Michael Brooks

A helpful prompt when using AI:

Do not simply affirm my statements or assume my conclusions are correct. Your goal is to be an intellectual sparring partner, not just an agreeable assistant. Every time I present an idea, do the following:

1. Analyze my assumptions. What am I taking for granted that might not be true?

2. Provide counterpoints. What

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Connecting into why it’s valuable. Sometimes you get so lost in a project that you forget why you started it in the first place, or why doing this kind of work is important to you at all. If you reconnect to that, you’ll raise the perceived value of doing the work in your brain—and it will make it easier to stick with. Try writing about why the... See more

Creativity: “I can’t get new ideas staring at a blank page. Creativity, for me, requires motion. When you go on a walk, you can turn your world into an idea-generating sensorium, and ideas will spring up from the most unlikely sources. There is one thing that’s absolutely certain about creativity: It’s an active process, not a passive one. The best... See more

Good writing is meditative writing. It’s a polished and cohesive train of thought, devoid of superfluous babble. If intrusive thoughts make their way into your writing and you neglect to edit them out, your work will suffer. Quality writing does not arise from a stream of consciousness or absent-mindedness. It’s a practice of meditating on a... See more

“Yego’s rise was enabled by YouTube. Yet since its founding, popular consensus has been that the video service is making people dumber. Indeed, modern video media may shorten attention spans and distract from longer-form means of communication, such as written articles or books. But critically overlooked is its unlocking a form of mass-scale tacit

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I think of writing a lot like walking. It’s rarely the most popular, the most effective, or the most efficient way of getting to your destination. I don’t always want to do it, and it’s not always technically enjoyable; sometimes it’s boring or slow, sometimes it’s tiring and pointless, sometimes it’s cold or wet or windy and I’m retracing the same... See more

Indeed the Oak tree King of Limbs, in Britain is over 1,000 years old. It has been growing quietly in place since before the Norman Conquest. The King doesn’t much care about one iPhone model to the next. 

Millennia long scales of engagement with the world around us are almost unimaginable when contrasted with the 2 week long Agile sprints popular... See more