This newsletter has one purpose:
Help you replace doomscrolling in your life by writing essays.
Let me tell you a quick story.
One of my best friends is a teacher (he just started his Masters). We were talking about learning science, focus, and attention spans at one of our weekly gatherings last Friday. And I told him that I’ve finally found my limit for deep focused work since going full-time as a writer:
2.5 hours.
Which isn’t a lot. Considering we were told to study for like 8-10 hours in school.
But then he said something pretty shocking to me.
“I think the average in my school is way less than that. I reckon it’s about 30 minutes.”
…
3 0 m i n u t e s.
Now why should you give two shits about this?
One of the biggest regrets on people’s deathbeds is going to be how much time they spent scrolling. Being an audience member in other people’s lives instead of going out and living their own damn life.
Living your life chronically online means one thing.
Missing out on feeling content in life.
Because we’re meant to be working on farms, thinking about long conversations we had with friends at the pub over the weekend, while we move our cattle from one side of the farm to the other across 12 hour days.
No AirPods in the ears back then.
If you write, you will focus for a hell of a lot more than 30 minutes.
You’ll watch a golden pink sunrise in your garden with nothing but yourself, your two ears, and the grass beneath your feet, with no overwhelming thoughts bugging you.
And you’ll choose what you think and believe about yourself and the world, instead of letting Instagram Reels choose for you.
No more reaching for your phone within 5 minutes of opening a book, no more Netflix playing while you scroll every evening after work or school, no more forgetting your summers, and no more waking up with anxious thoughts without knowing why they are there.
App blockers are necessary.
Don’t get me wrong.
But they’re a means to an end.
They’re not the end itself.
Writing is the most meaningful replacement to doomscrolling there is.
First, I’m going to tell you what writing does to your brain (that scrolling cannot).
Then I’m going to give you a simple system for writing your first essay this week.
So let’s start with what scrolling saps away from your life… that writing can return to you!
Announcement! (Skip if you hate self-promotion)
The Profound Writer V2 is out now.
I started writing online in May 2025 as a complete beginner. I’ve written over 90 of these newsletters, and now, 18 months later, I have an 83,000+ audience across Substack and YouTube. Writing is now my full-time job too, all by writing 1 newsletter per week and 1-2 short form posts daily (which takes me about 1-2 hours of writing per day).
What’s inside the course, you ask?
18 modules across 6 sections (modules require only 5-10 minutes of reading and 20-60 minutes of action)
A custom AI that acts as a thinking partner. It’s not a ghostwriter, and the AI doesn’t write for you. It asks you questions to help you brainstorm and outline while you write by hand (this is a course you can talk back and forth with using AI)
8 bonuses, including my personal newsletter SOP, swipe files of my best newsletters and titles, and 3 AI prompts
Every future version of the course, at no extra charge, for as long as the course exists
And a 90-day refund with no questions asked
Sections 1-3 are live now. A new section drops every week until the full course is completely released by Sunday, November 29th.
It’s 50% off until November 22nd.
From November 23rd it’s 35% off until November 29th (then full price from November 30th).
Consider enrolling while it’s 50% off.
P.S.
If you have any questions, shoot me a DM or an email. I’m here to help in any way I can!
You’re a legend! Onto the newsletter now.
Why writing does what scrolling cannot
The difference between scrolling and writing, is the same difference between reacting and responding.
The word “react” in Latin means to “act back.” To react means to act in a mechanical way. Like a robot. Automatic, and without any sense of ownership. You swipe through 1 reel… next thing you know, you’ve scrolled past 100 reels within the space of 5 minutes. Gun to your head, I bet you wouldn’t be able to remember 10 of them.
But to “respond” (again, in Latin) means to pledge back. It means to act in a deliberate way. You’re accountable and responsible for your actions. You close your apps, block them if you have to, open a page or a document on your laptop, and you write one sentence as to why that dancing cat Reel pissed you off.
Can you see the difference?
Writing is a thousand thoughts massacred into one.
It is the slowest way to say something.
