No, this article isn’t AI-generated nor is it AI-assisted. And you’ll be confident that’s the case by the end of it, because it meanders, makes random detours and goes on tangents, and doesn’t really go anywhere. But a tiny part of my soul’s in it, which I think is enough to make this a hopefully engaging piece of writing.

Let me set the stage. I don’t like the idea of autonomously AI-generated content, but I don’t really frown as much at AI-assisted content. I’ve been trying to use the tooling here and there in my work, with a varying degree of success: it’s a tool like any other - sometimes it works okay enough, and sometimes it doesn’t. Outside of work, I write for fun, and I while I used AI for on-the-fly proofreading and even some occasional brainstorming, I haven’t really tried engaging in a writing exercise with AI end-to-end in my leisurely writing. Writing is a creative outlet, it’s fun figuring out how ideas come together, and I enjoy the tactile experience of typing out my thoughts.

I have an infant in the house - she’s becoming more active, more engaging, and I’m starting to find less time for hobbies. Earlier today I was walking my daughter in a stroller, my hands were busy, so I tried putting together an article using a voice AI interface. It’s an article for a “secret” gaming blog I run (reach out - I’ll be happy to share it privately). I spent an hour and a half walking and talking to an AI assistant about the piece. While it was an engaging thing to do, the results were mixed.

First, I recorded voice notes. Talking about the subject, core ideas, some salient points I wanted to cover, as well as some anecdotes I wanted to include. Default voice recorder app transcribes voice memos into text, and I copied the transcript into the Gemini app. I then used Gemini Live (back-and-forth interaction mode) to align on an outline and produce the resulting outline. I’ve also prompted Gemini to review other articles I wrote and try to match the voice, tone, and style of my writing when generating a draft.

Talking to an AI assistant about my writing was engaging - akin to chatting with an overly agreeable friend. Naturally, it was very encouraging, and happy with whatever direction I wanted to take. Gemini felt like a friend who listens to many podcasts and has a lot of interesting takes which are a mile wide but an inch deep - it knows a lot about many things, but isn’t particularly well versed in any subject, and misunderstands many details (and yeah, I know AI doesn’t actually understand things). AI is, as always, overly agreeable, which could discourage divergent thinking, but I’m sure some clever prompting can be used to work around that.

A few weeks ago METR (an AI research non-profit) published, a study on impact of AI on open-source developer productivity. The synopsis is simple: experienced developers felt like they were faster when using AI tooling, while in reality they were working slower. The authors outline a few hypotheses, but the one that connects with me is about friction: AI tooling reduces the friction and cognitive demand for the work, making it easier to stay in the flow.

Just like the participants in the METR study, I felt like I was constantly making progress. I kept refining the ideas, revising the text, and overall I didn’t experience the often painful and unpleasant part of creative process. The part where you don’t really know what to do next, and feel like everything you’ve made so far is terrible. But you see, I value that part of the process. I think that’s where the creativity comes from, from a deep hole of “this isn’t very good” and “I’m terrible at this”. That’s how powerful new ideas emerge. I’m a solitary thinker, but not everyone is. Many enjoy processing information on the fly, while engaging with others. And for those type of folks, engaging with an AI assistant may have been more productive.

At the end, Gemini produced a draft, but fine enough is the best I can say for it. When in my voice notes I talked about the struggle of finally beating a Isshin the Sword Saint in Sekiro after weeks of struggle, the AI draft sanitized this into a generic point about how overcoming challenges is fun for players. It captured the words but missed the entire point: the point about painful, frustrating, and ultimately meaningful process. Technically correct, but really not the point I was aiming to make.

In the end, a piece that would have taken me an hour of focused, difficult work took three hours of frictionless, meandering conversation. The time flew by, but I spent most of it re-injecting the nuance the AI had stripped away. I think for writing that’s meant to have a viewpoint, the friction is a critical part of the process. It’s the creative cheese grater that you have to pull yourself through, leaving little bits and pieces of your soul on each page.

When I was younger (but not that young, this was just a decade ago) I converted my Prius into a camper and toured the United States for about a year. It was a really fun experience, and you can read some more about some of my reflections on the experience here.

I was reflecting on that part of my life earlier this morning, and I remembered a story I think you might enjoy. It’s a bit creepy, and it’s definitely up there with scary stories you tell by the campfire - but I promise it’s nothing but the truth!

