An INTP Confession: Why I Chose Blogging over YouTubing about Investing

Remember the sheer excitement of receiving a gift you’ve wanted for a long time?

That is the exact inner joy I felt when I first discovered online journaling more than two decades ago.

As an introvert, blogging was a fantastic outlet for me. It was a quiet space where I could organise my thoughts and share my views with a wider audience without having to overcome the social anxiety.

It was the undisputed “in-thing” in the early 2000s, before choking out due to the rise of social media in the 2010s.

Then came high-speed internet, ushering in the era of YouTube to further disrupt the landscape. Today, traditional blogging finds itself grasping for air in the age of AI.

As a content creator, if your goal is wider reach and better monetisation, building a YouTube channel is the way to go.

In contrast, dwindling readership means you will only get very little advertising dollars from blogging (maybe just enough to cover the various subscriptions).

Yet, I am convinced that blogging, like reading, is unlikely to become a Dodo bird.

Not only does it continue to serve a cognitive function that is incredibly difficult to replicate on video, but there is also an inherent, deeply personal beauty to writing that simply cannot be captured in motion.

Writing is Thinking

“I was prompted to start this investment journal when I was having a discussion with a friend. I found that I was not clear in my investment goals and strategies. I was not able to inform, convince and put across my points clearly. Hence, the discussion did not really benefit either of us.”

I literally wrote those exact words in my introductory blog post back in 2007. Nearly two decades later, the core reality has not shifted an inch: Writing is thinking.

As an educator in my “previous life”, I know this pedagogical truth intimately.

One of my favourite frameworks I used back then to check my students’ understanding was Visible Thinking.

Through these thinking routines, I could glimpse what my students had actually learnt versus what they were still missing. Making their thinking visible allowed me to unpack their interpretations and bridge those crucial learning gaps.

The exact same approach can be applied to our own learning as investors.

It is one thing to read an annual report, look at a balance sheet, and understand the content on a passive, surface level. It is an entirely different beast to distill that data, organise it logically, and explain it to someone else clearly.

The sole act of writing down your thoughts is extremely powerful.

It reflects, with brutal clarity, what you know, and more importantly, what you don’t. Writing for an audience forces you to follow up on those knowledge gaps, resulting in two underrated advantages:

• Deeper Learning: You move past the snapshots and headlines of mainstream financial news, delving deeper into the business intricacies.
  
• Retained Learning: The human brain naturally filters out information. Writing forces you to revisit your findings, strengthening those synaptic connections to make your investment thesis stick.

I cannot emphasise this enough: these mental exercises build the deep conviction required to defend against the emotional, knee-jerk reactions from that very same brain when the markets inevitably swing between fear and greed.

Video is Performing

You might argue that creating a video also requires a massive amount of thinking.

I don’t deny that for a second.

As an AV Club member during my school days and later managing it as a teacher, I know firsthand the immense thinking and effort required to produce a good video.

I truly enjoy video production; it is the perfect medium to capture beautiful life moments. Preserving these memories allows us to relive the experience, just like these highlights from my recent family trip to Sa Pa, Vietnam with our lifelong friends.

However, the cognitive effort in video production is heavily skewed. You aren’t thinking purely about the architecture of the logic; you need to think about how to engage and retain the fleeting attention of an audience.

While readers can immerse themselves in pages of dense text, viewers will click away when their senses aren’t actively engaged.

Instead of developing the core ideas, a disproportionate amount of energy is spent wrestling with pacing, transitions, audio quality, and the ever-shifting whims of the YouTube algorithm.

The Unavoidable Distillation Trap

Moreover, the very nature of video requires an aggressive compression of content.

If you are an avid reader, you have likely experienced how a movie adaptation almost always leaves out critical subplots, thought-provoking nuances, and character-building internal monologues.

Did you watch the Netflix adaptation of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem? That’s a clear example of watering down a complex, deeply philosophical plot.

It is no fault of the filmmakers.

The structural details that make the book brilliant would slow down the pacing and end up far too heavy for a mass audience.

The exact same distillation trap happens when you translate an investing article into video format.

Most investing videos merely skim the surface of fundamental analysis.

Again, it is not that content creators don’t want to go in-depth, but the nature of the medium means they will lose their audience if they spend too much time on these details.

Sustaining is the Secret Sauce

To be clear, I am not chanting “Blogging good, YouTubing bad” like the sheep in Animal Farm.

Just like how I enjoyed both the fast-paced Netflix series and the original book trilogy, each medium has a distinct, valuable place in the investing community.

I am simply sharing why this content creator chose to remain on a less popular path.

I have learnt from my journey towards financial independence that my success wasn’t due to a jaw-dropping income (an educator’s salary is stable, but not outlandish) or some legendary investing acumen.

The secret sauce was simply sustaining the process over decades — enjoying my teaching career and the investing process alike.

To continue creating for the long haul, I have to choose the vehicle that allows me to genuinely enjoy what I am doing.

Satisfying the Craving of an INTP

For an INTP, nothing is more deeply satisfying than exploring new ideas, breaking down immense complexity, and figuring out exactly how things work under the hood.

When I open a blank document to start a new post, my mind immediately begins to map out the puzzle:

• What are the key ideas, and how do I link them structurally?
• How can I use the appropriate analogy to make a reader truly understand this concept?
• What unique insights can I share, and how do I get you to wonder?

Every ounce of cognitive effort goes entirely toward building this conceptual architecture. For an INTP, that process is pure, unadulterated dopamine.

I never found that same satisfaction from my previous YouTube channel. Even though the videos were well-received, I was drained by the production. I knew I could not sustain it for years.

It is the exact same reason Why I said No to Gold, Crypto, and Options in favour of long-term, fundamental investing. Doing the former would be solely monetary, while I get a kick out of the latter as it challenges my type of intellect.

With the limited time we have on this beautiful planet, the best thing we can do for ourselves is to use more of it for what makes our hearts flutter and leaves us filling fulfilled.

The True Payback?

It is definitely not the ad revenue. If I chose to, I could make that annual amount in just a few sessions of private tuition.

The true payback is that journaling crystallises my thinking, and I would like to think it has contributed significantly to my investment returns over the years.

Just as importantly, it fulfils what I perceive to be the key pillars of a purposeful life:

• Creating: Being able to build something from scratch is deeply satisfying, and writing provides the perfect outlet for that creative urge.
  
• Connecting and Contributing: Making my writing public is my way of connecting with you and offering my own small contribution to the community. It is always incredibly heartwarming to know that someone has benefited from what I share.

But what about YouTube?

You might have noticed the recent video summaries on my channel, which I produce using NotebookLM. While they attract little view counts, I am personally impressed by the quality of the generation.

The faceless format and AI voices might be a turnoff for many, but if you look past that, the technology actually provides a much more coherent narrative than if I tried to script, film, and perform it all myself!

It allows the video format to exist without draining my cognitive battery.

Subscribe and Spread the Word

If you enjoy reading my posts or listening to these AI-generated summaries, please consider joining my Telegram group or signing up for the email newsletter.

Because of how social media algorithms work, relying on platforms to organically show you my updates means you might easily miss a post.

I would also deeply appreciate it if you could spread the word to others who still enjoy reading deep, long-form thoughts on investing.

Thank you, as always, for your companionship on this journey.