[1] https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/good-ideas
I recommend Byung-Chul Han’s books The Burnout Society and Vita contemplativa: In praise of inactivity for a short but deep dive into this aspect we’re rapidly losing.
(I have just finished reading both books and I quite enjoyed the main thesis, though thick with philosophical discourse at times. Thankfully, they are quite short, not even reaching 100 pages so they don’t overstay their welcome)
There's some hope, we can get better at this even in small ways by carving out pockets of time away from phones and notifications and other external distractions and inputs.
At least read Gatto’s work in education because he knows what he’s talking about as an actual teacher who has put more students through schooling than anyone writing these articles. His work contradicts some of this because he studied very non-exceptional childhoods of exceptional people. He has a better answer to how to think for oneself as well.
To actually get to the bottom of things: I think most normal folks are concerned more about getting by and making decent money in “the age of AI” than they are about being brilliant whizkid prodigies coming up with original ideas. A lot of those end up being poor anyway. But the desire to live a quality life is a more universal thing. No amount of “mind training” will help here. Just steer clear of paths that AI can dominate (they’re expanding), and failing that, use it to your advantage as best as you can.
Right now working with one’s hands seems to be in vogue because it’s one of those things that people are unaware of is actually dominated by robotics in the industrial/manufacturing sectors, so the ignorance there can probably get people through some hard times. But eventually even that will be shown for what it is and we’ll have to find better ways to spend our time.
Working with one's hands has been in vogue since the dawn of human history.
In my experience most people working on this are attempting variations on a handful of generic ideas. Most AI startups are fairly uninspired “XYZ but with AI chat” type things or ideas that have no staying power because Claude 7 will one-shot the whole product with a prompt. Succeeding here in the long run means doing something truly different and new and interesting and that’s what the linked articles are about.