Scan time: 2-4 minutes / Read time: 4-6 minutes
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Hey rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
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🙋♂️ Wes’s week with nothing to write
Wes is a data analyst with a newsletter explaining money numbers in plain words.
This week, he has nothing to write.
So he listens to three more podcasts on the commute and reads ten more newsletters.
🧩 His struggle:
He takes in more whenever the ideas stop, so he never gets quiet time to think.
At lunch, a coworker tells him the real story of a writer
who also once had nothing to write,
and who says his business made more than $4 million in a year.
He got his ideas back without reading one more thing.
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🧠 The writer who sat down and nothing came
Dan Koe runs a one-person business: a newsletter, courses, and no employees.
He has said publicly that it made more than $4 million in a year.
He had written a newsletter almost every week for five years.
Then, in March 2026, he sat down to write that week’s letter, and nothing came.
In his own words, he felt “completely brain-fried.”
This is how he described it:
“When you try to think, brainstorm, or have a great idea, and nothing comes to mind, no matter how hard you try.”
Only a month earlier, the ideas had come easily.
What had changed?
He had been spending long hours inside Cursor, an AI coding tool.
He had turned his attention to the other businesses he runs.
He had dropped his writing routine.
Dan did not think he had run out of ideas.
He thought he had taken in too much, with no time in between to digest any of it.
He compared it to eating.
“It’s obvious that if you eat too much food, you start to feel slow and look slow.
But most people don’t realize this applies to the mind as well.”
People think they need to “consume 10 podcasts a week” to keep up, he wrote, “even though the opposite is true.”
Then he wrote a line about the fridge.
“You can only cook with what’s in the fridge.
The problem is that most people’s fridges are overflowing with ice cream and soda pop.”
In other words, the ice cream and soda pop are the podcasts on the commute and the scrolling before bed.
They are easy to take in, but you can’t cook an idea out of them.
So he wrote out the way back, for his readers and for himself.
Day one: pick the one thing you reach for without thinking, the podcast or the scrolling, and replace it with nothing.
Sit in silence.
Go for a walk with no headphones, and leave the phone at home.
By day three: sit with nothing for ten minutes, and let what is already in your head come up.
Why the walk with no phone?
Because new ideas show up when your mind is wandering, not when it is busy.
If every minute is filled, there is no room for an idea to show up.
Turns out Dan had not run out of ideas.
His ideas were still there, buried under all the hours of coding and the other businesses he had piled on top of them.
Once he cleared the pile, the ideas came back.
The proof is that week’s letter: he sat down unable to write, and everything quoted above is what he wrote.
Dan’s lesson is the opposite of what most of us do.
When the ideas stop, do not add more input.
Cut it, sit in the quiet, and let what is already in your head come out.
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🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Input Diet
Dan sat down with nothing to write, and wrote himself a plan instead: cut what you take in, and walk with no headphones.
That plan became the letter he thought he could not write.
This approach is called The Input Diet.
When you run out of ideas, you do not need more input.
You need quiet time, so the ideas already in your head can come out.
Dan didn’t go looking for more to read or listen to.
He wrote himself a plan to cut what he took in, and to walk with no phone.
So the week you have nothing to write about, do not add another podcast.
Drop one instead, and drive to work in silence.
By Friday, you will have your next issue.
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🛠️ Wes’s turn
Remember Wes, the data analyst who had nothing to write this week, no matter how many podcasts he listened to?
That night, he runs the prompt at the bottom of this email, and gives it everything he listened to and read this week.
The reply from his AI sidekick is short:
You don’t need three more podcasts, you need quiet time to think,
so drive to work in silence this week, and take one walk without your phone.
The next morning, he leaves the podcasts off and drives to work in silence.
On Wednesday, he walks after dinner and leaves his phone at home.
By the end of the walk, he knows what this week’s issue is about.
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🌅 Two months later
Wes hasn’t missed a weekly issue since.
His drive to work is quiet now, and that’s where most of his ideas show up.
Twelve readers replied to last week’s issue, more than ever before.
Your ideas probably haven’t run out.
They’re just buried under everything you take in.
When the ideas stop, cut what you take in, and give your own ideas quiet time to come out.
That’s it, my fellow mavericks!
Yours ‘helping you build a smart AI sidekick so you can work less and enjoy life more’ Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️
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🏄♀️ The prompt
The prompt below cuts what you take in and builds the quiet hour where it becomes your own thinking.
🧰 What you’ll need
Everything you take in most weeks, and how much of it you could describe a week later
- Type it, or say it out loud with a voice tool.
- e.g. six money newsletters, three podcasts, X most evenings, two YouTube channels, a book I never finish, and I could describe almost none of itWhat you’ve published lately, and where your best ideas came from before
- e.g. two issues in six weeks that both felt like restating something I read, and my best ideas came from long drivesAny time in your week with nothing planned in it
- e.g. none, every gap has a podcast in it
🚀 How to run it
Open your AI sidekick, ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever one you use.
Swap the three examples, the text inside the curly brackets, for your own, then run it. If your AI sidekick can already see your notes, you can run it as is.
🧪 Want to test it first? Run it without changing anything, and it will use the examples.
CONTEXT:
- Use my own material first. If you can see my drafts, my sent issues, or my subscriber dashboard, pull the real details from there instead of the examples below.
- If you know how I write, use my voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If you know who my readers are, write for them. Otherwise assume people who want money numbers explained in plain words.
- If I have replaced the examples, use only mine. If an example is still there, fill it in from what you already know about me, and mark it as your assumption. If you don't know anything about me yet, use the example exactly as written.
- Do not recommend any new source, tool, app or subscription. Every recommendation is a removal or a block of unscheduled time.
=============== INPUTS — edit these, or just run as is ===============
Everything I take in most weeks, and how much of it I could describe a week later:
{e.g. six money newsletters, three podcasts, X most evenings, two YouTube channels, a book I never finish, and I could describe almost none of it}
What I have actually published recently, and where my genuinely original thoughts have come from before:
{e.g. two issues in six weeks that both felt like restating something I read, and my best ideas came from long drives}
Unscheduled time in my week, if any:
{e.g. none, every gap has a podcast in it}
======================== END OF INPUTS ========================
Outputs:
1. The audit — what I take in, and which of it has ever produced anything of mine.
2. The cut — what goes, specifically, and what I am afraid I will miss by cutting each one.
3. The quiet block — where the processing time goes in my actual week, and what may not happen in it.
4. What stays — the few inputs worth keeping, with the reason each earns its place.
5. The backlog — what I have already consumed that never got thought about, and which one to sit with first.
Then tell me which input I keep because it feels like work rather than because it feeds anything.