Without being unique, you have to be the best in order to have impact. Uniqueness makes you having an impact on the world easier, because you can get more recognition, for actually doing less.

A single skill or area of expertise will not make unique, unless you are the absolute best or very close to it. In a world of billions, no one is fully different from everyone else. Uniqueness comes from unique combinations of skills and knowledge. The more uncommon, the easier it is to have impact in your specific niche.

Being unique is a better world for both you and the world. The world because another person is now actively making it better, and you because you lead a life worth remembering.

By having impact through being unique now, you can have impact through being the best later. Uniqueness is the best offramp from zero because it requires less resources to get started. After you use that offramp, more opportunities become available. More so if you continue to stay unique.

The world doesn’t need another average person. Be unique. Be better.

Current artificial intelligence technology is not capable of original thought. LLMs at their core are all just statistically calculating what the next word in a sequence of words should be, based on all the data ever given to train it. This makes LLMs by default think inside the box. They may produce what looks like original thought, but is actually just the average of words (as much as that makes sense) in a certain context, in a certain field of view.

The worst use case for generative AI is anything that has to do with creativity, because AI is not capable of being creative, at least not what we have right now. LLM based AI, by definition of what it is, can never be creative, and to quote myself here:

Creativity is inherently human. The human element is what makes it unique, and creative. AI is nothing but a regurgitation of everything that we fed into it. It is incredibly average to the point of being bad.

Now, you could say that human creativity is also a regurgitation of all that particular human ever experienced, but that is not nearly the same thing. Everything any one particular human knows is only a tiny fraction of everything there is to know in the world. Even in a world where every creative human is just repurposing all they already know, every one of those humans is still unique and creative because of the very small and different sample sets of knowledge each one of them has.

AI is an order of magnitude worse on this because it has the broadest possible sample set. When all of the very different writing fed into it, that was written for very different purposes in very different styles is mixed together what you get is generic writing slop. By default average or below average in everything it does.

Whatever “improvement” any individual writer may feel they get when using AI is made worse when you realize all of the AI writing sounds exactly the same. However much you may think that the AI is your voice and, “yeah, I could have said that”, any person who has seen enough AI writing knows it sounds exactly the same as a thousand other “works” across different contexts.

But for millions of people thinking is just their job, and millions of people don’t care about their job, and just want their job done well enough, so they can not work and still get paid. Even better if the job is on the surface better made than they could have done on their own.

That goal is something, that while not noble, is something lazy human brains can sympathize with. Human brains have preferred easy for them over good for them for as long as brains have been human.

AI use has merit in exchanges that are already so devoid of soul and overly scripted that using AI just spares a person the pain of writing them. AI use is fine if every person in the exchange only cares about the message in the writing, and not how the writing was made in itself.

But if AI was only taking thinking jobs nobody cared about, than I wouldn’t be writing this.

Where AI is used much more eagerly than in jobs nobody cares about is in creative passion projects. I say passion projects, even though the only passion people who are using AI in such projects have is for money.

The amount of monthly e-book publications has tripled since the release of Chat GPT. Are there suddenly 3 times more writers wanting to share more knowledge? Or are a bunch of people trying to cash in on making low quality content? I think we all now the true answer.

There is now more creative work, or “creative work***” being created per second than ever. But not because of any sort of creative renaissance.

AI supporters love to bring out the argument of “democratization”. That this AI is going to make it easier for more people to “create” and “express themselves”. But I find that argument garbage on a couple of levels. First of all, what does it mean to “express yourself” when you are doing none of the expressing. Just giving AI the idea. And second, what “democratization” is happening here? Content creation has already been as democratized as it can ever be. Anyone who has a phone can upload a video on YouTube. Anyone who has a phone can write and publish an article on Substack or a million other platforms. Anyone who has a phone can publish their photos on Instagram or Pinterest. Anyone who has a phone can publish their e-book on Amazon. Everyone who has a phone and an internet connection, who can access AI, can also access these things. What “democratization” are we talking about here? Democratization based on INTELLECT?! CREATIVE ABILITY?! Are we being for real?!!!!

And lets not pretend like any of the AI books have any value.

