Daily Productive Sharing 1278 - Rebuilding My Brain

Dr Selfie -

One helpful tip per day:)

Joan Westenberg has discovered that efficiency is, in fact, the enemy of depth. And all interesting things are hidden in depth.

  1. Every week, she sets aside an entire day without using AI.
  2. On that day, she insists on generating content purely with her own mind and expressing herself in her own words, without relying on any external scaffolding.
  3. It was during those days that she realized what she had been missing all along: the sense of fulfillment that comes from original thinking.
  4. Modern life conditions people to habitually avoid this state. So sitting in ambiguity and uncertainty, without rushing to divert attention, becomes a radical act of reclaiming herself.
  5. Every line of thought ultimately hits a dead end or falls into clichés. But that’s precisely the point. She’s learning how to stay with a problem, even when it stubbornly refuses to yield an answer.
  6. Reading, and becoming fully absorbed in it, no longer feels like a burden.
  7. Long stretches of silence have become enjoyable. She can sit for an hour without music, without screens, without any task—just thinking.
  8. Aristotle said that excellence is not an act but a habit. She once thought this meant discipline, but now she believes it means inner consistency.
  9. The key is accepting that difficulty itself is part of the process, not a “bug” that needs fixing.
  10. Writing by hand forces her to slow down and think carefully before putting words on paper, rather than pounding out a flood of words on a keyboard and trying to find the point afterward.
  11. Now, she’s able to stay with difficult problems long enough to discover those less obvious answers. This has led to her best work—the pieces that began as vague intuitions and, through sustained focus, grew into coherent expressions.
  12. But she also knows that perfection isn’t necessary. She certainly hasn’t achieved it. Especially in the first month, she often broke her own rules. The point isn’t perfection—it’s leaving enough space for the mind to remember what it’s capable of.
  13. She understands that true original thinking often begins in boredom. The place where one can truly hear one’s own voice is in silence.
  14. Instead of adding another new system of efficiency or optimization hack, she’s more inclined to remove obstacles that block thinking. She tries to create conditions where insights can arise naturally.
  15. She believes you don’t have to disconnect entirely from the world—but you do have to start choosing what you allow into your mind.

If you enjoy today's sharing, why not subscribe

Need a superb CV, please try our CV Consultation

Joan Westenberg 发现：高效，其实是深度的敌人。而所有有趣的事物，都藏在深度里。

  1. 她每周会留出整整一天，不使用 AI。
  2. 那一天，她坚持用自己大脑生成内容，用自己的语言表达，而不是依赖任何外部支架。
  3. 就在那时，她意识到自己一直缺失的东西：原创思考所带来的满足感。
  4. 现代生活让人习惯性地逃避这种状态。因此，坐在模糊与不确定里，不急于转移注意力，本身就是一种激进的自我找回。
  5. 每一条思路最终都走进了死胡同，或者落入陈词滥调。但这正是重点。她正在学习如何与一个问题待在一起，即使它迟迟不给答案。
  6. 读书，并且全神贯注地投入其中，不再成为一种负担。
  7. 漫长的沉默也变得愉悦。她可以一小时坐着，不听音乐，不看屏幕，也不做任何任务。只是思考。
  8. 亚里士多德说，卓越不是一个行为，而是一种习惯。她曾经以为那意味着自律，而现在她认为，那意味着内在的一致性。
  9. 关键在于，接受困难本身就是过程的一部分，而不是必须被解决的“漏洞”。
  10. 手写迫使她放慢速度，在动笔之前先仔细思考，而不是用键盘敲出一堆文字再去找重点。
  11. 现在，她可以在难题上停留足够久，直到找到那些不那么显而易见的答案。这促成了她最好的作品——那些最初只是模糊直觉的文章，通过持续关注，最终发展成有条理的表达。
  12. 但她也知道，不必做到完美。她自己也没做到。尤其是在第一个月，她经常打破自己制定的规则。重点不是完美，而是为大脑留出足够的空间，让它记起自己本可以做到的事情。
  13. 她明白，真正的原创思考，往往始于无聊。真正能听见自己声音的地方，是寂静。
  14. 与其增加一个新的效率系统或者优化技巧，她更倾向于去除阻碍思考的障碍。她试图为洞察力自然浮现创造条件。
  15. 她认为，你不必完全与世界断联，但你必须开始选择，什么可以进入你的心智。

如果你喜欢的话，不妨直接订阅这份电子报 ⬇️