Note: I originally published this back in July of 2015 on Medium. Reposting it here on my personal blog. My writing style has changed over the years, so please be nice.

Not everyone loves writing, and I’m not convinced people should love writing.

It’s hard work.

I have a love-hate relationship with writing that has been cultivated over several years.

In college, there is no greater skill than the ability to communicate. We communicate every day.

You communicate with your professors in person and through email; with our friends and relatives through social media, like Facebook and Twitter; and with yourself as well as larger potentially unknown audiences in blog posts and other ways.

You communicate even when you don’t think you’re communicating, and the basis for much of communication is still the written word.

Five reasons you should write daily:

Writing enhances your ability to communicate.

In this culture, communication is so often hampered because we don’t know how to express ourselves, whether it be verbal or written. If you have trouble communicating what you want or asking tough questions, regular writing will give you a mind for structuring words quickly to achieve the desired effect in a diplomatic way.

Writing will remove stress from your mind.

Writing can be therapeutic. It can be a way to vent all the pent-up frustrations burdening your mind into a far less volatile form. Writing can serve as a form of cathartic stress relief where you finally get to say what you can’t say out loud. Note: be careful, don’t burn any bridges in the process.

Writing will develop your analytical skills.

Working through your problems with a piece of paper encourages you to think things through clearly, in both linear (sequential) and non-linear (creative) ways.

Writing regularly online will build your personal brand and help with job seeking efforts.

If you’re seeking a job after college, you’re going to need all the help you can get. Instead of spending hours binge-watching Netflix(don’t deny this fact, I see your Snapchat stories), you could spend 30 minutes a day writing and have something to show for it at the end of the summer.

Writing every day makes you good at writing.

The ability to write well is a powerful skill to be good at nowadays. Write every day to keep your skill with the written word sharp. Like any skill, the ability to communicate clearly, concisely and aesthetically degrades without practice.

There are no bad writers — only inexperienced writers.

Conclusion

And that’s just the start. The full benefits of this regular habit are, ironically, not something you can put into words, but something that must be experienced to be known.

Over time, you’ll learn the power of interaction with your audience, and draw inspiration and lessons from the audience. But for now, just get started.