Even if the AI can arrange words in a format of a book, that is not why people read. If you want information, you can get it on the internet within seconds. People read books if they want a deep dive, or information from a credible source. You using AI to publish a book on anything is borderline fraud.

And you might say “well the book was my idea”, and to that I say, ideas are worthless without execution. Sure you may have had an idea for a book, but you clearly didn’t have a book worth of ideas. The world is gonna be fine without another AI slop book.

There is no shortage of information. And when there will be new information, guess who will publish it, a genuine expert in the field, or you, who knows nothing except how to write a prompt for an AI to write a book? The idea that AI slop books bring anything to the table is laughable.

Any book written using AI, is going to be a terrible book, because AI is not capable of original thought. Any AI book will never bring anything new to the table.

And even without AI, ideas are terrible when they are stretched beyond their merit. You didn’t need to “write” that book. You could have packaged it in a format it deserved. If you had a twitter post worth of ideas, it probably would have made a great twitter post. But lets not pretend it would have made a great book, the substance just wasn’t there.

That is just how terrible AI is on the literary level. Not accounting for semantics, and there is no argument around the semantics of AI use. Semantics even without talking about literary merit are enough to discredit most AI “work”. If an author or “author” of a creative* project is not willing to put the creativity and effort into the finished project, why should I like it? Why would it even be worth liking, when there is nothing original or human in that work? If it was evidently not worth the creators time to make it, why would it be worth mine to consume it?

Again, there is no shortage of information or entertainment. Before AI was a thing, there were still a whopping 100.000 books being published every month. Even if 99.99% of them were still complete garbage, that is still PER MONTH. Without AI, there would have still been too many great books for a human to read during a lifetime. Same thing goes for photo, audio, and video entertainment. YouTube even before AI had millions of hours of video uploaded every day.

Every AI generated book, image, video, article brings nothing of value to the table. All AI makes easier is making money for people that do not deserve it. From work that you can hardly call theirs.

And that is a problem. A problem for people who make a living from actually being creative, and for people who care about the people behind creative work. I believe that all AI content should be, if not de-platformed, than clearly labeled as such. A quality control sticker, if you will, on every creative work, from 0% AI “Certified Human”, to 100% AI slop.

And than it should be disallowed from being monetized. That change alone would stop the vast, vast majority of people currently flooding the creativity market with AI slop, from making that AI slop.

That sounds great in theory, and would be great in practice, but for reasons of greed from publishing platforms, who make a commission off of everything being sold on their platform it probably won’t happen. At least not right away. Copyright is not remotely clear in questions of who owns that AI generated work, but another great, albeit inferior solution would be for AI companies to take a commission from every sale of content that was made using AI. Proportionately to the percentage in which AI was used. Better even if there was a multiplier, so that for every 1% of the product being AI, the AI company would take 5% of the revenue, or something along those lines. The idea here is to punish people who use AI where it hurts most, which is in their wallet.

The ship has sailed on people being able to make AI slop, but there is still things we can do to prevent them from selling it. AI companies making a commission from sales of AI slop, or altogether owning it from the get go, would stop 99% of the people currently making it, from making it. Which is a huge victory on its own.

And all the people who weren’t stopped by the commissions, will have their “work” labeled as AI, which will stop people who care about things being made with integrity, which is nearly everyone, from supporting it.

That would effectively end the war on AI slop, with the final step remaining, after all the revenue from AI slop has dried up, for publishing platforms to de-platform it.

By preventing people from selling AI slop, we can help fight to keep the future human.

To a certain extent human creativity is also a regurgitation of all that particular human ever experienced, but that is not nearly the same thing. Everything any one particular human knows is only a tiny fraction of everything there is to know in the world. Even in a world where every creative human is just repurposing all they already know, every one of those humans is still unique and creative because of the very small and different sample sets of knowledge each one of them has.

AI is an order of magnitude worse on this because it has the broadest possible sample set. When all of the very different writing1 fed into it, that was written for very different purposes in very different styles is mixed together what you get is generic writing slop. By default average or below average in everything it does.

