/ETL developer because I can check back as to why I made a particular decision and how I should proceed. Fortunately, I'm also able to do keep this much documentation while being a very efficient developer. Anethema as this may sound, I found that keeping documentation is more a matter of will and not as much a matter of "time." I used to loath writing documentation until I discovered how immediate and palpable its benefits were. (And your boss will LOVE it!)

I would submit that if you were to choose two, and only two, pastimes to take up each day for the rest of your life, one should be any kind of writing (poetry, novels, music composition, screen plays, etc) and exercise. Both are actually quite similar in many ways--and produce results that nothing else really can... :hehe: