The last few days I have been writing up a patent. Doing one of these things always seems like it’s going to be a lot of work, but once I am into it, the process is very enjoyable.
Having an idea in your head for a way of doing something is not at all the same as actually needing to describe it. And for a patent, you need to describe your idea in sufficient detail that a reasonably knowledgable person could build it for themselves, going only from your description.
That means you can’t leave things out because they are “obvious”. What is obvious to you is not necessarily obvious to somebody else. People can’t read your mind — they can only read your patent.
In the course of going through such an exercise, you end up understanding your own idea a lot better. But that’s not all.
Diving down into a detailed step by step description forces you to be critical about your idea, to see it the way others would. You need to tear it apart and put it back together again.
In the course of doing that, two good things happen: (1) You end up having a much better version of your idea, and (2) you end up getting new ideas that you otherwise never would have thought of.
I’d call that a pretty good return on investment.