Things That Matter
My rule of thumb when writing articles is that an article should save me time, not cost it; in the age of LLMs1, I have no interest in writing regularly just for the sake of ‘being a writer.’ I write for two primary purposes:
because putting ideas into words helps clarify my thoughts for myself, and the results of that process sometimes seem valuable for other people
because sometimes I say the same thing over and over, and having a public collection of related thoughts makes it easier to avoid repeating myself when someone different asks me questions about a topic.
Less often, I write to vent my spleen when I am annoyed, which sometimes results in my most popular posts, for example:
I get annoyed when people malign secondary sources, which are great!
I have strong feelings on the folders vs. tags debate, although I grant that AI has been a game changer.
Priests were the experts of the ancient world, actually.
My primary interests — and thus the typical focus of my deep dives — tend to be questions about how non-industrial people live, with a particular focus on the Bronze Age. I try not to spend too much time on well-known stuff like Classic civilizations and post-industrial wars, although I do sometimes dig into science that's relevant for near-future sci-fi, like aerogels. My goal is to surprise and delight readers with new information, not to become another expert in well-trod spaces.
Secondarily, I treat this newsletter as a space to insights into efficiency, because it turns out I am somewhat of an outlier in terms of productivity. More importantly, my system is optimized for something other than producing content about how to be productive 😅
Eleanor Konik
I’ve got two great kids, a wonderful husband, and a lovely home with a garden full of herbs. Although I’m pretty open about my personal life as it pertains to articles, it feels weird to say much more than that on an ‘about me’ page.
Professionally, I used to be a lawyer, then pivoted to teaching history, then pivoted again to handling quality assurance for my favorite reading app — but writing has always been my passion. My non-fiction articles about obscure history have been published by professional outlets like Tor.com & SFWA. The Konik Method for Making Useful Notes won an Obsidian community award.
They say that authors shouldn’t bother readers with all the background research that goes into making a good story. No matter what the “iceberg theory of writing” says, though, my favorite parts of my favorite books have always been the afterwords. They often explain the relationship a story has to a real world historical event… and have themes I can take inspiration from to help live a happy, healthy, and productive life.
My goal with my essays is to share interesting things that help make your life better — even if it just gives you something interesting to talk about at your next party ;)
Certainly that’s been a big driver of my nonfiction reading habits over the last few years!
My LLM use policy is as follows: I use OpenAI models for image generation, spelling and grammar check, to suggest research directions I may have missed, and Readwise’s Ghostreader to search highlights of documents I’ve personally read. AI is never used to write verbiage in the original drafting of my essays except in rare cases where I can’t think of a word and ask it to help me figure out the phrase.
