Why Slowing Down to Write Essays Is the Most Counterintuitive Competitive Edge Today

The author begins by sharing a personal habit of translating and preserving articles that move him, introducing Dan Koe’s core claim: in a world of endless short videos and AI‑written text, the most important thing to do is to slow down and write essays.

Thinking ability itself is becoming the scarcest asset of our time.

He explains that fast, algorithm‑optimized content—what he calls “fast content”—pollutes the epistemic commons, a metaphorical water source of information, by prioritizing engagement over genuine understanding. This leads to fragmented attention, reduced tolerance for complexity, and a society at risk of intellectual decay.

The essay outlines three interlocking forces that threaten civilization’s capacity to think:

Rivalrous dynamics: zero‑sum competition in media, academia, and social platforms.

Substrate consumption: the rapid depletion of attention and trust, the essential “soil” for knowledge.

Exponential technology: AI and algorithms improving faster than human wisdom can keep pace.

When these forces converge, they can drive civilization toward collapse or dystopian control, unless a third, positive attractor—shared sense‑making and aligned incentives—emerges.

Essays, the author argues, are a form of “slow content” that cannot be fully replicated by AI because they require a situated human perspective, lived experience, and the act of ordering one’s own consciousness. Writing an essay forces the author to wrestle with complexity, producing meaning through the process of structuring thought.

He contrasts fast content, which delivers pre‑packaged conclusions and leaves readers feeling informed yet empty, with slow content that demands both writer and reader engage in the ordering of consciousness, resulting in genuine meaning.

From this analysis, the author identifies an opportunity: ordinary people who document their thinking publicly become “value creators,” shaping the epistemic commons and providing the scarce commodity of meaning.

He then offers practical guidance for starting to write essays, emphasizing discovery over performance, focusing on genuine interest, resisting templates, questioning one’s own beliefs, consuming centropic (meaning‑rich) material, and building a coherent body of work rather than a content calendar.

Finally, he suggests publishing platforms that prioritize long‑form thinking—X and Substack—and encourages readers to experiment with essay writing as a way to reclaim cognitive agency in the age of AI‑driven information overload.