There’s this remote campground half way between San Francisco and Los Angeles that I really like. It’s not too far from a highway, but roads aren’t great, and there’s quite a bit of elevation to climb - it takes a good hour to get to the top of the hill where the campground’s located. It’s managed by the Bureau of Land Management (for those in the know - it’s a BLM campsite), meaning that it’s free, there are some basic amenities (read: a composting toilet), but it doesn’t have any on-site staff, and tends to not have many visitors. No cell service, either. Park rangers check in once a week to make sure all is well.

You do get gorgeous views in 360 degrees around you, and it’s a great place to be alone with your thoughts, or maybe to make a new friend - isolation does tend to bring people closer.

I pulled to the campsite in the late afternoon: it’s a small 10-site space, with each site having a space for a car, a firepit, and a camping table. There was one other camper - a weathered trailer hidden away behind a tree.

By the evening, another camper arrived - an old Toyota RV. A friendly guy in his early sixties politely introduced himself and invited me to a campfire later tonight. This is common in remote campsites - he gave me good vibes, and I joined him for some campfire stories, beer, and dessert.

We got to talking, and the guy - George (name changed for privacy) - told me his life story. It was fascinating, and I wish I’d written it down there and then: he was a professional navigator, taking scientists, film crews, and various explorers through hard to reach places: be it through the Amazon jungle knee-deep in rainfall, driving through permafrost in specialized vehicles, or leading a trek into the heart of the desert. I don’t know if George exaggerated or not - and I don’t really care - he was a fantastic storyteller, and I was engrossed in his stories.

Now that I reflect back, I think at some point he talked about wrestling a bear. That’s fine, tell your tales, gleeman - I’m all ears.

Hours passed, and George noticed something odd - it’s been dark for some time, but the other camper’s got no lights on. Given how remote we were, it was worth making sure the only other inhabitant of the campsite’s doing well.

We grabbed our flashlights, and made our way to the camper. A few friendly “hey, just checking in that you’re doing well” yielded no response. Oh well, I was ready to head back, but George decided to knock. He did, and the door just swung wide open.

Okay, that’s definitely weird. Well, back to the campfire, right?

George had a different idea. In we go. Well, you’re the adventurer, George, although I’m pretty sure that’s trespassing. We get inside the old trailer: it’s definitely got a lived-in feel: you can see some clothes on a bed, books, food on the table… Yeah, a plate with an unfinished meal - some hardly recognizable gruel, with a piece of unfinished apple next to it. That’s like a still from Resident Evil, thanks - I hate it.

The apple started decomposing but isn’t quite rotten: the meal’s a few days old, and the person clearly left in a hurry. “Park rangers check in weekly, and they make sure the campers don’t outstay the limit. So something happened recently. We should investigate.” - says George.

Well, George, this is creepy. Investigate what? Let’s head back to the campfire, have a last round of drinks, and maybe be extra vigilant through the rest of the night. Right?

Nope, George has gotten interested in trying to figure out what’s going on. He tells me of stories of people wandering off from the campsites, and how we need to see if there’s any information here that could hint at the person’s whereabouts - maybe we could send help.

A rational person in me wanted nothing to do with this, head back to my car, and lock the doors. So we started looking through the trailer. I’m sure I rationalized that somehow in the moment.

Let me paint the picture for you: it’s pitch black, there’s not a living soul for miles around and two men with flashlights are looking through a decrepit trailer. Yeah, it’s weird, I know. I mean at this point George is in a full detective mode trying to find any indication on what happened to the person. I’m probably an accomplice to some crime by now.

And we do.

There’s a stack of papers on the table. Naturally, George dives in, I’m reluctantly looking over his shoulder. Bills, receipts. It’s a woman, in her fifties. A-ha - a journal. Open on the last page. Lots of ramblings about what I could only assume to be a boyfriend. But the last line stands out:

“I’m not safe anymore, I think he found me. I should run.”

Now, this is too creepy even for George. We nope out, head back to our own vehicles, lock the doors, and aim to reconvene in the morning.

In the morning, we have a huddle. Naturally, no one came back to the camper. George tried to get his satellite phone to work through the night - but couldn’t. We both were planning to leave the campsite today, and decided whoever gets out first will call in the authorities. George was planning to leave right after our chat, so we’ve decided he’ll make the call.

I don’t have a satisfying conclusion for you. George headed down the mountain to call the authorities, and I left shortly after. I’ve tried searching for her name a few times over the years, but never found a trace.

