LLMs such as ChatGPT have replaced books. In some ways.
I personally love using ChatGPT for research. The information I get is custom-tailored to the question on my mind in that moment. So it fits my level of interest and knowledge.
I still read plenty of books, but the reason I read books has changed. I used to read non-fiction books even if I had a specific question about a subject. It either required a lot of patience to wait until I read the answer to my question, or a lot of searching within my e-reader or the index to find what I was looking for.
Now when I read a book, it’s mostly because I don’t have a specific question at the front of my mind. Reading a book is now less of a scavenger hunt and more of a stroll through the landscape of a subject.
Even more important than the subject covered by a book is the way the author thinks. When I talk to an AI, my own brain is in the driver’s seat. When I read a book, the author is in charge.
In this way, reading a book is like trying on a brain. The same way I will act differently wearing a tuxedo than a bathing suit and flip flops, I will think differently based upon whose brain I’m trying on.
And if I wear it long enough, it will change who I am.
Aphorism: “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” —Franz Kafka
If I’m eating by myself, I’m naturally inclined to supplement my meal with media: a podcast, YouTube video, book, etc.
This is a bad habit.
Because there is no time when my mind is more reliably flooded with ideas than during or right after eating.
I don’t know exactly why. I’d guess it has to do with the rush of glucose and dopamine, the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, the repetitive motion of chewing, or simply pausing to do something relaxing. From a primal perspective, it makes sense that after you’ve found food, a great use of your newfound energy would be to think of inventive and energy-saving ways to find your next meal.
So now instead of a phone, I keep a notebook or small whiteboard next to my plate. I don’t try to come up with anything, but if something occurs to me, I write it down. That usually leads to writing another thing, then another.
Try it and you, too, might have some of your best ideas. Instead of media with your meals, be creative as you consume.
Book:Tiny Experiments (Amazon) is Anne-Laure Le Cunff’s guide on how to live freely in a goal-obsessed world.
There used to be only one “micro-blogging” platform. Now there are several.
It’s a schadenfreudic flavor of amusement to watch people migrate off X, to Bluesky, Threads, or Substack Notes, while proclaiming that finally, they’ve found a place that isn’t full of toxic, vitriolic, and hyperbolic snark, misinformation, and melodrama. The situation has the energy of someone who, after divorcing the eighth time, proclaims they’ve found “the one.”
It’s impossible to copy the “Twitter” format, open it to all of humanity, and not end up with pretty much the same thing as Twitter. You still have a feed full of snippets of text, competing with one another for attention. You still have an algorithm with no better way to decide what’s “good,” besides likes, comments, and reposts.
Those short snippets of text still need to interact with human wetware. We still scan that feed, and what stands out stops the scroll. So information of the ugliest emotional tenor always wins.
Maybe one platform will have a different political leaning or psychographic difference than another. Maybe one platform can make a subtly different algorithmic tweak, but it will still be the same. So if you expect your feed to consist of only well-reasoned, intellectually rigorous and honest civilized discourse, delivered with a friendly, light-hearted, and humble tone, you will be disappointed.
As Marshall McLuhan said, “The medium is the message.” As the eight-time divorcee should hear, “It’s not them, it’s you.”
As we need to learn, “It’s not the algorithm, it’s us.”
Aphorism: “Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.” —Gustav Flaubert
Cool:Searching for Sugar Man is a documentary about a musician who became a star, without knowing.
An hour a day of sitting and doing nothing seems like an absurdly long amount of time. The natural response to the idea is, “Who can afford to meditate an hour a day?”
We’ve long been in an age in which a huge amount of information is coming at us. If you spent one minute on social media, then stepped away to consider the consequences of all the information you encountered, including asking yourself why it caught your attention, you would be busy the rest of the day.
Yet daily, we encounter hundreds if not thousands of times more information than that. As this info-tsunami has swelled, it makes sense that meditation has become more popular. Some silence and self-examination goes a long way in helping sort through it all.
But now we’re adapting to the rapid introduction of the most powerful information tool to this point in history. It’s now possible to do in mere seconds many informational tasks that might otherwise take hours.
Using that tool to simply do more is a race to the bottom. The less-obvious and more challenging path is to use that extra time and energy to make better decisions about what to do with our tools. The better question is becoming, “Who can afford to not meditate an hour a day?”
Your mind is like a body of water, which must circulate. If your mind doesn’t meditate, it stagnates.
Book:Purple Cow (Amazon) is Seth Godin’s classic about the ever-growing importance being remarkable.
