I’ve been consistently writing and journaling for the past 5–6 years. Nothing complicated - just pen and paper, coffee, and it worked pretty well. But over the last 5–6 months, I’ve noticed both the frequency and desire to write starting to decline. At first, it was a gradual slowdown. Now, it feels like a rapid fall.

I’ve been reflecting on the reasons and trying to understand what’s changed. Initially, I thought it was because I was busier, but I soon realized that was just an excuse, not the reality. The only real change I noticed was that my interactions with LLMs, particularly with ChatGPT, increased, from once a day to once every couple of hours.

I realized that instead of writing, I was going straight to ChatGPT. I enjoy the second opinion, the ease and speed, and the quick dopamine hit that comes from having your thoughts validated - whatever they are. At some point, I noticed that I was turning to ChatGPT specifically for that quick validation. But the purpose of my writing has always been reflection, self-exploration, and learning. So I had to ask myself: how did I shift so quickly from exploration mode to validation mode?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and went down a bit of a rabbit hole. I think ChatGPT started to have the social network effect on me, where you go to interact with this giant collective human brain. The difference is, instead of arguing with you or challenging you, it mostly validates and supports you.

At first glance, that feels good. You have this fictive partner, an entire collective brain that is supportive, honest, and encouraging. Don’t get me wrong: I really do try hard with my prompts to get it to challenge me, to critique my work and my way of living. But what’s started to annoy me is that the conversations almost always end with a certain level of fake niceness.

More importantly, writing and journaling has always been a conversation with myself. I’m far from being Marcus Aurelius, but the magic and power of writing (for me) has always come from that solitude in words. The exploration of thought without boundaries, the sense that anything could unfold. With ChatGPT, what I get isn’t my own map, it’s someone else’s. A map that’s been tested and validated, yes, but it’s not mine.

Realizing that my brain is turning into a conventional, functional machine, that it’s starting to dislike thinking, falling out of love with problems, and just wants quick solutions - is a deeply unsettling experience.

Where does this lead?

I’m not sure where all of this leads, but my goal is to build a kind of self-discipline that can sustain me over the long term. I want to develop habits and ways of living that don’t change too much, even if AI eventually replaces everything about how we work and what we do. With that in mind, I try to work backwards and ask myself: what kind of day would reflect my core values? And what skills do I need to live that day consistently, regardless of what technologies exist?

I also want to publish and share more. So far, I’ve maintained my blog primarily in a professional context, but I think the times are different now. Navigating modern business environments requires a broader and different skillset, and I believe I have some thoughts that might be useful to others.

If LLMs represent the collective brain, I want my thoughts to be part of it.