Interlude: Typos, Timeshielding, and the Decline of Writing

Last week, someone replied to my newsletter to let me know that there was a typo. And this isn’t the first time a typo appeared in one of my newsletters.

When this happens, I tend to oscillate between two thoughts.

First, I feel so grateful that someone reached out to point out the typo so that I can fix it where I can (thank you, Jackie!).

Second, I feel embarrassed and, frankly, disappointed in myself.

Because I’m an editor, I tend to believe that there is lot less room for typos and other minor errors in my writing. I have the perception that people expect perfection from me when it comes to writing. And for a long time, I expected that of myself.

But I’ve tried to shift my mindset from striving for perfection to striving for excellence. And that has helped me learn to acknowledge the embarrassment and move past the disappointment.

And last week, I had a third thought. I recognized that the typo showed readers that the text was written by a human rather than AI. In a world where AI is changing how we write, I think that typos can remind us that there is another human on the other side of the message. And knowing that can help to keep us connected.

So the next time you spot a typo in something you’ve read, I hope you’ll see it as a sign that a real person was on the other end of the message.

Thank you, as always, for reading—typos and all.

Now onto this week's round-up...

Round-up

Reading

​I’m Begging You: Never Write With A.I.​
”The problem with writing with A.I. is that it’s mentally enfeebling — an escalator toward a result when you really need to make a daily habit of taking the stairs. As it becomes ubiquitous, it undermines not only our individual ability to write but also a society’s collective ability to reason, a culture’s inner capacity to create and everyone’s reason to care. We’re already reckoning with the well-documented decline of reading; A.I. is accelerating the decline of writing, ushering us further into what The Atlantic’s Rose Horowitch calls our ‘postliterate age.’”

“What, uniquely, does writing do? It compels thought. It compels thinking in ways that silent contemplation or spoken language rarely can. It compels us to subject our thinking to the effort of articulation, the rigor of grammar, the tests of intelligibility and coherence, the inspection of others. In doing so, it also enjoins us to be clear, logical, accurate — and accountable.”

“We become better writers by the constant effort that mundane writing demands. We become better thinkers by investing into that writing a degree of attention we’d never give it if we relinquished the task to A.I. We become more creative when we learn how to put a personal stamp even on routine things, making them unmistakably our own.”

​Beyond Time Management​
”That’s why I practice what I call timeshielding. At the beginning of each week, I protect time for my key priorities. . . Timeshielding means protecting blocks of time for what matters to you without assigning them a specific task list. . . This differs from timeboxing, where you assign a specific task to a fixed period. This structure gives your priorities a place in your calendar while leaving enough flexibility to respond to your energy and attention in the moment.”

Watching

​What happens when you talk to AI?​
”An AI model writes one word at a time, but it doesn't think one word at a time. Jane from Anthropic’s user experience team breaks down the prediction process behind every AI output, and how to better interpret the responses you get back.”

Tools

​Alfred​
I’ve been using the Alfred app for nearly a decade. This app works a lot like Spotlight on a Mac (but better!) and helps me quickly open files without digging into nested folders on my computer, search the web, complete quick calculations, and more. The app has many other features that I have not explored (yet!), so if you use Alfred in other ways, hit reply and let me know. I’d love to learn how I can maximize this tool.

Quote

“Part of what is happening when you spend 7 hours reading a book, is you spend 7 hours with your mind on the topics in the book, grappling with them, drawing connections, having thoughts you would not otherwise have had. And so without that process of grappling, without those hours inside that book, it doesn’t get inside you. It doesn’t impress itself upon you. It doesn’t change you. What reading and writing and processing information is supposed to do is change you.” –Ezra Klein

Thank you so much for reading.

Warmly,

Crystal