I went on a birdwatching tour and our guide insisted on counting the number of species we saw. I thought birdwatching was supposed to be relaxing!?
It’s hard to argue that measuring doesn’t make civilization run more smoothly, increase our standard of living, or increase life expectancy. Which makes what I’m about to say even harder to explain.
I challenge you to, for one week, stop measuring things. This will probably be impossible, but for sure you will notice how every facet of our lives is ruled by measurement.
Measuring gives us an illusion of control and having an answer, often at the expense of whatever we’re not measuring. How many backpackers who were measuring the weights of their water bottles by the gram are now estimating the quantity of microplastics they’re consuming through their Nalgenes?
Choreographer Twyla Tharp sometimes spends a week telling herself, “stop counting.” She avoids looking at anything with a number on it, such as bank statements, bathroom scales, clocks, and royalty reports. “The goal,” she explains, “is to give the left side of the brain – the hemisphere that does the counting – a rest and let the more intuitive right hemisphere come to the fore.”
Yes, measuring allows us to set goals, formulate plans, and evaluate our attempts to achieve those goals, but measuring also distracts us from experiencing life. It numbs our powers of observation and teaches us to distrust our senses.
There’s a maxim in business, “What gets measured gets managed.” Sometimes, what gets measured gets mangled.
Aphorism: “Paint what’s in your head, what you are acquainted with.” —Georgia O’Keeffe
If you’re organizing a closet, you’ll only get so far rummaging and rearranging.
That shoebox of old photos is held in place between your uncle’s worn baseball glove and the stack of wigs from Halloween costumes past. One wrong move and you’ll be buried under family heirlooms and unused hobby supplies.
When organizing our hearts and minds, we run across thoughts and emotions and end up stuffing them where they’ll fit. We end up with such tangled knots of unresolved issues, the easiest course seems to avoid opening that door again.
It’s no surprise that when we attempt to journal, we end up disappointed. Our writing, as a reflection of our inner world, doesn’t look like the well-organized closet we’d envisioned, where you can as easily grab a winter coat as your beach essentials.
The way to get there is spread it all across the floor, throw out what you don’t need, then put everything in its place, maybe with the help of a sturdy framework designed for the purpose. You won’t get it right the first time, and keeping it organized will be an ongoing practice.
That is how you organize a closet, and that is how you journal.
Aphorism: “Truth has its own definite boundaries, but that which arises from uncertainty is delivered over to guesswork and the irresponsible license of a frightened mind.” —Seneca
Self-discipline has a reputation as a battle of wills.
Supposedly, the self-disciplined person doesn’t want to do various unpleasant things, but is strong enough to overcome that.
People who know me well think I’m disciplined. I write books, run a business that requires self-motivation, stick to a strict diet, and keep an exercise routine.
But I don’t think I’m any better at doing what I don’t want than anyone else. If anything, I’m worse.
One source of “self-discipline” I’m pretty good at is self-knowledge. That is, I’m pretty good at predicting how and why my actual behavior will deviate from my intentions.
So, I set intentions I have a pretty good chance of following through on. I know what I like and don’t, how various activities sap and replenish my energy, and my threshold for burnout. I pick goals within those limits.
But I also know that even when I work within my limits, I won’t always do what I intend. So I don’t beat myself up over it, and design my environment and schedule so that when I mess up, the damage will be limited. For example, the “grippy and slippy” tools and weekly energy-based schedule I talk about in Mind Management, Not Time Management.
Self-discipline isn’t doing the unpleasant through force of sheer will, but rather knowing oneself well enough to predict where you’ll fall off-track, then setting up the right guardrails ahead of time.
Aphorism: “The rate of interest is a quantitative measure of the general discounting of future pleasures. If the prospect of spending $1000 a year hence were as delightful as the thought of spending it today, I should not need to be paid for postponing my pleasure.” —Bertrand Russell
When I get stuck on a creative project, I grab this toy off my bookshelf.
This toy perfectly represents what I’m trying to achieve with any creative project. It’s a demonstration of a concept called tensegrity. Tensegrity is a portmanteau of “tension,” and “integrity.”
This bridge is a tensegrity structure.
Wikipedia: Paul Guard
NASA is experimenting with tensegrity to build a robot to explore other planets.
Tensegrity structures use a combination of compressive strength and tensile strength to hold themselves together. The human body is somewhat of a tensegrity structure, with rigid bones held together by flexible muscles and tendons.
