why you should write essays too

it's a life hack for learning new things

29 Dec 2025
1:20 AM

It’s middle of the night, the year is ending. And I have got this obsession of reviving my love of writing and thinking on my own without the assistance of AI. My partner made me realize, how AI dependent I have become. I have stopped thinking from first principles.

Now that I have starting learning new things again. I want to learn them well. Writing Essays is going to be a part of that.

I watched this video, where it said “essay” means “to try”, “to attempt”.

Essays have been the first way for people to express their ideas and thoughts. Einstein used to write essays. Ralph Waldo Emerson is famous for his essays. I sometimes refer to them to get a kick in the butt.

Writing is super duper imp because when an idea is on paper, it separates from you. You can see it. Examine it. Criticize it. You can see if it even makes sense at all or you are spiraling, talking about surface level things.

In essay writing you have to take your vague and scattered thoughts & make sense of it. Give it some rational linear order and that is hard. But that is what intelligence is & essay writing is the ultimate test of that.

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It’s 10th Jan, and today was the first day since I started, where I was struggling to write on any dedicated topic. So, I thought let’s just write about what’s blocking me.

A few reasons come to mind:

1. I don’t feel the spark. I have certain topics I wanted to write about but I don’t feel excited about any of them. I look at them and go.. “blah!”
   
   The few topics:

   1. I am dumb when I am happy, intelligent when I am sad.

   2. Why do people clink glasses when doing a cheers. (There’s a murder mystery plot behind it.)

   3. Our couples app is going live soon. (We need early testers...)
      

2. I woke up super late. I have come to realize, my daily habits directly impact my inspiration water tap. If I don’t open it on time, the well goes dry. By writing daily, I fine tuned my mind to be in the deep work zone at night & early mornings.

According to me this is a lazy piece of work.

So to make it worthwhile your time, let me tell you how this tiny habit has impacted me in the last 10 days.

1. I have reduced my AI usage. I am only using it to ask questions I have zero idea about.

2. One habit stacks more habits.
   For eg, once you start smoking, you start eating less, it becomes a habit to skip food. Pretty soon, your life reorganizes itself to accommodate smoking. My life has reorganized itself to accommodate publishing daily. That includes eating right, reading the books that fire up currents in my body and brain, walking to process the ideas.

3. I am religiously documenting my product updates & marketing ideas.

These are v.v.v small results in 10 days. The compounded results can be different.

excitement is contagious <3

I have only one rule in writing now:

If it looks good enough to read. I am posting it.

This small intent change has made a lot of difference. Earlier months would go by and I did not write anything. Or if I wrote anything, I didn’t post it thinking it needs more punch.

Now I am just going with the flow.

Signing off
Akanksha