Cal Newport

It forces your brain to work together in a ways that otherwise wouldn't do.

It forges new connections.

And over time, this literally makes your brain more capable.

You become smarter.

So you want to have a certain number of pages you read every day.

that you treat similarly in your physical health to getting a certain number of steps every day.

All right, the second easy exercise I recommended was don't avoid writing.

It is very tempting because of AI tools to offload that strain you feel when you look at a blank page by just having that chat bot or just clicking on that Gemini button in Google Doc.

Just like, hey, give me a draft of this.

Just put some words down.

I'd rather sort of just like edit what you have to say than having to, you know, conjure de novo words from scratch.

But do not flee that strain.

That strain, you have to reconceptualize it.

It's not a negative thing you're trying to avoid.

It's the feeling of strength.

It's the feeling of growth.

It's like feeling a burn in your muscle when you lift a heavy weight.

Head towards the strain of filling an empty page and be proud when you finish that little high you get after you've completed the act of cognitive construction, cognitive creation.

Writing is, I'm going to say, like the pull-ups of your brain, right?

So if reading is like getting enough steps, it's our foundation of movement.