AI can make you prolific

 

With AI, your company can product an unlimited supply of content.

Twelve blog posts before breakfast, 47 social posts by lunch, and an AI-generated image of a middle-aged guy in a tie pointing at a graph while a small purposefully diverse group else nods approvingly.

The machines will keep producing and we’ll keep publishing. But people will still have the same old brains … we’ll scroll past most of it.

In terms of content consumption, humans have never been particularly attracted by volume. We notice what feels familiar, useful, surprising, or unmistakably “someone”.

Yes, AI is making the act of producing something remarkably easy. But it hasn’t made the act of being remembered any easier.

In fact, it may have made it harder. When everyone can produce polished writing, beautiful images, clever campaigns, and reasonably convincing thought leadership, “good” starts becoming the wallpaper of the internet.

Competence stops being distinctive when everyone is competent.

So it’s time to stop asking “How much content can we make?” and ask “Could someone recognize our content if appeared without our logo?

Maybe it’s a phrase. A visual style. A peculiar way of looking at the world. An observation about customers that sounds so obvious afterward you wonder why nobody said it before. Something with fingerprints.

Yes, AI can make you prolific … but prolific is not the same as memorable.

And I’d rather be the thing someone remembers tomorrow than the thing an algorithm produced a couple of dozen times while you were sipping your morning coffee.

CAPTCHA

I was asked to select the boxes with traffic lights to prove I wasn’t a bot.

I’ve done it hundreds if not thousands of times, but this time I thought: "If AI is so smart, why can't it solve a simple CAPTCHA?" 

We writers are a curious lot, and a minimal amount of research unveiled that the traffic lights aren't really the test.

It seems that modern CAPTCHAs don't care much whether you can spot a traffic light. They care whether you behave like a human while doing it. How you move the mouse. How long you hesitate. Whether you click with just enough uncertainty. It's less an eye exam than a vibe check.

So, while AI can often recognize the images with no problem, it isn't built to impersonate a person navigating a website. The pictures are mostly stage props.

The CAPTCHA is like a nightclub bouncer who isn't checking your ID anymore. He's watching how naturally you reach for your wallet.

The fact that AI struggles with a CAPTCHA, doesn't tell me much about AI. It does, however, indicate we're redefining intelligence: more than Can you solve the problem? but also Can you look enough like your average human while solving it?

Unquestionably, AI will move past this and eventually we'll have a new hoop to jump through to say, "I'm human. No really, I am."

_________________________

CAPTCHA rejected this suggested update:

I quit.

I helped a friend draft a letter of resignation. 

It's exactly what they want to say, but I'm guessing they'll do some major editing before submitting it. In fact, they're probably only gonna use the first line.

Dear [Boss],

I’m resigning from my position, effective [date].

If this comes as a surprise, it says more about the state of leadership here than I know how to explain politely.

I'm leaving because I care enough about the rest of my life to stop donating it to a workplace that has mistaken endurance for engagement.

I want to spend my time doing things that don't require a twelve-person meeting to determine whether an email should be sent. I want to work somewhere that understands that “urgent” is supposed to be an occasional adjective, not a permanent operating system. I want to be around people who understand that creativity needs oxygen, that good ideas rarely emerge from exhausted people staring at dashboards, and that human beings are not software licenses that can simply be reassigned when someone leaves.

Most importantly, I want to remember what it feels like to finish a day without mentally drafting my resignation letter.

For years you’ve told me I’m a “team player,” which I eventually learned means I’m willing to do the work of three people while being thanked for my “flexibility.” If you could’ve, you would’ve rated me “exceeds” on “exploitability” … you love the way I absorb disfunction quietly.  In my last review, you asked, “What do I think I’ve improved on this past year?” My answer: “My ability to pivot in dynamic situations.” I worded that carefully to avoid saying: “My ability to survive the absolute chaotic clusterfuck of your creation.”