The questions are all that remain. Did she simply drive off, leaving a strange scene behind? Did she wander into the unforgiving wilderness? Or did “he” find her? Was it a story of mental illness, a paranoid fantasy, or the final moments of a lonely, horrifying reality? I’ll never know.

Dear reader, you’re in luck. I was going to spit out more uneducated opinions about how AI might or might not destroy art, but instead I’ll be talking about technocratic totalitarianism, and having said opinions. As always, thanks to Patrick for getting the thought train started through his thoughtful email forwards.

I haven’t finished college. I studied aerospace engineering for about two years: this was back in Russia, where education was free - or actually the opposite - I got paid a small stipend to study. Structured curriculums felt mind-numbingly monolithic, and at the same time I struggled to wrap my head around some subjects. The stipend wasn’t enough to keep me in a university though, and after two years I wanted a major change, so I packed a suitcase and moved to the United States.

If aerospace engineering didn’t work out, I always planned to go into software engineering. It seemed not particularly hard, it was interesting, and it lent itself well to unstructured learning I so very much enjoy. Lady luck smiled, and that worked out - I’ve been working in software engineering for nearly 15 years.

I’m taking you through this preamble for a reason: I’m not particularly well educated, I don’t have an academic background, and I don’t fetishize formal education. Good on you for getting a PhD, but I can’t get myself to place much value on that fact alone. Full transparency: I spelled aerospace engineering wrong when I first published this article, which only illustrates my point. And yet, I found myself nodding along as I was reading Cal Newport’s latest blog post:

“We hesitate to take a strong stance because we fear the data might reveal we were wrong, rendering us guilty of a humiliating sin in technocratic totalitarianism, letting the messiness of individual human emotion derail us from the optimal operating procedure.” - Cal Newport, Don’t ignore your moral intuition about phones

And it hit me. The quiet, persistent anxiety that hums beneath every opinion I hold. Despite my disdain for the academic institution, I’ve internalized one of its worst dogmas: that any belief not reducible to a peer-reviewed study is fundamentally illegitimate.

Yeah, I’m a technocratic totalitarian on the inside, worshipping science - turns out I am the tech-priest. A blind faith that a world is a complex machine, every aspect of which can be optimized, figured out, and rationalized. In a temple of technocratic totalitarianism being wrong is a “humiliating sin”, and ultimate act of heresy. And being a devout follower of my faith, a zealot, I fell into shying away from holding strong opinions.

Part of this came from my childhood - I was generally a gifted child, and things came easy to me. School was trivial, new languages weren’t hard to learn, and the only time I’ve faced intellectual adversity was in a university - and my fierce disdain for authority played a huge part in that too (but that’s a story for another day). I grew up with a belief that I’m smart, capable, and nothing is beyond my grasp if I put my mind to it (thanks, mom). A decade and a half of working in tech has played a role too. Surrounded by deeply technical peers and academics, the beliefs rubbed off on me. Software engineering being perceived as a precise and purely mathematical craft, corporate focus on numbers and metrics, and a call for every decision being backed by data only entrenched my beliefs.

And it’s really, really hard to hold opinions outside of a narrow field I’m able to build deep expertise in. So here I am, going through life, scared to have opinions about things because deep down I’m afraid to be proven wrong, which isn’t just a social failure - but a violation of my deeply held core beliefs.

Which brings me to parenthood. Watching my daughter grow has made me think about what it means to be a human. About deeply seeded biological instinct, fundamentally irrational behaviors, intuition, intangible human connection, love, and the joys of existing in this world.

For me, parenting is a deeply instinctual activity. While I tried to approach child rearing from a perspective rooted in research, turned out 1) there’s really not that much science about children out there, and 2) babies aren’t inherently rational and logical human beings.

When I started researching baby slings to wear my little one, I’ve read a lot about hip dysplasia - it’s a condition in newborns, where the hip bones don’t fit in the joint sockets right. And there’s lots of “maybes” on the subject, and one point stuck in my mind: “we are very likely to never know if baby wearing impacts hip dysplasia as studying this on infants would be deeply unethical”. And yeah, science shouldn’t really toy with children’s futures, and it largely doesn’t, and because of it raising children isn’t as well understood despite it being an activity humanity has lots of practice with.

And with many decisions, we just had to go with our gut, advise from parents, friends, and doctors - most of which was hearsay. The technocrats could burn me at the stake for this!

