Every new tool you adopt quietly reorganizes how you think — not just what you can do. The medieval Persian scholar Al-Ghazali noticed something similar about the relationship between practice and mind: repeated actions don't just produce results, they reshape the inner faculties doing the acting. What he called 'malaka' — a kind of deep cognitive groove worn into the soul by habit — is exactly what happens when you start using a new piece of software or a new platform. The tool doesn't stay outside you. It trains your attention, sets your defaults, and slowly redraws the boundaries of what feels possible or necessary. The practical implication: before you adopt a new technology, the sharper question isn't 'what can this do for me?' but 'what kind of thinker will daily use of this make me?' That's worth a few minutes of honest anticipation before the first login.

What is the opposite of the technological habit you've most recently formed — and do you still have easy access to that opposite?

Drawing from Islamic philosophy / Sufi epistemology — Al-Ghazali