I started taking writing more seriously in the last few months of 2025. Here are some thoughts around writing for 2026:
think less, do more
One of my goals in 2025 was to write less about “negative” things. This was a great exercise because it forced me to think differently and harder about things. Pessimism and cynicism are easy. A lot of academic writing in the humanities suffers from this trap. I want to continue and expand on this by writing less cheap writing — good/bad takes, rumination, or indulgent prose. Instead, I will focus on writing about tacit knowledge I’ve gained, personal reflection/experience, and long-form book reviews. Think less, do more (and write about it).[1]
write for llms
This year I realize LLMs increase the range of what I’m able to read and write about. In order to improve this, I want to write more for LLMs. I take notes in obsidian and revisit <10% of them. In 2026, the plan is to make my reading notes more observable and translate them into notes or mini-essays. These are currently scattered between pdf annotations, marked-up physical books and highlights/notes on e-ink device. It would be nice to organize these into concepts across books, essays and blogs. Most of my notes are currently single ideas or quotes linking 2-3 notes that have some thematic overlap.
For example:
I have two notes linked about society rewarding reactive problem solving one is from a podcast with Palmer Luckey and another by Nassim Taleb:
Palmer Luckey’s talk - “Current Year is Too Late to Start Caring About Current Things” and I said you know I’m going to go there and talk about why you can’t wait till after the war in Ukraine starts to care about national security that that means you’ll necessarily never be part of deterring a problem only fixing it reactively. People say they want to be proactive and not reactive but that isn’t how anyone online acts. http://youtube.com/watch?v=nK0NfL2M5L4
Nassem Taleb -
“I will illustrate with the following thought experiment. Assume that a legislator with courage, influence, intellect, vision, and perseverance manages to enact a law that goes into universal effect and employment on September 10, 2001; it imposes the continuously locked bulletproof doors in every cockpit (at high costs to the struggling airlines)—just in case terrorists decide to use planes to attack the World Trade Center in New York City. I know this is lunacy, but it is just a thought experiment (I am aware that there may be no such thing as a legislator with intellect, courage, vision, and perseverance; this is the point of the thought experiment). The legislation is not a popular measure among the airline personnel, as it complicates their lives. But it would certainly have prevented 9/11. The person who imposed locks on cockpit doors gets no statues in public squares, not so much as a quick mention of his contribution in his obituary. ‘Joe Smith, who helped avoid the disaster of 9/11, died of complications of liver disease.’ Seeing how superfluous his measure was, and how it squandered resources, the public, with great help from airline pilots, might well boot him out of office. Vox clamantis in deserto. He will retire depressed, with a great sense of failure. He will die with the impression of having done nothing useful.”
I mainly have optimized for quick capture of things I read and loosely find interesting. I organize this as best as I can by linking parent/children relationships. However, with an LLM I can add organization layer to help point out connections and make the nodes more legible.
At the end of the day, it’s about increasing my output and being able to write with more depth and be a more prolific writer.
consume less information
In the past, read alot [2] and wrote very little. Now, I have a better grasp of what I want to read and where to look. I used to read a lot out of fomo, hoarding “just-in-case” knowledge. I wrote little because I over developed my taste and knew my writing wasn’t good. I want to raise that bar for what I read and lower the bar for writing.
act on my writing impulses
Since starting to write more, I have thoughts throughout the day about interesting ideas which I could write about. I write some of them down and act on <10% of them. Many times, I take an idea write something and realize there’s nothing there. This is a good thing as its feedback and I can let that thought go. If I act on these impulses and close more of these idea loops, eventually I will have a good instinct for which ideas have substance.
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Over the last few years, I’ve been an idea person and have not been able to see if they have any merit because I don’t act on them and they forever live in this ideal state in my imagination. In 2026, I want to have the courage to find out if these ideas are actually any good through writing them out.
xx
[1] I’m inspired by this essay from dreamlitlab. [2] a list of every blog or newsletter I’ve ever read