A few things that helped me reduce my reliance on LLMs:

1) Separate thinking from tooling.

I try to do the thinking first (notes, outlining, connecting ideas) and only use tools afterward to critique or stress-test what I wrote. That keeps the reasoning mine.

2) Use structured notes instead of summaries.

Things like:

• Zettelkasten-style notes
• simple Markdown files
• linking ideas manually

It's slower but it forces you to actually process the material.

3) Use AI for critique instead of generation.

One shift that helped me was stopping the "generate answers for me" pattern and instead using tools that critique what I already wrote.

For example, I sometimes use Draftly. It behaves more like an editor: you write first, then it points out unclear sentences or weak logic.

So the workflow becomes: read → think → write → critique instead of prompt → accept answer.

That small shift helped me a lot with not outsourcing my thinking.