I’ve pivoted, adapted, collaborated, reprioritized, embraced ambiguity, and demonstrated resilience. Although these were presented as professional development opportunities, they were just increasingly creative ways of saying, “We’re intentionally not staffing properly and exploiting the current team, expecting them to suck it up and grin and bear it.”

This organization has dashboards, metrics, performance frameworks, strategic priorities, and enough corporate vocabulary to launch a satellite, yet somehow remains unable to identify the obvious: people eventually stop tolerating being overworked, under-resourced, and undervalued.

I’ve raised concerns. I’ve adapted. I’ve solved problems I didn’t create. I’ve cleaned up messes I didn’t make. And every time I did, the system learned the same lesson: [First Name] can handle it. Well, now I’m going to stop handling it. I'm done. This organization is just not my cup of tea (I don’t take my tea with large chunks of shit in it).

So “Goodbye, Boss” and congratulations to you: You get to graduate from “boss” to “some asshole I used to work for.”

Respectfully,

[First Name]

_________________________

If you see a resignation in your future, feel free to use this to leave your position with flare.

When Autumn Falls

I'll Be Ready When Autumn Falls
(with apologies to Ogden Nash)

I do not fear the chilly call of autumn.

Sweaters, rakes, and scarves? I’ve bought ‘em.

The leaves may plummet, orange and gold,

I'll meet them bundled against the cold.

Though frankly, if I'm being candid,

My readiness is mostly branded:

Cause if summer ends with a stormy sky,

I’ll be inside with hot cider and pumpkin pie.

AI for Students

 

Universities are concerned about AI cheating.
But the problem isn’t AI.

AI just held up a mirror. 

We’ve built a culture obsessed with outputs while neglecting the critical thinking needed to produce them. More content. More credentials. More polished little rectangles for LinkedIn. Meanwhile people are walking around undereducated.

So, I suggest universities return to oral exams.

If a student can’t sit in a room and explain what they think (clearly, spontaneously, and without consulting a prediction machine trained on the internet’s compost heap) then what exactly are we measuring? Formatting skills? Citation choreography?

Oral exams test whether knowledge has actually entered the person. Can you explain something clearly? Can you defend an idea without collapsing into a haze of jargon? Can you think while another human being is looking directly at you? You can hear understanding in real time.

As a writer, I believe that writing matters. Good writing sharpens thought and should be aggressively taught. But modern academia has built systems to generate, grade, summarize, and value documents nobody actually wants to read … bureaucratic fog with footnotes.

Then AI arrived and said, “You mean this counts as intelligence? Hold my beer.”

Educational institutions should start asking: “Has this person become wiser?” instead of: “Can this person generate acceptable artifacts at scale?” Oral examinations should be part of answering the former. They require presence, and you can’t outsource presence. You either know what you’re talking about or you don’t.

The real purpose of education was never supposed to be producing polished effluvia on command. It was supposed to build a human being, someone more thoughtful, articulate, perceptive, difficult to fool.

That’s much harder to fake live.

_________________________

Using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym.
The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place.
That is not the work. The work is what happens in you.
- Sam Halpert

_________________________

Other posts on education (from the eyes of a writer):

Are we teaching our kids to memorize or to understand?

We Need Education Reform

Labor Day Rant

 

Labor Day has morphed from a celebration of workers into an opportunity to convince me that I need a new mattress with retailers proclaiming Labor Day as the Super Bowl of horizontal living. "Celebrate America's workers by purchasing a queen-size memory foam sleep system!" I wasn't aware my appreciation for the labor movement hinged on whether or not my spine was cradled nightly by individually wrapped coils.

And why are appliances involved? Refrigerators. Washers. Dryers. Somewhere along the line, someone looked at a holiday about workers' rights and said, "You know what this really needs? A stainless steel dishwasher with fingerprint-resistant technology."

