the barbell rule of reading and writing

I believe in the power of the written word. I believe writing is the deepest form of thought. I believe reading and digesting great books allows someone to live 100 lives in 1 lifetime.

But in recent times, as I consume a lot of information from LLMs and X, my ability to deeply explore reading or writing is diminishing.

All I have been doing is either writing half essays or reading half the books. I would do part of the work and then go on to use AI to just summarize the book or write the essay for me.

The downside of this would be deadly (metaphorically, of course). I would not be able to develop a coherent, well-thought-out point of view on anything. I would have a lot of information, but no way to interpret or use it.

I think the information speed is not going to slow down anytime soon — if anything, it’s just going to become multifold, and new information is going to come at us all the time.

To balance and thrive in this dichotomy of an AI-first world, I have decided to apply the barbell rule. I would read and write very deeply every day, while simultaneously consuming a lot of new information from LLMs and X.

My thesis is that it will give me the ability to form a coherent and thought-through worldview, and then take the fast-moving information to map it onto this worldview.

I started reading Meditations on First Philosophy by René Descartes — only 2-3 pages per day, using AI to just help me understand tough paragraphs.

I started writing full essays about a topic — and started doing morning pages to assist with easing the flow, using AI to just help with grammar and proofreading.

I do not want to be someone who knows a lot but thinks very little. This is my attempt to make sure that does not happen.

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.” — Francis Bacon