Mini essays are, as the name suggests, small essays.
Azarik puts it into words much more poetically than I do:
A Mini Essay is a lot like a creative vignette, but for nonfiction writing where you briefly explore a single idea, topic, or question. These are aligned with the sign mind, that narrow detail oriented mode of thinking. In later works, we can synthesize all of the details we collect like shards in a statue of stained glass - but each essay is reserved for a single conversation with a single idea, like speed dating. 30 mins or 500 words per essay, max.
For me, they are an exercise in research, thinking, taking notes, writing and a habit I aim to build to get myself going in the morning. While I don’t expect myself to write one each morning, I aim to make a habit of writing them first thing in the morning.
My self-imposed restriction is that I will timebox my essay writing, including all the research and adjacent actions into a single Pomodoro session of 25 minutes + 5 minutes for reflection.
The goal is to not only write the essay but to use as much of my existing notes as research. This will hopefully help me figure out if my notes are written in a way that support my writing and encourage me to make more and better notes in the future about the topics I care about.
Miniessays
- July 29th, 2026: Prize tasks in Taskmaster as worldbuilding
- August 3rd, 2026: Double processing information for notes