I think of creative projects as tensegrity structures. The rigid elements are the constraints of the project. These could be practical constraints such as the laws of physics, budget, or time available, or constraints of a medium or genre, such as that films are thirty frames per second or self-help books tend to be about 250 pages.
The flexible elements are the choices you make within those constraints. The same way flexible elements in a tensegrity structure pull against one another, the choices you make in creative projects have trade-offs. Like if you write a character who’s obsessive, it will feel wrong if he has a calm demeanor, unless you balance that contradiction. For example, he has a calm demeanor only when he’s on a stage and feels like he’s finally in control.
You don’t build a tensegrity structure brick-by-brick, as you might do the bookkeeping for your business. Instead, you must iterate and find the right balance between compression and tension.
Like a tensegrity structure, your creative project either stays together in a cohesive, coherent, whole – or it falls apart.
Aphorism: “Many inventors fail because they do not distinguish between planning and experimenting.” —Henry Ford
Cool: I haven’t tried a Keego water bottle but as a squeezable titanium-lined water bottle, it looks like an exciting alternative to plastic.
Best, David P.S. Achieving creative tensegrity is easier for a fox than a hedgehog.
We’ve long lived in a post-labor world, where few of us require physical activity to meet our needs.
Over recent decades, we’ve entered a post-social world. Little social interaction is required beyond the perfunctory: “Here’s your coffee,” “Thank you,” “Have a nice day.”
In a post-labor world, we replace physical activity with intentional exercise. In a post-social world, I submit, we need to replace the social interaction we would normally have with intentional socializing.
Like exercise, we can logically explain ourselves out of social interaction. We don’t have to, we don’t want to, we’re too busy, and we don’t want to risk injury.
We’re lazy creatures, so are good at coming up with reasons not to do what’s uncomfortable. But our laziness works to our detriment. What’s uncomfortable is often good for us, both as individuals and a society.
Think of this forced social interaction as “social lifting.” Take opportunities to have unnecessary, inconvenient, social interactions you don’t even want to have.
I’m just beginning to think about social lifting, and, as someone whose friends routinely compare to Larry David, if there’s anyone who doesn’t want unnecessary social interaction, it’s me.
But I’m going to start thinking about ways to do some social lifting. Examples:
Pick up a friend at the airport
Instead of buying an iron/hammer/cup of sugar, borrow one from your neighbor
Ask the barista you see daily about a piece of jewelry they’re wearing
Have friends over for dinner and don’t expect a return invitation
Set up a Calendly link and share widely so old friends can schedule a catch-up call
Social lifting isn’t about making everyday interactions with people you’ll never see again less superficial. That would be great, but is more like social strolling. I’m thinking more about having interactions of consequence with people who are a part of your life either through history or coincidental proximity.
Overall, think of ways to skip the elevator and take the stairs.
Aphorism: “No one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility.” —Seneca
Cool:Splitwise is a handy app for splitting trip expenses with friends.
Maybe 2025 is the year you write your novel. I have a hack to make it easier.
The tough thing about writing a novel is, you’re already on a computer enough. Presumably you need to make a living and aren’t assuming your novel will be a smashing financial success. So how can writing your novel be a priority?
If you’re writing a novel, hopefully you’re also reading novels. So to finish your novel, make writing your novel as much as possible like reading one.
Take some section of your usual reading ritual, and turn it into a writing ritual – a writing ritual as much as possible like your reading ritual.
So if you often curl up with a novel to read at night or on a Saturday morning, sit in that same reading spot. Yet instead of reading a novel, write one. Write whatever entertains you. Make writing a novel like reading one.
To make writing more like reading, write by hand, in a small notebook. I really like these notebooks (Amazon), because they’re only 68 pages long. So you fill one page at a time, and one notebook at a time. I’ve made it to the second notebook!
If you think it’s crazy to write by hand, it’s not. Neil Gaiman writes his first drafts by hand. He describes the process as like throwing mud at a wall, then seeing what shapes it makes.
Which is also a wonderfully low-pressure way to think about your first draft. Make writing as unpretentious as possible. I try to use the cheapest pen I can find, just because it makes it feel more casual.
Once your first draft is done, sure, you’ll have to spend some time on a computer, to transpose what you’ve written and make some edits. But writing like you read might be all the momentum you need.
Book:King Dork (Amazon) is a coming-of-age novel in the modern-day Catcher variety.
Cool:Sustainable Containables (Amazon) are LFGB-certified (I’ve confirmed) silicone containers that won’t leak phthalates into your food.
Best, David P.S. In case you missed it, I talked to behavior-change expert B.J. Fogg about how to build good habits.
