The article "Writing as a Thinking Tool" discusses the author's personal experience with using writing as a means to process and understand information. As a middle school student, the author struggled to comprehend long passages, but found that taking notes in the form of mind maps helped to clarify their thoughts. This approach allowed them to organize and make sense of the information, rather than simply storing it. The author later realized that writing serves as a tool for processing information, much like a computer algorithm, and cites Manuel Blum's advice to graduate students, drawing parallels between writing and computational models like Finite Automata and Turing Machines.