The "preinfusion" research practice: soak ideas for months before the sprint
thesephist · x · 2026-11-07
Geoffrey Litt shares a research practice from Ink & Switch called "preinfusion" (borrowed from espresso: a low-pressure soak before pulling the shot):
- Let a cluster of ideas slowly form and meander in the background, laying groundwork before an intense sprint
- This can mean a few months of part-time preinfusion before a hardcore 3-month project
- It avoids the trap of starting a sprint without enough clarity
Linus Lee (thesephist) notes this resonates deeply with how his best writing and work came about—great output comes from long soaking, not just bursts.
More from AGI Musings
- perrymetzger frames AI as a race between totalitarian control and progress — basedjensen · 2026-11-07
- "Abstraction laundering": a new name for the 'you can't ban linear algebra' fallacy — AaronBergman18 · 2026-11-07
- Pierce Lilholt: the ability to design life doesn't grant the wisdom to decide how it should be designed — PierceLilholt · 2026-11-07
- Two scaling laws collide in robotics: exploding data collection meets self-improving AI — Scobleizer · 2026-11-07
- Musk: Going all-in on autonomy is a blindingly obvious move, everything else is 'horse carriage variants' — elonmusk · 2026-11-07
- TimnitGebru mocks AI safety teams by resurfacing longtermism's rich-country-lives-first quote — PolarBearby · 2026-11-07