For a long time, I was convinced that the hardest part of my work was just the effort. Writing took forever, planning felt heavy, and decisions dragged on simply because everything moved so slowly. That slowness created a strange kind of comfort; if something wasn’t working, I could always tell myself it just needed more time.
AI killed that illusion. Not because it made things effortless, but because it removed the long delays that used to hide my weakest decisions.
Time used to soften the blow of a bad choice
Before AI, a bad decision could survive for weeks. You could keep “refining” an idea without ever really committing to what it meant. You could stay “in progress” long enough that no one—not even you—had to confront whether the direction was actually right.
Time acted like insulation. The longer something took, the harder it was to tell if the work was genuinely unclear or if it was just unfinished. AI removes that insulation instantly. When you generate something in seconds and it still feels wrong, you’re forced to face a much more uncomfortable truth: the problem isn’t your effort anymore—it’s your judgment.
Speed doesn't create pressure—clarity does
AI doesn’t actually rush you, and it doesn’t demand outcomes. What it does is collapse the distance between a decision and its consequences.
When the output appears immediately, you can no longer confuse motion with progress. You see the shape of your own thinking right away. If your thoughts are vague, the result is vague. If you're conflicted, the result feels incoherent. That feedback loop is incredibly loud, and loud feedback makes a bad decision impossible to ignore.
Why this feels so unsettling
I think a lot of the discomfort people feel around AI isn’t a fear of being replaced; it’s a fear of being exposed. The tool isn’t judging you—it’s just removing the excuses you used to lean on.
You can’t say “I just need more time” or “it’s still early” when the draft exists instantly. The only thing left to question is the direction itself. And direction is a responsibility that no tool can carry for you.
The real work starts after the speed
Once execution becomes cheap, the work moves inward. The hard parts of the day start to look like:
- Deciding what actually matters enough to keep
- Choosing exactly what to leave out
- Accepting trade-offs instead of just postponing them
- Knowing when something is “finished” enough to stand behind
These aren’t productivity problems; they’re ownership problems. AI can accelerate your output, but it stops exactly where your responsibility begins.
Learning to use the signal
When AI output feels flat or frustrating to me now, I treat it as information rather than a failure of the tech. It usually means I haven’t decided what I actually want yet, or I’m hoping the tool will make a hard choice for me.
Instead of asking for more variations, I pause to ask one question:
What decision am I actually postponing?
Once that’s clear, the AI becomes useful again—not as the driver, but as a pressure test for my own ideas.
Final thought
AI didn’t make work easier; it made our decisions louder. It removed the delay that used to protect unclear thinking and replaced it with immediate feedback. That discomfort isn’t a bug—it’s the whole point.
Once speed is no longer the bottleneck, the only thing left to improve is your judgment.
And judgment is the one thing that can’t be automated.