"Some days, starting feels effortless. A clear challenge or opportunity presents itself, an idea crystallizes, and then contracts into a single coherent thought. Today, frankly? That's not happening. I'm staring at a pristine white canvas while the cursor mocks me. That uncomfortable space-the blinking cursor, the first messy draft, the false starts-isn't a nuisance. It's where creativity lives. Today, the temptation is to skip past all that."
"A recent MIT Media Lab study, Your Brain on ChatGPT, found that people who wrote without AI showed the strongest and most widespread brain activity, tied to creativity and memory. Essays produced with LLMs, by contrast, were described as flatter and more forgettable. The researchers warn that skipping the messy part of creation may create "cognitive debt"-you get an output, but you don't actually grow."
Starting often feels hard, but the blank canvas and blinking cursor represent a necessary, generative space where messy first drafts enable creative growth. The lure of using AI to bypass uncertainty can produce usable outputs without the personal struggle that builds skills and memory. A recent MIT Media Lab study found stronger, more widespread brain activity tied to creativity and memory when people wrote without AI, while LLM-generated essays tended to be flatter and more forgettable. Skipping the messy process risks accumulating "cognitive debt." Recommended practice: begin messily, resist premature polish, then rigorously edit and iterate.
Read at Fast Company
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