I know I know. You have debating, teaching, conversations… sure. But in terms of time per sentence, with those methods you only have seconds. With writing, you have minutes per sentence.
Having less time to think about every word and sentence increases the probability of reacting. Giving yourself more time to think gives you a higher chance of responding instead.
This is why vagueness dies on paper.
There’s a big difference between thinking “I should probably change my career” (vague, stays in your head, produces anxiety, never gets resolved completely) and writing an argument for why you should change your career (forces you to define your genuine reasons, evaluate whether they are strong or not, and make the damn decision).
The claims you write down and defend inevitably become your operating manual for your life.
Your beliefs.
Beliefs determine your behaviour. I’m writing this sentence at 13:34pm on Monday, November 2nd, because I believe writing is valuable. And your behaviour determines who you are.
In other words:
Don’t let reels determine everything that you believe about what is right or wrong, good or bad, or true or false about yourself and the world you live in.
The page is where you decide those things.
And those things should not to be ignored, or pushed aside as being “stupid” or “dumb.”
So how do you write your first essay this week?
How to write your first essay
Step 1: Destimulate
Writing seems like the most boring activity in the world until you stop entertaining yourself to death.
If you’ve already bricked your phone, and you’ve done all the “no social media” yadada, you can skip to the next step.
I heard Dr. K talk about this on a Modern Wisdom podcast. He talked about how dopamine and serotonin are functionally inverse. Which means a dopaminergic lifestyle full of scrolling, short-form, constant stimulation… well… it suppresses how content you feel in your life.
Writing is a serotonergic activity. It requires presence, slowness, and deliberation. Which means you’re going to have to trade pleasure for contentment.
You know how the story goes:
You try to write.
It feels boring.
You reach for your phone within 5 minutes.
Prime Craig in the college library.
So:
Turn your phone into a brick for at least the first 60-90 minutes of your day. Use an app blocker like Opal. Turn your phone onto airplane mode. Keep it downstairs on do not disturb until you’re finished writing.
For tomorrow morning, the bare minimum is to leave your phone in another room for the first 60 minutes of your day. If you have work or school, great. Carve out an hour to leave your phone in another room.
Remove all options to pick up your phone so that the only option for you is a page.
Step 2: Choose one problem to write about
An essay starts with a question that’s killing you because you don’t have an answer to it.
And you have complete permission to start with a question that is as vague as possible. Writing will help sharpen it.
Interest is the ultimate leverage you have in life. You can bet your ass I had no interest in writing about The Picture of Dorian Grey while I was in secondary school. But if you had me writing about Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics…
I would be talking even more than I normally do in these letters.
If the question grips you enough that you’d think about it without being told to, then you can write about it.
In this very newsletter, I asked myself the question as to how I would personally replace doomscrolling with writing. Specifically by writing newsletters like these (essays, newsletters, articles, they’re all just long form!).
Write the question at the top of your page in one sentence, then write one claim about that question (what you believe the answer might be).
This will be the spine of your essay. And this takes about 20-30 minutes at most to decide. If this is your first essay it might take a little longer. That’s ok too!
If you’re really stuck on what to write about, choose one of the prompts below and write one sentence answering it.
Prompts to get you thinking:
Why do you scroll for 3 hours after work and knowingly let yourself feel worse?
Why does your work/job/career feel meaningless?
Why can’t you put your phone down?
Why do you feel so behind in life?
Why are you so obsessed with this X or Y topic and can’t let it go?
Why do you have this regret you can’t stop obsessing over?
Step 3: Outline before you write
The outline is where you think.
The essay is where you communicate what you have thought.
FYI, there’s no such thing as writer’s block. What does exist is an incomplete outline.
What is an outline, then?
An outline is your logic laid out line by line. Consider how basic logic is presented:
Premise
Premise
→ Conclusion
Example:
Socrates is a man
All men are mortal
→ Socrates is mortal
This is an outline if you see it as one. Your essay outline follows this structure down to the bone: premises that lead to a conclusion.
Spend 30 minutes talking through your question and claim with AI. Use AI voice mode (Claude) as your thinking partner. State your question, claim, and dump your ideas. Let the AI push back.