Whatever creativity any individual may see they get when using AI nullified when you realize all of the AI writing sounds exactly the same. However much you may think that the AI is your voice and, “yeah, I could have said that”, any person who has seen enough AI writing knows it sounds exactly the same as a thousand other “works” across different contexts.

Any machine thinks or “thinks” faster than any human. But that does not make it creative.

Consistency only works if the base elements of the particular style are great. If a style is built on bad elements, following it consistently won’t make your house great. Consistency just amplifies the impact of the individual elements. If the individual elements of a style are great, than following that style will make a great whole.

When you take elements that are great on their own, but don’t work well together, you detract from the whole. Consistency in design makes sure that the finished space is at least as good as each of the individual elements on their own. Consistency makes sure that no element detracts from anything else.

In creating a consistent style, there are many things to consider, but above all consider longevity. Great design that will last you a lifetime is a worthwhile investment. A more expensive design element will pay for itself many time over in its longevity, and in you internally actually liking how it fits into your home. More expensive, doesn’t always mean long lasting. But when you can spend to ensure longevity, it is always the right decision.

And in creating that style, experiment with custom design elements. When custom elements are designed well, they always make a home more homely. More like you. If you can’t make you design yourself, consider becoming a patron of your local craftsmen. Custom design is another worthwhile investment.

When designing, design wisely.

Sunlight is important because of the energy it brings to a space. The more sunlight a space lets in, the more energy that space gives back to you. It is always worth it to have more energy. Even if you do not use it, you feel it. Being more refreshed always, by default, is nice because you cannot be refreshed at will. Once you spend a certain amount of your daily energy, you cannot get it back without sacrificing something in the immediate future. Having a higher baseline of energy always makes you feel better.

Sunlight gives you that energy, and in turn makes a living space great.

Besides sunlight, other forms of lighting matter. The artificial light in a space matters as much for the life and energy of a space as sunlight. And white artificial light is almost always superior to yellow artificial light. Yellow light should never be used outside of nightlights and settings where you want to deliberately arouse weariness. Having yellow light as the primary, only and default setting is a cardinal sin.

If lighting in a space, especially in a space without windows, is supposed to be used before sunset, having yellow light as the only and default option is maddening. Yellow light is sleep inducing, which is the opposite of what you want when you are supposed to be awake. You take away your energy for no good reason at all.

Using artificial light before sunset is bad for your energy in general, especially in a space with windows, but if you absolutely have to using white light minimizes that impact. And by absolutely have to I mean your excuses better be that you are either up before sunset or in a space without windows.

If you want to use artificial light, while there is still sunlight, that sunlight has to be really dim before artificial light has merit for the energy of a space. Sunlight even on a cloudy day will still on its own give you more energy, than that same space with the lights turned on. That space may better lit with the lights turned on, but it will be less refreshing if the sun was still bright enough to light the space on its own. By default artificial light is bad for energy. White light is the least bad but still draining. It is only when natural darkness is more draining that the tradeoff for turning on the lights is worth it.

In designing a space, prioritize letting in as much sunlight as possible. Well designed lighting makes a space great. Great for your energy, and for your wellbeing.

Even on a lesser budget passion projects can outperform big business in terms of greatness because creative decisions are made with creative integrity in order to make an actually good body of work, and not with the central goal of maximizing profit.

A movie made for passion will be a better movie than a movie made for profit. A book written for passion will be better than a book written for profit. Integrity in creative decisions is what makes greatness. More so in creative fields. That creative integrity is why passion projects give outsized returns per dollar put into them. Creative integrity is what makes great works great.

When that integrity is absent, it shows on the final work. It is really easy to spot unjustifiable, outright bad creative decisions that should never be made if you are concerned with making a good body of work. And that integrity is often missing where business is present. Whereas, in contrast, passion projects are always made with integrity. It is there by definition. It is literally coded in the word passion.

If a so called “passion project” lacks creative integrity, it was probably never made for the passion. Rather for the love of cold hard cash.

That disparity in creative integrity between passion projects and business is why passion projects consistently outperform business. Passion projects shine in the are one are that makes creative projects great, that is creativity. If you cannot make creative decisions with integrity, no budget will save you.

