Last week, 250 people applied to beta-read my first book, Magnetic Writing.

It took 16 months to write. To celebrate, I visited a friend in Harrogate, a beautiful town in the green rolling hills of Yorkshire. As I sipped a Guinness in the sweltering sun, my friend asked what I planned next.

My head wanted to answer that I would finally spend more time on AI.

But my heart spoke first:

I am going to write essays and begin my second book.

He was surprised. After all, why take two hours to write something Claude can write in two minutes? Why focus on a skill that the world has declared is dying?

Writing feels like a waste of time, but it’s still one the best thing you can do with your time.

Let me give you 4 reasons why you should be writing more, not less, in the age of AI.

Reason 1: Writing brings you closer to reality

I started writing in July 2020, and have had more insights about myself in the past 6 years than in the previous 30.

I was a dentist, and wanted a creative outlet for my thoughts. Writing was meant to be a playful hobby, but instead, it shone a light on the unexamined corners of my mind. I did not like what I found. I was succeeding at a career I did not enjoy. I cared more about what people thought of me than what I thought of myself. And I was using money as a proxy for meaning, while ignoring the fact it was making me miserable.

I wasn’t being stupid. I just wasn’t thinking.

When you don’t think deeply about your life, it’s like driving through mountains and letting someone else describe the view. Not only do you miss the beauty, but you’ll likely take wrong turns and crash through dumb decisions (for example: staying in the wrong career for 40 years because you were too scared to let go of the illusion of security).

But the more you write, the more you think.

You peel away the layers of bullshit to discover what is real, what is true. This proximity to reality is key for great decision-making: you will not get what you want if you don’t know what that is. This is increasingly important with the leverage we now have at our fingertips. Like executive coach Joe Hudson wrote recently, “As AI takes over the doing, the critical work left for humans is the higher-level deciding: what to build, what to leave behind, and when to change course.”

Writing makes you smarter because it is like going to the gym for the mind.

Yes, the workouts are tough. No, you won’t get jacked in two weeks. But keep consistent, and you will start to see yourself, and the world, a lot clearer.

But we’re not just talking about improving your judgement.

We’re talking about improving your taste.

Reason 2: Writing sets you apart from the slop

Knowledge is now a commodity, but taste cannot be cheated.

There is a certain type of magic that only comes through endless hours of repetition. The more you write, the more sensitive you become to the world around you. You find magic in the mundane and notice insights where most people see nothing. You begin to combine seemingly disconnected ideas to create exciting new combinations.

This is the process of becoming an original thinker, and AI bulldozes over it. It fires information through a firehose and stops you from actually processing what you learn.

This matters even if you are ‘not a writer’.

For example, my dad works in an oil company in Abu Dhabi. When ChatGPT arrived, he said everyone suddenly became a professor. But in conversation, most could barely explain what they had said. He only promoted people who took the time to write, because they had taken the time to think.

Good writing makes a good first impression, but only if that writing is actually yours. This is important if you are serious about your work. Nobody is going to invest in somebody they do not trust. And nobody trusts you when you sound remarkably similar to their Claude.

On the flip side, if you can write authentically, you will stand out like a diamond in the dirt. In an increasingly artificial world, the best rewards come from being real. And being more human is not something you can prompt.

American poet Robert Frost once said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” I’m not suggesting you must cry at the computer to get people to read, but how you feel seeps through into the page.

AI can't write like you because it hasn't lived like you. It doesn't know how depressing it is to sit in rush hour to drive to a job you hate. It doesn’t understand the sting of self-doubt when you chase your dream. It has never felt the joy of a first kiss or the bliss of holding a newborn baby. It just repeats what it has read elsewhere, an echo of what it feels to be truly alive.

This is why AI writing can, on paper, be perfect, and yet feel so empty:

It is full of words but devoid of soul.

But it is not just standing out from AI-slop that writing well helps you achieve.

Reason 3: Writing eliminates almost all competition

I'll be honest, three weeks ago I had a big wobble in my writing mission.

I want to write books, but after finishing my last draft, the reality of my dream hit hard. It takes 2-3 years to release a book, with no guarantee of results. I was teetering on the edge and then saw Tim Ferriss write that his book sales were plummeting.

In my panic, I started making more plans for my business and less for my craft. But my best friend saved me from falling too far. When I told him how hard it is to succeed as a writer, especially today, I expected empathy.

Instead, he said one word:

Good.

Because if writing were easy, it would not be worth doing. AI has only made this more true. Everyone is taking the shortcut, but the path of least resistance leads to the place of most difficulty:

The crowd.

And that is a terrible place to be.

Writing builds a body of work. You create what Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger looked for in any great business: a moat. Few people can compete with you when your words are flung far across the internet, building your reputation while you sleep.

Most people do not have the patience for this process.

Especially today: social media has destroyed the capacity to wait for results. Almost everyone I started with online has quit. To the pessimist, this fact is depressing. But to the optimist, it is exciting. You are not competing with the crowd, you are competing with the survivors—and there are fewer each year.

Writing is one of the few crafts you can commit to for life. This means it will continue to compound for decades to come. Do not underestimate how powerful compounding is on a long enough timeframe.

But the core benefit of writing happens long before the external results do.

Reason 4: Writing makes you come alive

One of the saddest things is to see a smart person fail to live up to their potential.

We get one shot at this life, yet most people just go through the motions of it. I was almost there when I was a dentist. But I have never been filled with such a sense of purpose as when I started writing. Even when I sucked, and no one read except my mum, I knew the skill was special. I couldn’t wait to wake up early, overdose on Yorkshire tea, and tap away at the keyboard while the world slept.

I had found something worth committing to. Something for me, not my boss.

6 years later, I can count the days that I have not written on my hands. Even though most sessions leave me exhausted and often riddled with self-doubt, the next day, I can’t wait to go again. I have never felt more alive than when a piece finally clicks, or a reader reaches out to say an idea helped them.

Now, I don’t know if writing will be your thing.

But I do know that if you try, the words will shape you as much as you shape them.

When you write every day, you prove you can persist in the face of uncertainty. When you wrestle with your thoughts, you learn to focus in a world of distraction. When you publish a strong belief, you show that you will not let the crowd stop you from being yourself.

These are all fantastic qualities, and make writing worth every word.

The fact people pay attention is just the icing on the cake.

Charlie Munger once said, “The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.” Nothing is more beautiful than making an impact with the ideas bouncing around in your head. Even if you help just one person think, feel, or act a little differently, they go on to impact those around them.

This ripple effect can be staggering when you zoom out enough.

So let the world think AI has killed writing. Let the crowd give their mind to robots.

But you? Protect your writing time.

Because it will always be the most important thing you do.

Kieran