And then we met Leila (name changed for privacy). Leila is a lactation consultant - turns out breastfeeding is hard, since both the baby and the mom are figuring out how to do this together for the first time. Leila is also a postpartum doula, a certified marriage councilor, a church pastor, essential oil distributor, and she even has a YouTube plaque sitting in her office, sitting on a shelf among the all the crystals.

Here’s the thing, Leila was instrumental to getting our daughter to take on a breast. And it didn’t stop there. She’d make many recommendations - from holistic medicine to bizarre techniques that I’m pretty sure summon some kind of spirits. And guess what, when it’s 3 am and my baby hasn’t stopped crying for six hours - you’re damn right I’ll follow the instructions to the letter. Because those things worked.

Why did the techniques work? I’m too sleep deprived to analyze or care. They just worked.

In certain social circles - the ones I tend to find myself in often - intuition is devalued. It’s treated as a crutch, something deeply stepped in biases and human emotion, something to be avoided if possible. It’s the enemy of the optimal, and Leila should’ve been the final boss in my crusade against irrationality.

But at 3 am, with a screaming infant, you can’t run a regression analysis on the efficacy of spiritual-adjacent rocking techniques. You don’t get to wait for a double blind, peer-reviewed studies. You do what works. And Leila’s effectiveness isn’t based in a methodology that can be verified, but something I’ve taught myself into dismissing: embodied wisdom. A messy collection of experience, tradition, and gut feelings.

This is the inflection point: that’s when the technocrat in me had a meltdown. I couldn’t file Leila under the science label, nor could I label her as a fraud. Life isn’t a set of engineering problems that require precise data-backed solutions, and I’d argue engineering problems don’t always require precise, data-backed solutions either.

Raising a child is a deeply human problem - a chaotic, messy, sleep-deprived relationship with an infant often breaks all logic. And parenthood forced me to revisit the lens through which I see the world around me.

Science is an indispensable tool, but it’s a terrible god.

I was talking about opinions, wasn’t I? Well, parenthood opened up a new mental framework. You may have engaged with the results of this framework on my blog if you’ve read any other pieces this year.

I exist in spaces that worship metrics, and often if something can’t be measured - it doesn’t exist. Robert McNamara, who led the U.S. Defense Department during the Vietnam War, solely relied on quantitative metrics - body counts, sorties flown - to gauge success. Needless to say, he wasn’t very successful in the war efforts. I’ve fallen into this trap a countless number of times, most recently when I realized I pursued high view counts for my blog, for whatever reason. This religious pursuit of truth leaves little room for nuances of being human.

When I was talking about this article to my wife, she made a point I’d like to share: we don’t differentiate well between opinions and facts, and when we do, we discount the former. And I’ve been excited to share and discuss opinions more, and it’s been an enriching experience. It invites dialogue, facilitates sharing unfinished ideas, and helps me learn about the world.

Opinions are unique, colorful, and diverse. Opinions are made of scraps of knowledge, thoughts, feelings, and experiences glued together by an essence of humanity. I’m excited about sharing my opinions and I care about hearing yours (shoot me an email).

After a multi-year hiatus, I resumed blogging. It’s nice: I really enjoy getting my thoughts out, finding the right words, and eventually getting a message from someone saying that what I wrote resonated with them. It’s fun to practice a skill, and it’s engaging figuring out what I should say, and most importantly - what I shouldn’t. It’s a fun process.

Anywho, I’ve been writing weekly - on schedule - over the past 4 months, and it’s been an interesting experience. I committed to writing weekly over a full year, and I think now that I’m a third of the way through - I’d love to have a brief moment of retrospective.

I’ve been publishing every Monday, consistently.

Now that’s just good for building up a loyal audience: predictability and consistency and all that. And me-in-a-different-phase-of-life would’ve seen that as enough of a reason, but I wouldn’t really say I much care for an audience - or more specifically, I don’t want a large audience.

I must say that I love getting emails from folks who wanted to say something in response to what they’ve read - and there are now a few regulars with whom I communicate through occasional email threads (hey, you should reach out with thoughts - any kind of thoughts). I guess I do like my audience, and a regular cadence facilitates building that connection.

It’s also really nice to have some kind of rules to follow. It helps with regular practice, and it doesn’t just rely on a rare bout of inspiration. There’s something that needs writing, regardless of how inspired I feel. Better, if I’m inspired - I’m more likely to be writing at that moment. It’s a reinforcing cycle of practice and inspiration, and I’ve been enjoying that. I definitely wouldn’t write as frequently without a set cadence.