And above all other things, integrity gives you a legacy as a person who made great things. Only through it, can you get recognition for your work. If you break that integrity, you may still get money for making your work, but you will never make any money from your your work.

Ideas are judged by their length. If a great idea is expressed in a concise format, it will be generally regarded as a great idea. If that idea is packaged in a format with a ton of additional, useless fluff that doesn’t expand an idea or meaningfully contribute to the idea, than the whole body of work, and thus the core idea will have a stained perception.

When creating and publishing an idea, put it in the medium it deserves. A twitter post worth of ideas should be a twitter post. An article worth of ideas should be an article. Ideas should be published in the medium that best expresses that idea. Ideas shouldn’t be compressed or expanded to put them into the medium you want to publish them in.

When ideas are stretched they become worse. A article with a twitter post worth of ideas is a bad article. A book with an article worth of ideas is a bad book. By putting ideas in a medium above their actual substance you are forced to add fluff to create substance that isn’t there. You create a bad body of work, even if the core on its own holds up well. You create a bad perception around your work. Even the actually good core of your work will now need defending, where if it had been put in a medium that actually suits it it wouldn’t have. You create bad work out of good work.

An idea is well published when it is published in a medium that it belongs to. In a medium in which it can be published without fluff or omissions. In the format that the idea reads naturally, it can get the best perception.

The best things, are the best things. They attract attention and wonder for their greatness. They attract curiosity, because there are things to think about, because there is depth and intellectual substance in the work.

The worst things, are the best in their own way. Them being the worst is what draws natural curiosity to them. As a case study of how a thing ought not to be. There is as much depth and intricacy in what makes bad things bad, as there is in what makes great work great. Bad things aren’t irredeemably bad, but they are a product of a series of bad creative decisions. Had those decisions been avoided, a bad thing could have turned out different.

Bad things offer intellectual substance on what makes them bad. And even if not bad things still evoke strong emotion, whether laughter or anger that drives a large amount of attention to them.

Average things fail to attract that emotional attachment. They are plain dull. Not good enough to be the subject of deeper pondering, and failing to create emotional attachment. That dullness, the lack of unique elements, good or bad, is what make something boring, not worth remembering.

Average things attract the least amount of attention, not because they are the worst, but because they are worst at attracting attention. Having neither intricacy to ponder over, or elements that create any sort of emotion.

For a good thing to attract attention it either has to utilize existing conventional elements in a great way, or have unique elements that instantly evoke curiosity.

For a bad thing to attract attention there aren’t any specific criteria. Having an obvious flaw that attracts emotion and criticism is enough.

Average things fail on both of those levels. The very nature of being average means that none of the individual unique elements is strong enough to create a deep connection with the audience. Connection that is required for a thing to spread.

If you want attention you need to be the best. If you can’t be the best, you cannot afford to be average. It is better to have an obvious flaw that attracts curiosity, than to be so average as to be unnoticed.

This isn’t to say good things can’t be popular, but usually they aren’t. The deeper and more impactful a thing is, the more niche it becomes by default. Detail and intricacy is not something that is appreciated by the masses. Universality, generality and overall relatability and digestible shallowness is what gets you eyeballs, not depth and intricacy. Now more than ever. With the overall decrease in our collective mental capabilities over time more deep and intricate things will erode into shallow mass oriented products. The quantity as well as quality of deep intricate things will continue to decline in perpetuity as long as our mental capabilities do too.

To produce good intricate things is to accept that what you are making is most likely going to end up on the niche end of things. Not seen by a wide range of people. Good things are not made for the money or popularization of what you care about. Good things are only made for the belief that good things are worth creating, even if only a small amount of people will ever care about your work.

It is the good things, that however niche, have the potential to become something great. Without the need for mass appeal and reach, just at the hands of the right people, good things through their sheer potential, potential for original impact, can create greatness. Greatness that is unnoticed by most, but cherished beyond measure, by the few who care.

Good work rarely if ever finds the praise it deserves. But that work should still be made by people who truly care. Popularity does not make a thing great. Good things create greatness. It is through the pure passion put into good things that they can be impactful. Have original impact, even if unnoticed, on the wider world, and have intellectual substance and intricacy to those who care.

