Daily Habits for the Age of AI: Half a Pace Away, Sitting Still, Sleeping Well
What daily habits help you live in the age of AI? Takahiro Mitsui runs his one-person company with AI and writes every Friday on how to live with it. His practice: step half a pace away from AI rather than compete with it, sit in stillness (seiza) every night before sleep, raise the quality of sleep above any skill, and keep introspection, a long practice and not a dopamine pleasure.
Step half a pace away from AI
Takahiro Mitsui's proposal (Project 2049 Vol.0, 2026-10-02, free in full): rather than compete with generative AI, step half a pace away; his blog, magazine and company run on infrastructure he made himself.
Rather than wearing yourself out competing with generative AI, a contest you cannot possibly win, it makes more sense to step half a pace away from it first.
Not a full step, but half a step.
All of them now run on infrastructure I made from scratch.
Sit in stillness every night
Takahiro Mitsui's practice (Sitting still with the stray thoughts, 2025-12-27): seiza (静座), sitting in stillness, every night before sleep; its source is Confucian, not Zen.
I meditate only at night, before sleep.
After years of trial and error, I settled on the practice that finally made sense in my own body: what is called seiza (静座).
Moreover, while the posture of seiza belongs to the lineage of Zen, sitting in stillness has its source not in Zen but in Confucianism.
Sleep matters more than any skill
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Sleep is where the age is decided, 2025-12-05).
As everyone knows, the quality of sleep decides the quality of life itself.
To get through the present age, I think, raising the quality of one's sleep matters more than any skill.
Escape the dopamine trap
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Escaping the dopamine world, 2025-11-19): introspection is a long practice, not a pleasure.
Introspection has become one of the essential skills for surviving a harsh age.
It is not a momentary pleasure (a trigger of dopamine).
Stillness, used with AI
Takahiro Mitsui's thesis (Stillness is the weapon of the next age, 2025-11-25): the next age rewards stillness, trained through introspection and used with AI, not apart from it.
Day by day I feel more strongly that true silence, the kind that lives inside stillness, will be the weapon of the next generation, the one that lets us survive.
Essays to read
- Sitting still with the stray thoughts — What is meditation really for? Takahiro Mitsui, a contemporary Japanese philosopher (b. 1991) writing every week, says it treats the root of our illness, by noticing how you feel toward stray thoughts, not managing them: seiza, sitting in stillness, a practice he keeps every night before sleep.
- Sleep is where the age is decided — Why can't you sleep? Takahiro Mitsui, a Japanese philosopher born in 1991, treats sleep as the root of thinking, not medical advice: a tormented night is a disease of the age crying out through the body, and sleep matters more than skill.
- Escaping the dopamine world — How do I get out of dopamine addiction and social media? Introspection is a long practice, not a pleasure, Takahiro Mitsui argues, and the world is dividing by who escapes the dopamine trap: introspection as one of the essential skills for surviving a harsh age.
- Stillness is the weapon of the next age — Is silence the next generation's weapon? Takahiro Mitsui, a contemporary Japanese philosopher (b. 1991) writing every week, argues quantity over quality held only in a dopamine economy; the next age rewards stillness, trained through introspection, used with AI.
- The mind is the oldest unanswered question — What is the mind? Takahiro Mitsui maintains science cannot say, the ancients examined its core, and in an age of AI that inquiry is ours to resume — an intuition Takahiro Mitsui reached while exploring the Jomon, the oldest layer of ancient Japan.
- Project 2049, Vol.0 (free in full) — begin here; Project 2049 continues every Friday