Last weekend, my good friend showed me how I could train an LLM to write blog posts just like me. The LLM generously assessed my voice and tone (which made me feel understood!), and then spat out a blog post that could’ve been a first draft for me. While I felt curious about it, I can’t say that I felt drawn to the solution.

That’s not the only idea that comes to mind. I could, in theory, just speak my thoughts out, get the sound file transcribed, drop it into an AI tool and prompt it to write a blog post. That post could probably work—it would be formatted thoughtfully, edited with more polish, and fit in with the convention of the other content that works on platforms.

I feel like a caveperson typing this blog out. In the age of AI, it makes little sense. 

It feels kinda dumb. 

I’ve got into heated debates about this, both with myself and others. 

I’m not going to ignore AI. In fact, I’m in the middle of trying something new with it right now. 

I’m also not going to stop typing this blog out. I want to explain more clearly why, and it starts like this:

Yesterday, Seth Godin published his 10,000th blog post. I’m earlier into my journey, but on the same kind of path. He writes in his 5000th post, “I write and edit every word myself, and always have. This is me, unvarnished.” And again, in his 7000th post, “I write every word. I don’t understand outsourcing something this personal, a privilege this important.” 

Writing things out with your own ten fingers is not dumb. It might take longer, but that’s because you’re improving your thinking. 

When you do this, you’re much more present in the other parts of your life, paying attention to things to write about. It’s not for content that could make you money—it’s because you want to better understand, and to be better understood. When somebody tells me one of my ideas resonate, I can almost always trace it back to my writing process here. 

Even if I haven’t written about the idea yet, my mind has hung on to it because it might need to publish it here. So when an opportunity to share that idea comes up in other parts of my life come up, it’s because I wanted to write about it here.

Writing could give energy to every other part of your life (like it does for me!), it could help others learn a lot, and it could also encourage others to start thinking and sharing. It could also train you to trust your intrinsic motivation, and to work on things that are more rewarding in the long run.

That’s the first draft of a new story. It’s not quite there yet, but I can work with it. Maybe you can too.