To get good, actionable feedback, you have to conduct trials in a way that prioritizes both honesty and actionability.

In getting feedback you cannot just trust the participant to give honest feedback, you have to specifically instruct the person to do so. Otherwise the default human ulterior motive of being polite will take over. And there is no use in feedback if it does not reflect the truth.

Actionability in feedback is about getting the feedback you need to hear. Different kinds of feedback are needed at different stages of a project. The first draft or iteration needs different kinds of feedback than when a project is nearing conclusion. The earlier in the project, the more impactful feedback is, when there are still gaping wholes and monstrous errors that need your full attention.

Oftentimes actionable feedback also means negative feedback. It is easy to highlight the good parts in a project, but that feedback makes you feel to comfortable, oblivious to the sizable flaws in what you are making. By encouraging negative feedback, you direct yourself to find the flaws that really need fixing.

Target group and sample size also matter. Target group because feedback is useless if it comes from a group of people that won’t be interested in what you are making, and sample size because the more pieces of feedback your receive, the more representative and actionable it is a as a whole.

When you need feedback, make sure to collect it in a way that is actionable, that can actually measurably improve what you are making.

Mental capacity is defined by the amount of total available brainpower at a given moment in time. You should always seek to free up mental capacity when you are being idle, not doing any mental work.

It is fine to keep a few things in your head at a time. But when you idly hold too many thoughts, for too long a time, it strains your brain. It grows weary and tired.

You should always seek to clear the backlog of mental capacity. Whether by addressing or deciding to dismiss a pervasive thought as a non issue. The sooner, the better, the less your mind will be strained by that particular annoyance.

Keeping your mind clear gives you more energy throughout the day. Even if you don’t use that energy, it still contributes to a better state of wellbeing.

A free mind is a pleasure in itself.

Everything becomes easier when your mind is free. Ideas come more naturally, you become more immersed in your craft, get a better intuitive feel for it.

When making structural changes to your creative process, ask yourself whether it frees up mental capacity. If a change requires you to spend more cognitive effort on things directly outside of your creative work, like its organization, it probably shouldn’t be made.

If you need a good metric too see how well you’ve got your life together, try mental capacity. If your brain is constantly strained, you should probably order life in a different way.

Style emerges through constraints. Those can be different kind of constraints. Color, belief, font, interest, language, aesthetic. Anything that makes your style stand out. Be different in some unique way. Not by a single constraint, but by a combination of them.

Your style doesn’t have to stand out. Different here means distinct, easily defined. Your style doesn’t have to appeal to anyone. A style is meant to serve you, funnel your thoughts towards what you already like.

A style frees up mental capacity. Hundreds of stylistic decisions are condensed into one. One true to your style. Having a consistent style is saving you time every time you apply it.

This doesn’t mean you can’t change your style. A style is ephemeral, like all past versions of you. It should change as much as you do yourself. Having a style in the first place makes your more aware of those changes. It is easier to adopt new constraints when they are clearly defined.

A style doesn’t need to extend to everything. Some things need consistency, others don’t. It should be a conscious and considered choice on what things fall into which category.

The longer you stick with a particular set of constraints the more recognizable your style becomes. The more your style defines you as you are today. If you stick with your style, or its general outlines long enough it becomes a core part of who you are. And it is through deliberate constraints that your style becomes immediately discernable and memorable, even if just to your immediate circle.

For creative projects and their different sub components or concepts there is never only one definitive approach to naming them. That choice, the choice how to present what you have made, both the whole and the different sub parts if there are any, is a very expansive creative avenue for the author & producer, and an important one.

The choice how to present your work impacts both that works’ perception and audience, the kind of people that are drawn to it. A good title is one that both accurately describes the work and pulls in the audience. That, as well as ideally resonating with the author.

Nomenclature does not stop being art when we stop talking about original titles. There are still choices to be made even when talking about presenting rigid, established things. A newsletter can be presented as a blog, newsletter, publication, outlet, newsroom, home for writing, stream of consciousness and so on. All of those classifications create different atmospheres around the work, and invite and appeal to different kinds of people.

