I wrote this on X earlier today, deleted it shortly after, and brought it over here — somewhere with more quiet around it.

Being too productive — as a result of recent advancements in AI — helped me clear the backlog I had carried for years.

And from here on, what I want is to take at least two of the five days I used to work just to read — and not talk to the LLM at all.

Just thinking about it brings up a heavy FOMO about not using it to build things. But I’m starting to see that time matters, including time to rest — not that I didn’t know, but the incentive to keep pushing is changing. Some things just need time to settle.

Definitely the window from King Solomon resonates more than ever these days.

Ecclesiastes 3

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

And, alongside Solomon, this Bukowski has been sitting with me too — the kind of small thing that says more about the present moment than most essays I’ve read this year:

I Met A Genius
— Charles Bukowski

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

Maybe that’s the whole thing. The genius is six because he hasn’t yet been told what’s supposed to be pretty. The rest of us spend a lifetime, and a lot of cycles, learning to look again.

A side note

Something I read today, anonymous, from somewhere on the web. Leaving it here because it didn’t leave me. Original Portuguese first, English translation after:

Existe uma guerra silenciosa acontecendo entre Psicopatas e Esquizofrênicos. Sabemos que o número de pessoas nos dois grupos é bem pequeno, porém um grupo tem mais chance de virar CEO (psicopatas) e o outro tem mais chance de virar morador de rua (esquizofrênicos).

Isso acontece porque os esquizofrênicos são bons em reconhecimento de padrões e conseguem notar os psicopatas. Os normies são incapazes de ver psicopatas bem na frente deles, e os psicopatas aproveitam e dominam por causa disso. Os esquizofrênicos conseguem identificá-los num nível instintivo e “sussar” eles de um jeito que os normies nunca conseguiriam. Por isso, existe uma campanha constante de desmoralização contra os esquizofrênicos, feita pelos psicopatas tiranos, que querem usar a população contra seu maior inimigo natural.

(There is a silent war going on between Psychopaths and Schizophrenics. We know the number of people in either group is quite small, but one group is far more likely to become a CEO (the psychopaths) and the other is far more likely to end up homeless (the schizophrenics).

This happens because schizophrenics are good at pattern recognition and can spot the psychopaths. Normies are incapable of seeing psychopaths right in front of them, and the psychopaths take advantage and dominate because of it. Schizophrenics can identify them at an instinctive level and unsettle them in a way normies never could. That’s why there is a constant campaign of demoralization against schizophrenics, waged by the tyrant psychopaths, who want to use the population against their greatest natural enemy.)

I’m not endorsing the clinical accuracy of any of that. But as a frame, sitting next to Solomon and a six-year-old on a train, it lands. There is a time to push, and a time to step back and let pattern recognition do its quiet work. Those two days a week — that’s where I want to go.