What’s the point of using AI to help you write something?

It’s probably not going to save you any time. ChatGPT is going to spit out something formal and unwieldy, and it will be just as much effort to edit it as it would have been to write it in the first place, if not more.

And then, despite all that hard work, the finished product probably won’t be as good as what you would have come up with on your own.

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I received hundreds of comments on a recent video in which I used the clearing of a brush pile to demonstrate how a person might make incremental progress toward a goal.

Such a high volume of engagement yields fascinating patterns. One common response goes something like this: “Oh, I could never do a project over multiple days. When I do something, I have to get it all the way done.”

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One afternoon at The Little Middle School, I emerged from my office to find a valuable employee painstakingly disentangling a stack of wired headphones.

This was not the best use of her time, but she was reluctant to be torn away from the project.

I get it. Often, it’s easier and more immediately rewarding to do a task that’s far below our pay grade than to work on the stuff that only we can do — much harder stuff that might take longer to yield a satisfying result.

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Five years ago, I took a trip to a resort on the Andaman Sea, in the south of Thailand.

My intention was never to have a beach vacation. I have very pale skin and burn easily. Instead, I planned to spend my time writing a book.

Once I got there, I realized that I may as well have been at a Motel Six five miles from my home — I was just sitting at a desk, typing.

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