Those naming choices can be considered or spontaneous, elegant or tacky, concise or expansive, original or conventional and so on. Each of those approaches can be used to describe the same piece of work, but appeal to different people.

Each of those approaches also tell you a little bit about what the author & producer cares about immediately outside of the project. Whether that is authenticity or publicity, elegance or personal connection.

The process of naming projects, especially when there are different sub components or concepts is a whole project onto itself. It as a beautiful art form and important creative avenue. An it should be approached with its due diligence.

Being curios is a continuous effort. It has to be constantly reaffirmed in a world that strives to distract you with the urgent and unimportant. A curious life is hard but exciting.

But that effort is clearly worth it.

Without curiosity you could have all the information in the world in front of you, and let it slip. Whatever connections and opportunities you had would be rendered inert, unseen, because you weren’t looking.

Curiosity is important to living an intellectually rich life and indeed living life. Life is nothing if you don’t take interest in the things in it. Curiosity, having things to be passionate, enthusiastic, fanatic about and interested in is what ignites you, what gives life meaning.

Having things to be curios about is key to any state of wellbeing, happiness. A life well lived is a curios one.

Now, you wont be curios about everything in your life and that is normal. But it is worthwhile to find something that lights you up, drives you to action. Something that guides you in good times and still shines when all other lights go out.

There are many ways to a good life. But all paths require curiosity and determination. And you should always seek to nurture it.

In a world of billions no one is truly unique. If your idea does not require deep intellectual knowledge to produce, it has most likely already been thought up by someone else.

The difference, or potential difference between you and everyone else sharing your idea is execution. Without it an idea is just trapped potential. The most brilliant of ideas is worthless if never acted upon.

Your “ownership”, however tangible it is to your mind, on its own, has no significance. It is frivolous, having no purpose or value. No value because you cannot exchange it for a meaningful cash sum, and no purpose because it is just sitting there, locked away, doing nothing.

Even if an idea can be sold or bought for an amount however little or large, its value to society, the much more important metric, without execution remains zero.

A good idea can only be a multiplier to the value of the fulfillment. Whatever the value is of the idea, the value of the execution is always an order of magnitude or more above it. It is always the element with the higher potential and therefore, importance.

Whatever great idea you may have, it accounts for only a fraction in its own value equation. In a world of idea conjurers, prioritize execution.

For the digital space to be useful storage for important information there needs to be order. Order2 that is optimized both for searchability and organizability(the ability to quickly and effortlessly decide where a file should go).

Good order is about packing what should go together, and splitting what you want to remain separate.

Folders are in general bad tools of organization, especially when dealing with files related to more than one area of thought. Folders should only be used in order to deliberately keep something you view as completely incompatible, separate.

Tags and categories are the better way to organize files as they allow for notes to be related to multiple areas of thought without creating duplicates.

Tags and categories sound like the same thing, but they aren’t. Tags are non hierarchical markers for expressing lateral associations of content. Categories are standalone files that other files link back to, and are hierarchically higher than the files that link back to them.

Tags are better used when the tag is merely for searchability, while categories are for when the property itself is an important note the file needs to relate to.

Internal links between notes are core to a well ordered note system. Links encourage you to think broadly about how concepts relate to one another. It incentivizes you to find connections between elements of your knowledge network. It also encourages the practice to leave links unresolved in order to saw seeds for future connections between concepts.

Links become more useful as time goes on, because you can trace how ideas emerged, and the branching paths they created.

Introducing good order to your notes frees up mental capacity to actually work on them. It is worth investing some time into note organization, so you have a freer mind while working inside your knowledge network.

Consistently taking in new information, documenting, processing it keeps your mind active. Keeps your thinking fresh. Constantly taking in new information means creating new mental models, which allows for critical thinking and makes you less susceptible to manipulation.

Learning means growing as an individual. Learning makes it easier to both communicate and process ideas. It helps with every thinking related aspect of life.

And thinking, spending time on your own is a core part of life for a creative person. Learning helps make idle ideating time better. Gives you more answers to your own questions. Refines your thoughts.

Makes it easier to come up with new ideas because your mind stays vibrant. Never stagnating. Always learning means always adapting new mental models. And new mental models create new ideas. Learning is key to a never ending creative engine.