Finally, there’s a question of quality. Weekly writing exercise lowers the quality bar. Look at what you’re reading today - it might not be great, and I won’t lie and pretend that it took me hours upon hours of meticulous writing to get this piece out of the door. Contrary, 20 minutes, in and out, and there’s not even an editing pass for this one. Sorry, dear reader.

But lowering the quality bar helps. It helps me push something out of the door, regardless of what I think of it, and regardless of how much polish it has. Because sometimes I feel like I have a wonderful piece on my hands - and I might be right (hey, I’m really proud of the lessons in tech-heresy in the AI age, you should give it a read). And sometimes I might have a complete dud that I’ve written, and I might be thinking it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Or even the opposite - a seemingly ordinary piece resonating with a wide audience.

You see, I lied when I said I write weekly. I write twice a week - for this blog, and for another one (which I won’t yet share, as I’m still dialing down my voice for the other blog - but if you care enough, you can shoot me an email and I’ll happily send you the name). A few weeks ago what felt like a “throwaway” article (it was a Sunday night, and I needed to get something out Monday), which recounted what seemed like a boring and mundane topic, has resonated with a wide number of readers, and brought that (secret) blog out of complete obscurity.

What I’m trying to say is that if I wasn’t writing at a specific cadence with self-imposed deadlines, I don’t think I would’ve written pieces people like. And yeah, I just claimed that I don’t much care for a large audience - but I do care that some of you will read this, and maybe think about this a few days down the line when writing yourself, or when talking to a friend about obscure blogs you like to follow.

Then there’s also a question of experimenting with different writing styles. Consistent practice just forces you to experiment with different voices - it’ll just get stale after a while. From time to time, I plan out what I write differently, or even write something like this - which is rambly, and not at all planned out, but there’s whimsy to it, and you know I care about this enough to write this very long sentence instead of booting up Warhammer 40,000: The Rogue Trader, which I’ve been trying to finish for almost half a year in 30 minute increments since my daughter was born.

“There’s something special about every word written by a human because they chose to do this thing instead of anything else. Something moved them, irked them, inspired them, possessed them, and then electricity shot everywhere in their brain and then—crucially—they laid fingers on keys and put that electricity inside the computer. Writing is a costly signal of caring about something.” - 28 slightly rude notes on writing by Adam Mastroianni

Not all is rosy though. There’s the pressure to write, and if I don’t get the two pieces ready by Sunday afternoon, I’m starting to feel stressed. Especially so since my kiddo’s getting just a little bit older, enough to take up lots of attention, and enough for maybe an hour of uninterrupted me-time a day.

Rain or shine, exhausted or not, here I am. But I think it does make what I write feel more impactful to me - but that’s maybe because I’ve been thinking about Adam’s quote about caring, and my limited time makes me realize how much I care. Enough to write, clearly.

In this case, I guess I deeply care that someone knows what it’s like to write something somewhat creative every week. Well, it’s great on Mondays when I hit “publish”, and it gets worse as the week goes on. Here, you didn’t have to read the whole thing - maybe I should’ve put that in TL;DR. Oh, I’m sure it’s fine.

Jokes aside, a regular cadence has been the best way to illustrate to myself how much I care, and how important writing is to me. To think about what I want out of writing, and why do I even write. I care about getting my thoughts out on paper, I care about the craft, and I care about subtle art of connecting with a reader through shared context through an ultimately limited medium.

The Internet whispers a constant message: you should be doing more. I remembered a video I stumbled upon a while back. Some productivity influencer, barely old enough to grow a mustache, was detailing their morning routine. They were up at 3 am, of course. By the time the sun rose, they’d read an entire book, run ten miles, and meditated on a mountaintop while simultaneously coding a new killer app, all fueled by a kale smoothie that cost more than my lunch.

I didn’t feel inspired. I felt tired.

There’s a constant pressure in the background of modern life to keep up. The informational landscape has gotten particularly good at creating an illusion of scarcity, a fear that you’re falling behind. This is doubly true if you work in tech, where productivity and growth are treated not just as a badge of honor, but as a competitive sport. You must consume more, learn faster, ship quicker.

But this pressure is a trap. It pushes us further towards ever-increasing quantity, while the real value - in our work, in our thinking, and in our lives - has always been found in the deliberate pursuit of quality.