Then there's the weather. Labor Day exists in that awkward moment where nature can't commit to a season. It's 94 degrees at noon, 61 by sunset, and every weather app is shrugging its digital shoulders. Do I wear shorts? A hoodie? Both? Am I attending a barbecue or preparing for an alpine expedition?

But somewhere beneath all the sales flyers, clearance racks, and "last chance for summer" countdowns is the actual reason the holiday exists: recognizing the people who build things, fix things, teach things, grow things, deliver things, clean things, and somehow keep society functioning despite Wi-Fi that mysteriously stops working the moment someone says, "This'll only take a second."

That's worth remembering. But marketers saw a meaningful holiday and collectively responded, "Interesting. What if we made couches 25% off?"

I'm not against a day off. I support naps. I support grilled food. I even support buying stuff. I just find it fascinating how every holiday eventually passes through the same machine: Take something with history. Add balloons, giant SALE banners, and an email subject line in all caps. Stir until the original meaning becomes a footnote beneath free shipping.

Happy Labor Day.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to honor the dignity of work by avoiding it for exactly one day ... while deleting seventeen promotional emails reminding me that time is running out on the biggest sale of the season.

Attitude Adjustment

I hate waiting in line.

Yesterday I was stuck in line at CVS, waiting on a prescription, when "Midnight Train to Georgia" drifted out of the ceiling speakers. Gladys Knight was singing with range and emotion, the Pips were answering with those perfect little harmonies, and the orchestra wrapped around the whole thing like a favorite well-worn sweater. Somewhere between annoyance and the chorus, I forgot to be annoyed.

We spend a lot of time chasing the next thing because that's what the algorithm orders for dinner. Then a fifty-year-old song strolls through the pharmacy and reminds you that great art doesn't interrupt life … it sneaks up behind it and improves it.

________________________

Is this  great song or what?

In CVS I was just enjoying the music. Now that I relisten to this classic and focus on the lyrics and the way Knight sings with warmth, longing, and quiet strength, it feels deeply human. Choosing love over ambition feels intimate and universal. The song leaves you with a bittersweet sense of devotion, sacrifice, and comfort reminding us that home isn't always a place, but it can also be a person.

Performance vs Value

Being a freelancer has helped distance me from a frustrating feature of modern work: we have built increasingly sophisticated systems for measuring employee performance while remaining remarkably primitive at recognizing employee value.

We have dashboards.

We have metrics.

We have quarterly objectives.

We have calibration meetings.

We have competency frameworks.

We have seventeen different ways to say “good job.”

And somehow the conversation about actually paying someone appropriately still seems to require the organizational equivalent of a hostage negotiation.

I realize budgets are complicated.

I realize businesses have constraints.

I realize money doesn't grow on trees.

But neither does expertise.

And unlike money, expertise tends to walk out the door to be around people who understand that creativity needs oxygen, that good ideas rarely emerge from exhausted people staring at dashboards, and that human beings are not software licenses that can simply be reassigned when someone leaves.

When I asked a friend why she just left a high profile job, her one line answer perfectly summed up a situation many of us find (or have found) ourselves in: “I want to remember what it feels like to finish a day without mentally drafting my resignation letter.”

Pattern Interrupt for Marketing Writers

I dropped the phrase “pattern interrupt” in a meeting the last week.

One of the execs in the room (who shouldn’t have been in the room, but marketing seems to be run by committee too often these days) asked what I meant.

I responded with something along the lines of: “Pattern Interrupt is a psychological technique where you disrupt the audience’s routine thought patterns to grab their attention. In marketing, we use it to shift the prospect's focus to your message.”

Even to me, that sounded more academic than helpful (maybe being in a room of "suits" brought that out of me), so I continued:

“Imagine you're scrolling through your social media feed ... everything looks sort of the same. Suddenly, a bold, unexpected headline or a quirky image stops you mid-scroll. That’s pattern interrupt in action. It shakes up the ordinary and forces your brain to pay attention.”

