Writing Longhand in the Age of AI
There is research suggesting that heavy reliance on language models measurably dulls cognitive function. Whether or not the studies hold up, I recognized myself in them. I find it hard to watch a full video or read long text anymore; the reflex to summarize everything has eaten the patience for anything whole. Summarizing is efficient, and I told myself there was nothing wrong with efficiency. But somewhere in that trade, something atrophied.
So this essay was written deliberately slowly, without bullet points, without assistance — verbose on purpose. The unnecessary words are the point. Compression is what the machine does well; struggling toward sentences in your own voice may be the only exercise left that keeps the muscle alive.
The context for trying this was exhaustion — the specific tiredness that comes from wanting things too fast. Big goals, big dreams, the constant demand to figure everything out immediately. The experiment in slow writing doubled as an experiment in lowering the temperature: manage expectations, not by reducing effort, but by making effort itself bearable again. Learn things because the struggle to learn them is genuinely enjoyable, not because fear says you will fall behind otherwise. Accept mediocrity first — not as surrender, but as ground zero from which desire can actually be located. You cannot want anything honestly while every day is scored against an imaginary timeline.
There is an old tension underneath all of this: the spiritual traditions that recommend detachment from material wanting, and the animal fact that we are not built for total renunciation. Complete detachment — becoming a eunuch of desire, wise and castrated at once — sounds serene until you notice it might just be depression with good branding. Wisdom probably does not require amputating impulse. Some of history’s most consequential figures were conspicuously un-detached; they achieved worldly things while carrying, or being carried by, faith and fate in equal measure. Whether fate exists is not a question I can answer. But the shape of the compromise seems right: keep the impulse, discipline its direction.
Which brings me back to why write at all, slowly, by hand, in the age of machines that write better and faster. Because the act itself enforces the state of mind I’m after: calm, unhurried, unafraid of the blank stretch ahead. A summary gives you the conclusions without the walking. Longhand makes you walk.
The overall task, most days now, is subtraction. Almost no additions. Fewer inputs, fewer desires, fewer tabs open in the head — and whatever remains should be things done out of enjoyment of the difficulty rather than dread of the alternative. That is not complacency about mediocrity. It is the discovery that the feeling of burnout was never a prerequisite for ambition, and that some part of the mind only speaks when you write slowly enough to hear it.
Drafted with AI assistance from my personal journal (2025-06-28), then edited by me. See On AI Assistance.