Let’s be clear: this feeling isn’t your fault. It’s a feature, not a bug. The platforms where we spend our time are engineered for this exact purpose. The endless scrolls, the auto-playing videos, the short-form feeds that evaporate from memory the second they’re gone - it’s all optimized for one thing: for you to watch it from beginning to end, and then watch more just like it. It’s content designed to be consumed and to do nothing else.

This ecosystem thrives on the illusion of knowledge. We have endless summaries, TL;DRs, and AI-powered tools that can give you the synopsis of any book in seconds. We skim headlines and read the bullet points, mistaking this fleeting familiarity for understanding. We are becoming masters of the shallow factoid, the talking point without substance.

This isn’t a new thought. “Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips” (Sparrow et al., 2011) showed that we don’t bother remembering information we believe we can easily look up later. More recently, “People mistake the internet’s knowledge for their own” (Ward, 2021) took it a step further, finding that when we have access to the internet, we often mistake its knowledge for our own. We don’t just offload the facts; we internalize the false confidence of knowing, without ever having done the work.

A couple of years ago, I read Greg McKeown’s Essentialism. The core concept isn’t revolutionary, but the way I engaged with it was for me. I read it slowly. A little bit each morning, with a cup of coffee. I took notes in the margins, underlining passages, connecting the ideas to my own experiences. It became a paced, deeply personal experience. I’d mull over a chapter for days, bringing up concepts in conversations with my wife or colleagues. Because I gave the ideas time to breathe, they began to stick. They integrated themselves into my thinking in a way that no summary or 10-minute video review ever could. The book holds a place in my head not because of what it said, but because of how I listened.

This is the difference between knowing about something and understanding it. We internalize concepts slowly. Mastery and satisfaction don’t come from the frantic consumption of a hundred different things, but from immersing yourself in one thing, from wrestling with it, from letting it change you. It’s the long email thread with a friend debating a single concept. It’s the quiet hour spent thinking, not just consuming. That is where the real work happens.

This mindset of quantity over quality bleeds into other areas of our life. It shows up at work, rebranded as “growth mindset.” On the surface, it’s wonderful. Who wouldn’t want to grow? But it can be a bit of a grift. The corporate mandate to be “constantly upskilling” - often on your own time and at your own expense - isn’t always for your benefit. It’s for the company’s. It ensures the workforce is perpetually churning, learning the next new framework without ever pausing to question if it’s better than the last.

Worse, this mindset even poisons our leisure. Go search for a new hobby. You won’t just find tutorials; you’ll find guides on how to monetize it, how to build a personal brand around it, how to become the most efficient and optimized practitioner of it. I just want to watch TV and paint miniatures; I have no desire to win a trophy or launch a Patreon for my technique. The pressure to get better, faster, stronger turns the very activities meant to be a refuge from work into just another form of it.

The solution for me wasn’t to learn faster, but to learn better, which often means learning slower. This requires making a conscious choice to step away from the algorithm. I turned off my YouTube history, which mercifully nukes the recommendation feed and the YouTube Shorts (here’s what my YouTube home page looks like).

I left sites like Reddit years ago and haven’t missed them. Instead, I’ve returned to powerful tools like RSS or email. Subscribing directly to a person’s blog or newsletter is an act of defiance. It’s a choice to engage with a whole person’s train of thought, complete with their quirks and tangents, rather than consuming the single, out-of-context snippet that an algorithm decided was worthy of your attention.

This post was inspired by Nikhil’s You don’t need AI summaries, tldr or to be on top of things, which I’ve read back in April, and it’s been since sitting as a starred article in my RSS reader. I’d occasionally get back to scan through it, think about the message and take notes about what I’d like to say in response. And I’m glad I took my time and gave Nikhil’s post the mindspace it deserved.

I’ve leaned into more of a evangelist approach in this article, and I know I’ve simplified the topic. The older I get, the more allergic I feel to dealing in absolutes, but I felt like there’s a good message here. For completeness sake, algorithmic discovery isn’t all bad: it can help us engage in broad variety of content we wouldn’t otherwise seek out, and it can provide a platform to people who deserve it at virtually no cost to them. This piece isn’t about selling a new anti-productivity framework or joining another counter-culture trend. But I think there’s something to be said about reclaiming agency in an increasingly noisy world. By choosing depth over breadth, and quality over quantity, I found more genuine understanding, satisfaction, and a little more peace.