If you hate AI: talk with a friend. Talk to yourself out loud while on a walk in your favorite park. Grab a notebook and write your premises and conclusion, line by line, by hand.
The goal here is to externalize your logic. Nothing else.
For your first essay, keep it super super simple: 3 sections, each with 1 claim, 2-3 reasons to support your claim, and 1 example. So 6-7 bullet points per section at most.
I let myself have 1-2 days to finalize my outline.
So under your question and claim, write 3 premises that lead to your claim. This is your outline done. Should take 30-60 minutes tops.
If you can state each outline section’s key point idea without waffling, your outline is complete.
Step 4: Write the draft (no AI!!!)
The draft is where you choose every word yourself.
Use AI (please) but only up as far as the outline.
Why?
Writing by hand is the responding we talked about earlier. You are pledging your words.
AI responds to prompts you give it. Cool… but if AI writes your draft, then that means AI is responding and you are not. It’s similar to doomscrolling, in that you’re consuming someone else’s structured thinking and not producing any yourself.
It took me 4 days to write this newsletter at 1000-1500 words a day. I used AI to help me create an outline, evaluate it, destroy it, then rebuild it (I did this a handful of times) before writing every word myself.
Also.
Don’t edit while you write. Editing requires you to context switch from generating to evaluating. Think flooring the accelerator of a car while flooring the brake.
Screech.
Write first and evaluate afterwards. The outline made all your structural decisions, so all that is left to do is to execute on those decisions.
Write 500 words
Give yourself 30-60 minutes
Do it in one sitting, in one location, with just your outline open beside a blank document/a piece of paper
No tabs, no emails, keep your phone in another room
If you feel writer’s block, your outline wasn’t clear enough (go back and fix it)
After one sitting you will have one section written.
At minimum, write just one sentence. If it feels like a bad day, or if life is in the way for whatever reason, don’t stress.
Write 1 sentence.
And do 1 more tomorrow, and the day after that… and so on.
Your first draft will sound like my very first newsletter. It will deserve to be burned and scorned in the boiler room beneath hell itself.
Which is a good thing. It means you’ve fucking done something.
Step 5: Edit in one pass, then publish it
The essay is done when you’d let a stranger read it without wanting to change anything first.
You’re writing one essay a week, btw. I am not asking you to spend two weeks on a single essay, simply because you need reps. You need volume.
Read through your first draft once. Read it as if you are encountering everything you talk about for the first time.
Think through two lenses:
Structure - Does the logic hold? Can you poke holes in it? Do you agree with everything you said?
Meaning - Does it read well? Does it flow? Does it hit you on an emotional level?
Give yourself 30-60 minutes for editing. When my outline is solid, this is how long it usually takes for me.
If you are rereading paragraphs you’ve already fixed, or if you’re second-guessing word choices that don’t change the meaning behind what you’re saying, OR if you’ve been editing for more than an hour…
post it
Publishing is the act of taking responsibility. Letting essays gather dust in Obsidian or Notion is avoiding that very response. The essay is finished once it meets real people.
Pick Substack or X.
I’ve published over 90 of these on Substack over the last 18 months.
Read through your finished piece once, fix the typos and send it out.
I struggle to believe that you won’t get at least one reader to click on it, which is still one more than zero, and starting somewhere beats starting nowhere at all.
Your first essay will be shit.
Don’t stress my friend. That’s not the point with this.
Your first essay is your first response, then you write another next week. And another. And another. And each essay will get sharper and more precise, which is what happens when you respond to life, instead of watching it pass by.
You’re an absolute legend.
- Craig :)
P.S.
If you want to build an audience writing about your genuine interests with a simple content/writing system, consider joining The Profound Writer V2 before the price increases.
It’s 50% off until Nov 22nd (full price from Nov 30th).
Very practical and helpful. I’ve been diving deep into Dan Koe’s “2 Hour Writer”, and this closely summarizes his structure.
Always love a new Craig drop. Let’s go brother. Can’t wait to check this one out.