 
Ahh, that sounded better, so I capped it off with “The goal is to keep audiences engaged, curious, and wanting more ... to turn passive readers into active participants.”
 
I had the room, but one person still had a “I’m not convinced” look on their face. So I added, “The human brain loves predictability but is wired to respond to novelty. By introducing something unexpected or unusual, you create a cognitive jolt that draws people in.”
 
Now I was rolling.
 
“Think about an unexpected headline or humor or shocking statistic that pushes people to not rely on their go to responses.”

And that interaction inspired this blog post … so here's a quick outline of  how marketing writers can use pattern interrupt effectively:

How to Use Pattern Interrupt in Marketing Copy

1. Unexpected Headlines

• Example: Instead of a predictable headline like, “Struggling with Your Finances?”, go for something jarring like, “Why Saving Money Is Ruining Your Life”. The latter creates curiosity and demands explanation.

Why it works: The reader’s usual expectation (that saving is good) is challenged, sparking intrigue.

 

• Another Example: “Fire Your Morning Coffee—This Will Wake You Up Faster.” 

Why it works: This headline disrupts a cherished routine and replaces it with a bold claim. Readers feel compelled to find out what could possibly replace their beloved coffee. 

 

2. Humor or Absurdity

• Example: "This Soap Is So Natural, It Pays Taxes." 

Why it works: Humor paired with exaggeration disrupts the norm and creates a memorable moment.

 

•  Another Example: “Our Toothpaste Won’t Make You Rich, But Your Smile Might.” 

Why it works: It combines a playful twist with an indirect compliment, sparking a grin and curiosity. The humor lightens the pitch while emphasizing the benefit. 

 

3. Surprising Visuals or Words

• Example: Imagine an ad for noise-canceling headphones showing a rock concert with the text: “Hear Silence. Even Here.” 

Why it works: The unexpected juxtaposition of a loud environment with the promise of silence creates a stark and memorable image.

 

• Another Example: Pairing unexpected imagery with copy. Imagine an ad for a sleek electric car showing a gas powered car being pulled by horses with the caption, “Time for an Upgrade?”  

Why it works: The image contrasts with modern expectations, making the message stand out.

 

4. Break Grammar Rules

• Example: “Comfy. Stylish. Affordable. Nope, not your couch—your shoes.”

Why it works: The clipped sentence fragments break conventional grammar, creating a conversational tone that mirrors how people naturally speak and think. 

 

• Another Example: "This isn’t a normal ad. Because normal doesn’t work anymore. You’re here for different."

Why it works: Short, choppy sentences and unconventional grammar create a rhythm that interrupts the expected flow.

 

5. Address the Reader’s Thoughts

• Example: “Yeah, we know—‘Not another skin cream.’ But this one’s different. Here’s why...” 

Why it works: You disrupt their assumptions and establish a connection. The copy acknowledges the reader's potential skepticism, instantly building trust by showing the brand “gets” them and their concerns. 

 

• Another Example: ‘Oh, no … another weight loss program.’ Don’t worry …this isn’t one. It’s a life upgrade.” 

Why it works: By preempting the reader’s likely reaction, the copy breaks their defenses. It reframes the product in a new light, encouraging them to reconsider their assumptions. 

 

6. Shock with Statistics

• Example: “80% of jobs in 2030 don’t exist yet. How are you preparing for the future?” 

Why it works: The statistic is both surprising and forward-thinking, triggering urgency in the reader. It also positions the product (related to education or skills) as a solution to an unexpected problem. 

 

• Another Example: “The average person eats 7,000 pounds of food a year—that’s like eating an elephant. Ready to rethink your diet?” 

Why it works: The startling comparison grabs attention and contextualizes the statistic in a way that is visually and emotionally engaging.  Stark, unexpected statistics demand attention and prompt action. 

 

7. Start in the Middle of a Story

• Example: "She was running late—coffee in one hand, toddler in the other—when the car refused to start. Sound familiar?"

