How to Think about Thinking when Thinking is Rare
E3-'The Long-Term Game': Curated Readings To Help You Set Your Legacy
Quick List
The End of Reading Is Here by Rose Horowitch for The Atlantic. Read Here.
You Share Other People’s Thoughts Because You Don’t Have Any of Your Own by Feifei. Read Here.
How To Start Having Original Thoughts by Feifei. Read Here.
The Hobbies That Quietly Make You Magnetic by The Intemporelle. Read Here.
There Are Three Types of AI Users by David Brooks for The Atlantic. Read Here.
A Guide to Thinking With AI by Jeremy Caplan for The Wonder Tools. Read Here.
Let AI Interview You. A smarter way to get past the blank page by Jay Dixit and Jeremy Caplan. Read Here.
Welcome back to ‘The Long-Term Game’, a series on curated readings to help you set your legacy. Read the first two editions below:
Today’s edition is ALL about THINKING.
Essay 1: ‘The End of Reading Is Here’ by Rose Horowitch for The Atlantic. Read Here.
Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history
Rayaan Writer’s Why
This deep dive by the Atlantic captures the fall of reading in the US. It traces how ill-literacy flourished when one of the the greatest library in history, the Library of Alexandria, faced existential threats for centuries. It also points out our current societal state where social media thrives, and information is abundant but thinking is rare.
As a ghostwriter, I am on a mission to convince people that the best way to create a legacy is to not just to read but to write more because writing is thinking.
The less you read, the less you are aware. The less you know, the more ignorant bliss you breathe. The more you breathe this ignorance, the more blinded you get. Less reading might lead to more reluctance to writing.
We need to think more about this starting today.
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Studies have shown that people comprehend less when reading on a digital device than on paper, perhaps because of all these distractions. Devoting extended, undivided attention to a text can now feel like too much to ask. Audiobooks have become a popular alternative to print books at least in part because listening to a book allows for multitasking: You can read while doing the dishes or driving to work.
Reading books is a workout for the attention span. The more you read, the easier it is to read, and the more you’re rewarded with new understanding. Eventually the process is more pleasurable than it is challenging. But as with physical exercise, the converse is true as well: The less you read, the more difficult it is to read, and the rockier the path to acquiring knowledge.
The paradox is that although video contains more information than text—not just language but sounds and moving images—it does not stimulate deeper thinking. To the contrary, video thrusts so much information at the viewer at once that it’s difficult to focus on any one piece of it
Writing is hard. Orwell likened the experience to a “long bout of some painful illness.” AI promises a simple remedy. The trouble is that writing is not merely the act of transcribing fully formed thoughts—if it were, it wouldn’t be hard. Writing is the way people figure out what they think, and how to convey those thoughts to someone who doesn’t already share them. Cal Newport, a computer-science professor at Georgetown University, argues that the process of writing forces people to think in an orderly, linear fashion. It exposes flabby thoughts and shoddy reasoning. And the time and focus it takes to form thoughts into words, sentences, and paragraphs allow the author to make new connections and discover new insights.
The skill of deep thinking will likely become rarer and rarer in a world where much of the population uses AI to avoid writing. It will also become more and more important… the decline of reading seems to be ushering in a less rational, analytical, and sophisticated mode of thinking.
Eleanor Warnock, writer at Every.to, criticised the doomerism in this piece. She notes reader’s choice are ever evolving. “We shouldn't judge someone's intellect based on the format they choose to consume information.”
Food for thought indeed!
Essay 2: ‘You Share Other People’s Thoughts Because You Don’t Have Any of Your Own’ by Feifei. Read Here.
Rayaan Writer’s Why
I’m sad to confess, time and again that I am a phone slave. You will find me drowning myself in a million Substack articles, LinkedIn hot takes, crunching up breaking news or Instagram reels. Weirdly, the more I’m online, the more I realise, I don’t remember much. I feel shallow. So, I have constantly made the effort to keep track of my digital diet, to ensure that I have breathing breaks in between, that I create art physically, such as writing things on paper, drawing in my sketchbook, or even riding to my aunt’s house in my scooter and enjoying the commute without listening to a podcast.
I’m aware now that to produce original thinking or to just think about thinking, pausing is exceptionally important. Ghostwriting involves interviewing my clients. The best response I get from my clients is when I ask them a question that makes them think. And they think in long minutes of silence to process the words that come in their mind. Reading Feifei’s piece reminded me of the several conversations I have had with my clients to share about their work-life.
When the world screams for our attention, its best to pause and wait…
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Your Instagram stories are just screenshots of other people's tweets. Your "thoughts" on current events are reworded takes from that video essay you watched.
