You glorious, handsome, beautiful you. You write!
You know how it goes. Everyone is busy. So “writing” everything with AI seems to be an increasingly compelling and commong thing to do.
Now, the issue is… I think using AI to write makes you a glorified data-entry slave. What else is copying and pasting text from one textbox online to another textbox somewhere else?
And while everyone else is busy turning themselves into these…minions for robots, you still do have this choice: become a user of the machine or become its slave.
Absolutely, writing feels so hard when you can just copy-paste from a textbox. I know that. But what I also think is very much true but gets ignored in academia is that the moment you outsource your writing, you also outsource your thinking.
And in academia, there is just no way that you can have a future if you stop thinking at any point.
Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll explain why writing is a form of meditation for your brain, how you can keep thinking even if everyone else is outsourcing theirs. And I’ll throw in a simple framework that will help separate the intellectual slaves from those who still want to master their thinking…just like you!
Together, these can help save your academic soul from becoming just a cog in the upcoming robot revolution.
The Great Academic Shortcut Epidemic
I dare say we’re now living through the biggest crisis in academic thinking since… well, maybe ever?
Students are using AI to generate assignments and essays, with recent surveys showing that more than half of students are using AI in their classes in ways it shouldn’t be. Professors report that AI is hurting academic standards, with an overwhelming majority saying it will negatively impact academic quality.
But what is also true is that artificial intelligence isn’t increasing cheating frequency much. It’s just changing the tools that students use to cheat. People have always been looking for shortcuts. And I always quite openly admit, or joke, that when I was a freshman, we used to buy/sell C coding assignments for a case of beer.
If I had the option to just ask a robot online or buy a case of beer and wait for a week, of course I would go for the robot!
But for academics, researchers, writing is not content production to get a grade!
I get the feeling that sometimes we’re forgetting what writing does to our brains.
Historian David McCullough put it: “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.”
If you, as a researcher, skip the writing, you skip the thinking. When you skip the thinking, you become what the evil machines of the future want you to become: a voluntary cog in their wheels.
Research shows that handwriting leads to widespread brain connectivity and has positive effects on learning and memory. Other studies show how writing enhances critical thinking skills. And it just gets better. Creative writers score higher on verbal creativity indices, showing that forcing to express ideas clearly is GOOD FOR US.
I’m not going to drop a massive list of refs here, but if you want to read more about the science itself, clickety click this: Writing as a Thinking Tool – MSU Denver.
TLDR? Every time you write, you’re rewiring your brain to think better.
Every time you don’t write? You’re letting your brain atrophy.
Writing also Means Being Well
Want to know a secret?
Writing is meditation.
No, seriously.
Reflective writing reduces anxiety and depression while improving focus and overall well-being. I’ve always known about the powers of writing, but I didn’t know the formal academic term “reflective writing” before we actually wrote a couple of papers about this with our collaborators at the University of Tokyo.
Writing does the same thing to your brain as meditation: it forces you to slow down, focus on one thing at a time, and actually process your thoughts instead of just reacting to them.
Think about it.
When you sit down to write (really write, not just pour words onto a page or, yikes, copy paste text between textboxes aka the “new normal” way of “writing”), what happens?
You have to choose each word. You have to structure each sentence. You have to figure out what you actually think about the topic before you can explain it to someone else.
Just ten minutes of mindful practice every day has been shown to have great well-being benefits. Writing gives you the same benefits, plus you end up with something useful.
Compare that to asking ChatGPT to write your paper!
You learn nothing. You think nothing. You just… exist while the machine does the work. Oh, and congrats, you’re a data entry worker now. Not the giga-brain academic you promised yourself to become.
That really the future you want?
The Slave-to-Master Framework: Three Ways to Reclaim Your Thinking
As with everything, always start small. I’m not asking for much. Take just 10 minutes per day. If you don’t have 10 minutes per day for meditative writing practice, something is seriously wrong. Email me! Let’s work it out.
1) Start with a Messy Brain Dump
Before you even think about structure or grammar, just write. Stream of consciousness. No editing. No judgment. Just brain-to-page transfer.
There’s a lot of research out there that shows that the writing process is fundamentally a problem-solving process that just requires you, the writer, to analyse and synthesise information while making decisions about the content.
It has nothing to do with creating the perfect prose to begin with. A
nd it has much more to do with just forcing your brain to organize the chaos of your thoughts into something coherent in the end.
Most academics skip this step because it doesn’t feel efficient! You know, you just have to write the perfect sentence, the smart, academic, 100% accurate sentence on paper because that’s how smart people write!
Right?
No, no, no, no, no. Wrong.
This is the efficient way. This is where you dig deep into what you already know and think. This…this vomiting your brains on paper is a necessary step for you to then organise whatever was in your brains to begin with.
We okay with this? Next…
2) Write Before You Research (Yes, Really)
Controversial take: Write your first draft before you dive super deep into the literature.
I know, I know. “But Simo, how can I write about something I haven’t fully studied yet?”
That’s exactly the point.
This requires a little bit of clarification. Of course, you need to know your topic, and you need to know that there is, for example, a research gap when you are writing a paper or even just documenting your own research.
But knowing absolutely everything about it can also stop your creative juices a little bit.
When you write first, you discover what you actually think about the topic.
This is the only way to identify the gaps in your knowledge.
You generate questions that will guide your research. As opposed to you write to fill in the gaps.
When you research first and then “write,” you’re too often just summarising other people’s thoughts. There’s no you in the equation.
And I think there should always be you in the equation.
3) Embrace the Suck
Writing feels hard because thinking is hard.
That discomfort you feel when searching for the right word?
That’s your brain actually working.
You’re building intellectual muscle every time you push through that discomfort instead of reaching for the AI shortcut.
And even if it sucks, I’m pretty sure you are for building that muscle instead of letting it atrophy. This also reminds me of some of the literature in dopamine studies where one of the best ways for you to install a permanent habit is just to learn to embrace the action itself instead of the reward. And this is something you can literally learn by intentionally telling yourself that you are enjoying and embracing the suck.
Your Choice: User or Slave?
In five years, there will be two types of academics.
- Those who can think clearly and write originally.
- And those who can’t do either.
Of course, you should learn to use AI tools. But you should not let them take over.
If the tools can take over your work, your thinking, your writing, why would anyone need you?
The first group will be the ones designing the prompts for the kind of work AI is good for, directing the research, and making the real contributions to knowledge.
The second group will be… well, let go.
Keep writing & thinking.
Keep being human.
Keep being you?