Why it works: Dropping readers directly into the action creates urgency and interest.

  

• Another Example: “The email subject line read: ‘We need to talk.’ His heart sank ... until he read the rest of it.”

Why it works: This opening is emotionally charged and universally relatable, making readers eager to know the resolution. It also sets up an intriguing entry point for the product or service.

 

Tips to Make Pattern Interrupt Effective

• Keep It Relevant: The disruption should align with your brand message; don’t be weird for the sake of being weird.
  
  
• Know Your Audience: What interrupts one group might confuse or alienate another.
  
  
• Follow Through: Once you’ve grabbed attention, ensure the rest of your message delivers value and clarity.

 

Final Word: Creatively break the monotony ... but after you captivate, convert.

_________________________

Back to the meeting: At that point in the meeting, even though I had made a small gain, I knew that the real challenge was going to be getting too large of a group of people, each with too much input (and ego), to approve a campaign without watering down the concept to a point where it would be anywhere close to pattern interrupt.

The Anarchy of My Desk

 

My desk is a disaster. Not the dramatic kind. No moldy sandwiches. No opossums living in it. Just stacks of papers, half-used notebooks, receipts, sticky notes, and pens that seem to reproduce at night.

Every so often I try to organize it. The desk usually wins after about 14 minutes.

Which is not a terrible thing. Because the mess has some magic to it.

While a clean desk is efficient with everything sitting exactly where it should waiting politely to be used, it’s a bit lifeless. A messy desk, however, has side quests and plot twists. It creates accidents. Good ones.

I go looking for one thing and trip over 3 others. An old idea wanders out from under a pile like it just woke up from hibernation. A forgotten observation clears its throat from beneath a stack of unopened mail like, “Hey. I’m relevant again.” The desk, in its chaotic wisdom, refuses to let my thoughts become too obedient.

Neat systems are good at storage. A clean desk says: “Everything in its place.”

A messy desk says: “Maybe these things belong together and nobody noticed yet.” The mess creates friction. Friction creates wandering. And wandering is where some of the best ideas live.

I’m not saying chaos is a productivity strategy. Neat systems are good at storage. Mess, however, is good at collisions. And collisions fuel creativity.

Stop Painting the House Before You Pour the Foundation

 Why You Need to Know the Difference Between Brand and Branding

Somewhere out there this morning,
a business owner woke up, opened their laptop,
sipped their coffee, and declared to the universe:

“Today, we work on our brand. Let’s make the logo bigger.”

And somewhere, a brand strategist screamed into a decorative throw pillow.

The number of companies mixing up brand and branding is starting to rival the number of companies claiming they’re “revolutionizing” their industry by adding an app.

Brand and branding are not twins. 
They’re not cousins. They’re not even on the same group chat. And missing the differentiation can waste resources and negatively impact your business.

Brand is who you are. Branding is how you show up.
One is your personality. The other is your outfit.

Your brand is the stuff that lives in people’s heads after they’ve experienced you: feelings, associations, trust (or lack thereof). It’s the emotional residue.

Your branding is the stuff you manufacture to influence that feeling: your voice, your visuals, your packaging, the way your customer service rep sounds like they’ve had an actual human emotion at least once.

Brand = Perception. Branding = Presentation.

Not the same. Never will be. 

   => Brand is emotional. Branding is intentional. 

   => Brand is the story your audience tells themselves. Branding is the story you wish they’d tell, so you polish, tweak, craft, adjust, redesign, and pray it comes across the way you intended.

   => Brand is the soul. Branding is the stage makeup. Without soul, the makeup looks like… well… makeup.

And here’s the part no one wants to hear: You don’t get to decide your brand.

That’s right. You can nudge it, guide it, whisper sweet nothings to it, but at the end of the day, your audience is holding the steering wheel. They decide what you mean to them.

Your job is to create branding that helps them get there faster and with fewer navigation errors.

Mistaking branding for brand is how you end up decorating a house that doesn’t exist.