You buy books because they look good on your shelf or because everyone else is reading them. You take pictures, post them and add them to your Goodreads. But you don't actually read them. Or if you do, you don't actually think about them.
You're not sitting with concepts that challenge you. You're not forming your own interpretations or conclusions. You're just consuming content so you can talk about consuming it.
You watch a three-hour video essay about some movie or cultural phenomenon, and suddenly you're an expert. Suddenly you have "thoughts." Suddenly you're posting long captions about themes, symbolism and cultural commentary.
Everything you think makes you unique is just a very specific combination of algorithmic recommendations that you've accepted as your identity.
You don't have strong opinions about that celebrity drama. You just have the opinion that got the most engagement in your feed, the one that felt safest to adopt, the one that your little corner of the internet agreed was correct.
You Can't Form an Opinion Without Checking What Everyone Else Thinks First.
Thinking is hard. Coming to your own conclusions requires effort, time and the willingness to be wrong or uncertain (put your damn ego aside)… You'll have to confront the fact that you don't know who you are or what you think because you've never bothered to find out.
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Essay 3: ‘How To Start Having Original Thoughts’ by Feifei. Read Here.
Rayaan Writer’s Why
A common school of thinking among online creators is to capitalise on the perspective that you closely align with from people you admire online. This is a very safe bet to get started, sort of like training wheels if you are new to sharing your writing/ your work online.
I published this post on Son of Thanjai, a Tamil video game. It helped me attract a large number of LinkedIn followers. All I did was just share a quick note about this game because I love gaming.
When my ghostwriting clients ask what they should write about, I nudge them its best to start by sharing about the things they love. Thinking happens naturally when you do something out of pure passion and love for the art.
I love writing this newsletter. It is my goal to build a large caring list of readers and also to convert this into my core source of income. So I always thinking about how do I make my writing more hot and awesome. I always think...
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The first thing you have to understand is that this is a skill, not a trait…
The difference between original thinkers and people who just regurgitate isn't that one group never consumes other people's ideas. It's that one group does something with them. They push back. They extend the argument somewhere the original author didn't go. They notice where the idea breaks down when applied to their own experience. They sit with it long enough that it gets fingerprints on it.
After you read something, watch something, listen to something — before you look at what anyone else thinks about it — write down what you actually thought. Not what you think you're supposed to think. Not the smart take. Write down what you actually noticed, what bothered you, what you believed before and whether it changed… The goal is to catch your raw reaction before the internet gets to it.
You're allowed to have an opinion you can't perfectly articulate yet… Start saying, out loud or in writing: “I'm not sure why, but I don't think I agree with that.” Then try to figure out why. The trying is the thinking. The answer at the end is almost secondary.
None of this produces results immediately. Developing your own perspective is a years-long project. You're essentially rebuilding a habit of mind that's been slowly eroded.
Essay 4: ‘The Hobbies That Quietly Make You Magnetic’ by The Intemporelle. Read Here.
Three hobby categories that change your glow, your mind, and your energy.
Rayaan Writer’s Why
I am very picky about the type of people that I want to work with as a ghostwriter. I’m attracted to people who have a very high standard of work integrity and discipline, align with Morgan Housel’s take on the psychology of money, and how they’re with their family. I spot a green flag every time a client gushes about their spouse and their children during the interview stage.
I’ve also had the privilege to ghostwrite for deep thinkers — folks with great rituals. Rituals are habits that define who you are. These are the building blocks of your daily life that pave a way every day for you to start a clean slate to think deeply.
This essay refers to three magnets that you need: to help you glow, the energy to perform better, and take things as they go with calmness because great habits (for the body, mind & soul) is bounded by universal law to lead you to good thinking skills.
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The 3-Hobby Rule (If You Want A Simple Plan)
Pick three hobbies:
one regulating hobby
one mind hobby
one texture hobby
Example combos:
walking + reading + baking
pilates + language study + museums
swimming + psychology notes + cooking
Then give them a tiny weekly rhythm:
regulating hobby: 4–6x/week
mind hobby: 3x/week (even 20 minutes counts)
texture hobby: 1x/week (a ritual)
You don’t need motivation. You need rhythm. Magnetism is built in rhythm.
Essay 5: ‘There Are Three Types of AI Users’ by David Brooks for The Atlantic. Read Here.
What will differentiate people is not how smart they are but their relationship to mental effort
Rayaan Writer’s Why
As much as I’d love to be in world before ChatGPT, we can’t deny the way how these tools are infiltrating our work lives. I know two things for sure. AI is going to make us dumber if we don’t do the thinking ourselves. AI is going to steal our job if we don’t upskill and focus on legacy-building skills such as thinking, writing, reading, or listening with high moral values.