You do not have to learn in your area of creative craft to improve in it. The very act of learning, taking in new, high quality information sharpens your mind in every area of life.

Forever learning is forever expanding your capabilities. The means though which you both perceive and live life. Forever giving yourself a better life. Choose learning.

Books have such a high saturation of ideas compared to other mediums because of the incredible amount of effort put into them. The nature of the medium also encourages quality, as it allows for a great amount of depth. Books can take much more liberty with how detailed they want to present a concept without losing the attention of the reader. They are not prone to distraction like other mediums.

While you are reading a physical book, nothing within an eye’s glance is competing for your attention.

Because of the work put into books, poorer ideas get discarded, while only the fruitful ideas are ever published. And because of the amount of effort put into the presentation, ideas can be presented in a more compact, and less filler filled way.

Text is also a very easy medium to follow. You take in information at your own pace, not overloaded by the speed of the narrator or visual elements. You have the choice whether to continue forwards, or to obsessively analyze a singular chapter or page.

Not all book formats are created equal. Physical books are by far the best form, both in terms of enjoyment and the amount of information being absorbed. Written mediums, in general, convey more information than audio based mediums, even if the word content is the same.

While reading you need to continuously keep your focus on the text. With audiobooks that isn’t the case, they give you the freedom to do something else in the meantime, which leads to less information being taken in.

Doing something else in the meantime is also contrary to improving your thinking. You are artificially filling the time that would normally be spent with your own thoughts. Contemplating and processing information you have already taken in. You fill your mind with the voices of others when you should be listening to your own. You take away your own critical thinking about what you have read. You take away the vital idle ideating time.

There is no value to reading and doing something else in the meantime. It is fake reading. Fake learning. For whatever value was gained from the information in the book, there is an equal of exceeding negative value in terms of lost ideation time. The time where great ideas would normally form. And there is no reason to have to finish a book fast other than being in a book club or the arbitrary yearly reading goal. Both of those things are nonsense.

In terms of books vs e-readers, e-readers are fine on the condition that the device you are reading on is solely used for reading and not for anything else, otherwise that is a recipe for distraction.1

Books are a great source for ideas. The greatest medium worth consuming. When you not only read, but process them, you realize their full potential.

Many frames of light make a movie. Many frames of thoughts make a movie of your life. A movie that tells a story. A story of thoughts that changed and shaped you over time.

Some concepts have long exposure, they reappear across long periods of time. They set a theme of a particular period. Core concepts define an era of your life.

Others are more spontaneous sparks of imagination that build around more established ideas. Small snippets that are the product of more short term thinking. Small in essence but large in number, as to take up the majority of frames in the movie of your life.

No matter how disconnected an idea is by concept, ideas are always linked by time. The context and events around the thoughts help tell a coherent story of what, how and why ideas changed or stayed constant.

And ideas you create, believe and value can be a great medium thought which to see how you, yourself change over time. Ideas once deemed core change all the time. Because you, yourself change all the time. Change your interests and values.

And the story of that change, character development can be of interest to your future self above anyone else. It is story of who were and are as you are creating it.

Writing down important thoughts, ideas, events in your life makes a movie of that life. An autobiography. A movie worth creating, even if the only person watching it will be your future self. It has a beauty to it not only in itself, but in the process of making it. Beautiful are not only the things you made, but the story all around what you made.

The inability to be left alone leads to more time being spent in the complacent comfort of someone else’s mind. That time doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from time that would normally be spent with your own thoughts. Contemplating and processing information you have already taken in.

Never taking the time to contemplate on your own leads to stagnation of the mind. Your thoughts become dictated by the voices of others, by the voices who affirm what you have long ago decided to be true.

Your thoughts start to echo others, because others are the minds only input. No input from your own conscience. No critical thinking about whether those opinions still serve you, reflect who you truly are.

Taking the time to contemplate, think on your own leads to a better, happier life, because the voices you choose to have around you sing in harmony with your own, and not the other way around.

Choosing the voices you want to have in your life matters. But good choices can only be made if you know what you, yourself think. And you can only think yourself, if you give your mind the power to be left alone, in the comfort of its own thoughts.