michael-dean-k/

As an essayist, it’s easy for any little writerly task to become a chore. I sometimes write email responses as essays. It’s fun to do. But it also builds mental resistance. I have about ten important emails I’m late on getting back to, but my subconscious budgets that as hours of work.

Today I tried something new: voice transcribing emails. I use voice inside of Cursor and Claude all day, but never for Gmail. An email reply took 1 minute instead of 10-15. I practically said the same thing, but the medium of speaking compelled me to huff it out and not dwell on the prose.

It makes me wonder if I’m neglecting voice as a creative medium. Should Margin Muse have audio-transcription built in? Of course people could use their own tools, but I sense a small portion of writers talk to their computers.

I want to be in conversation with my books. This was Montaigne’s whole thing. He did this for 10 years. I can’t help but think that Kindle/eBooks/digital reading is a better format for this. If I were only reading, ie: if I were retreating into a tower to retire and die, then I’d see the appeal of doing it all by hand. [B] I'd wire index cards with string! [A] But this is maybe a 3rd or 5th or realistically 10th priority. I’m called to it, but given the range of things I’m juggling, efficiency actually does matter here. I know efficiency does bring invisible amputations, but also, if I’m not efficient here, I might just not do it in the first place. Since all my highlights sync to Obsidian, I can build a writing app that loads in highlights and then let’s me write directly to them.

I suppose the counter-argument is that I am juggling too many things. If I were really to choose, to pick the project I’d have to do, it would probably be to focus on building my business to support my family, but that also cuts me off from soul and spontaneity, and so this whole reading/writing for leisure thing is a healthy counter-balance; [B] budding aspirations warrant a minimal efficiency to bloom.

[Work smart, not hard] vs. [Work smart and hard] vs. [Work smart and hard for long hours or someone will beat you]. I believe in hard work, but I also think there’s more leverage in working smart. 8 hours a day in the exact right direction will beat 15 hours a day in a direction that’s off by 1 degree a day.