When potential clients in need of my ghostwriting service ask me that they can do their writing using AI, I say sure and add, “Imagine how your reader would feel if they realise that you offloaded your thinking to write your story using a robot. That feeling will be mistrust or amusement or both.”
I do get a push back for sure but I decline to work with such people who think that AI can this job. AI sure can do some jobs no doubt but its the human with rich taste, judgment and discernment skill that can make an average piece of work look better. It is because a human can think.
This Atlantic piece reminds us that the most efficient AI user is actually someone who thinks independently without over reliance on these tools.
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Ask for hints, not answers: People who ask AI to directly answer their questions suffer severe declines in motivation and ability. But people who ask AI for background thinking or clarifications do not.
Start with a blank page: Before you go to the bot, start with a blank piece of paper and write up your own analysis and conclusions. Then ask AI to challenge your thinking, not produce it.
Rotate tasks: Every time you do a task with AI, follow it with a task that doesn’t involve AI. That will keep your creative-effort muscles alive.
Redesign the bots: General chatbot use undermines learning. But as the writer Alberto Romero notes, AI tutors actually improve learning and motivation. That’s because although chatbots mostly answer questions, tutors lead students on structured learning journeys. It should be possible to redesign the normal bots so that they function less like encyclopedias and more like personal trainers whose jobs are designed to build mental muscles, rather than replace them.
Make a sharp distinction between rote work and creative work: Let AI write functional emails. Don’t let it write your essays or your memos. Shame people who do.
Ask for thinkers, not thinking: My favorite trick when using Claude is to never ask it to think through a problem for me. I ask it to summarize the thinkers who have already addressed a given problem. If I’m trying to understand child development, I ask it to imagine a debate between Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson. What would these two great psychologists say to each other about the problem I’m wrestling with? Then I ask it what books by these thinkers I should read if I want to understand their work. I get much better results from AI when I treat it as a brilliant librarian rather than as an oracle.
You may have noticed that the future I’m describing here is one of extreme cognitive polarization. Some people will use AI to think more. Other people, maybe most people, will use AI to think less. If you thought that economic inequality or political polarization were bad, cognitive polarization will be truly terrible, dividing society into what might begin to look like two different species. The high-need-for-cognition people will get more and more productive, happier and happier; the rest will fall into a kind of mental underclass.
Essay 6: ‘A Guide to Thinking With AI’ by Jeremy Caplan for The Wonder Tools. Read Here.
5 tactics I rely on
Rayaan Writer’s Why
Jeremy runs one of the best newsletter to guide you on which digital tools, apps or websites to use to enhance your work and personal life. This edition includes real practical tips on using AI to expand your own thinking in whatever work-related tasks you need to do.
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Ask your AI assistant to role-play. It can respond as a coach, a teacher, a family member, a competitor, or an audience member. Varied viewpoints can be useful. Or ask it to act like a person you admire, living or dead, real or fictional. You can even ask it to simulate a council of advisors, each with a distinct perspective. Ethan Mollick has written about using that tactic for feedback on material in his book. Limitation: Unless you provide detailed context, you may get bland responses.
I like talking out loud to clarify my ideas. It’s my way of free writing. I use voice AI tools to turn my stream of consciousness into organized text. I call it bionic dictation. The AI assistant records and transcribes what I say. It then goes a step beyond dictation by transforming my words into an outline or summary.
Do Deep Research Before a Big Decision 🔎: The Tactic: Before making an important decision or beginning a new phase of a project, I run multiple deep research queries. Within 5 to 25 minutes I have a citation-rich report that would in the past have taken days to prepare. After reading I can follow-up on the most promising citations and links.
Essay 7: ‘Let AI Interview You’ by Jay Dixit and Jeremy Caplan. Read Here.
A smarter way to get past the blank page
Rayaan Writer’s Why
Not all people who reach out to me require my ghostwriting assistance. Some agree to take my service. Some decline. To those who say no, I always point them to this another edition by Jeremy to expand their thinking, so it can help them write better. And do the honour of living a little by actually writing.
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I call the “Socratic interview” the foundational technique I teach for using AI as a thinking partner instead of a content generator. It’s also what inspired the name of my company, Socratic AI…
As a writer, I’ve always had plenty of ideas, insights, and stories. I know they’re in there somewhere. But staring down the blank page is hard. What’s much easier is answering when someone asks me a direct question. So I use Socratic interviewing to draw out the ideas, memories, stories, and examples I have in my head but haven’t gotten down in writing. For me, it solves the blank page problem — without ever using AI to generate prose.
And that’s all for today!
Did you like reading this edition? Should I do better? Please don’t hesitate to offer me your feedback. I am open to ideas and suggestions.
Feel free to reach me at rayaanjournalist@gmail.com or you can simply reply to this email or comment below. See you soon! 😊❤️