Toward the Unoptimized Life, GPT-3 Journaling, and More

Hello and happy Sunday!

We had a big week this week! We published 5 essays, and 1 podcast. We also launched our first ever conference: Thesis.

In case you missed it, Thesis is a conference we're organizing to bring together the internet's most interesting writers to give talks and host discussions about their big ideas about the world. We're doing it in partnership with Interintellect, and it's taking place February 25th in New York, and online everywhere.

Your favorite Every writers will be there, including Dan, Evan, Nathan, Fadeke, Nat, and Li. There will be a significant crew of other familiar names including Packy McCormick, Sahil Lavingia, Byrne Hobart, Anne-Laure Le Cunff and more.

Every members get a discount on tickets so act now to reserve your spot:

Science Chat Bot

In case you missed it last week: as promised we launched our Science Bot based on Huberman Lab Podcast transcripts. Every time you ask it a question it uses GPT-3 to scan transcripts of every Huberman Lab Podcast episode to return you an answer.

Every members can access the bot and the source code behind it here:

Now, on to the articles for this week!

In Defense of the Unoptimized Life

Evan Armstrong / Napkin Math

January 1st means New Year's resolutions and exhortations to meet your goals. Evan has other ideas.

In this essay, he breaks down why an overemphasis on optimizing our lives can lead us in the wrong direction. And why pursuing afflatus, a Latin word meaning a sudden rush or inspiration, has worked out much better for him than any productivity hack he's tried.

Read

GPT-3 Is the Best Journal I've Ever Used

Dan Shipper / Superorganizers

Journaling with GPT-3 is journaling on steroids. Dan has been a journaling afficianado for the last 10 years, and that's what he's found over the last few weeks.

He shares his journey figuring out how to use GPT-3 for this use case, and talks about how it can help you identify patterns, understand issues in your life better, and clarify your goals and values. He even shares the prompts he's been using to do this.

Is journaling with GPT-3 the start of an entirely new era in human flourishing? Or is it the equivalent of writing in Tom Riddle's diary? Read to find out.

Read

The End of Moore's Law?

Anna-Sofia Lesiv

“Moore’s Law is dead,” pronounced Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang in September 2022, before adding, “The idea that the chip is going to go down in price is a story of the past.”

Today’s chips come packed with billions of transistors, capable of executing billions of instructions per second. But getting ever smaller presents tremendous financial, let alone physical, challenges, and many are bracing themselves for a world where achieving our digital dreams is only going to get more expensive from here.

How did we get here? And what will the new normal look like when it finally arrives? Anna-Sofia answers in this essay.

Read

Writing as Strategy

Nathan Baschez / Divinations

You’ve probably heard the phrase “writing is thinking” before. The idea is that as you put thoughts into words, the thoughts themselves start to change, and new thoughts emerge.

Nathan has experienced the transformative power of putting words to paper, and in this essay he shares some other, less well-publicized benefits to writing.

Read

Want to Improve Your Public Speaking? Develop Your Awareness Skills

Michael Ashcroft / Expanding Awareness

Have you ever witnessed a performer walk on stage, look out at the audience, say and do nothing, and yet still captivate you? 

It’s not quite true that they’re not doing anything. Whether they know it or not, they’re using their awareness to connect with the audience in a powerful way.

In this piece, Michael shares some practical, yet hopefully novel, tips to help you level up your public speaking skills and connect more deeply in conversations.

Read

🎧 Reflecting on 2022

Kristen Habacht, Nikita Miller, and Stella Garber / Cross Functional and Friendly

2022 has been a rollercoaster. As we move on from a global pandemic to what is clearly a harsh winter for the tech industry, making the right professional decisions—or more importantly, having the right frameworks to do so—is essential.

In the last episode of season 2, the trio reflects on 2022 and looks ahead at 2023. They address questions that we all inevitably grapple with in our professional journeys: when is it the right time to leave a job? when should you start a new company? and everything else you need to know about your next career move.

Perfect timing, as we enter the new year. 

Listen

That's it for this week! See you next Sunday :)