You wouldn’t hang curtains on a construction site. You wouldn’t install hardwood floors on a patch of dirt. You wouldn’t try to paint walls that don’t exist.

Yet somehow, businesses do this daily:

“Let’s get new business cards!” Cool. And what exactly are those cards supposed to represent?

“Let’s redo the website!” Awesome. Why should anyone care what’s on it?

You must build the house (the brand) before you pick the paint (the branding).

Get the order right, and everything feels effortless. Get it wrong, and everything feels inconsequential (and expensive).

Brand first. Branding second.

Know who you are. Then show who you are. In that order. And no, there aren’t any shortcuts. 

If you learn the difference, you’ll stop wasting money on shiny things that don’t matter and start investing in the truth of your business … which actually does matter.

Because once the foundation is solid, you can paint the walls whatever color you want. And people will actually care enough to walk through the door.

10 Items or Less

 

"10 items or less" ... somewhere, a grammar lover is gripping the shopping cart extra hard.

Technically, it should be "10 items or fewer." Countable things get fewer. Uncountable stuff gets less. Less patience. Fewer bananas.

I like good grammar, but I don’t get worked up over the sign … cause I’m too busy being annoyed by the person ahead of me with 17 items. 

Anatomy of a Paragraph

Saw this on Course Hero. Don't know the source. Monmouth University writing lab perhaps ... but I couldn't find it on their site. Even though the source is unclear and it's focused more on academic writing (as opposed to marketing writing), I found spending some quality thinking time on it a worthwhile exercise.

And once you've finished wrapping your brain around this,

do yourself a favor by spending some time with the short piece: Rhythm in Writing.

Steak with a side of questions

Don’t make 'em dig through a word salad to find the steak.

Nobody’s showing up for the garnish; they came hungry for the meat.

Keep your message lean and properly seasoned, or your audience will drop their fork and head for somebody else’s drive-thru.

 

When in the groove, my fingers fly and writing appears on my monitor like the three lines above … when all I’m trying to communicate is: If you’ve got something to say, say it simply and directly.

Then, when I review it, I question whether I should’ve just stuck with the simple statement or if my “voice” makes it more interesting and memorable.

Typically, I can’t answer that question so I stick with the original direction, arguing there’s more “me” in it … but the question never feels properly answered.

Is it overthinking? Yes. 

Is it imposter syndrome? Probably.  

Will I ever move past this inner uncertainty? Doubtful.

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

 

Questions are one of the most valuable weapons in a marketing writer’s toolbox.

They’re the crowbar that pops open the stuck door. The flashlight in the basement.
The quiet little key that unlocks the “Ohhh … that’s what we should be saying” moment.

Without the right questions, you don’t get answers (duh). But more importantly, you don’t get insight. And without insight, your writing becomes nothing but decorative noise.

Ask the wrong questions, and you’ll fill your pages with fluff. Ask no questions, and you’ll fill them with guesses. But ask the right questions -- questions that dig, that press, that annoy just a tiny bit -- and suddenly you’re not writing anymore.

You’re uncovering. You’re discovering. You’re revealing the truth your audience actually cares about.

Behind every strong headline, every landing page that converts, every sales deck that doesn’t put the room to sleep is a writer who refused to write until they had asked enough questions to see the whole landscape clearly.

So before you write your next sentence, pause and channel your inner detective. Ask boldly. Ask relentlessly. Because the writers who win aren’t the ones with all the answers … they’re the ones who won’t stop hunting for them.

_________________________

Some examples of questions to ask clients:

• If your competitor said this exact same thing, would anyone notice?
• What are you not saying because you're worried it's too honest?
• Who is this definitely NOT for?
• What's the story you tell yourself about why this hasn't worked before?
• What do your best customers know about you that your marketing doesn't say?.
• What would you do if you weren't afraid of what your industry thinks?
• When was the last time a customer surprised you — good or bad?
• What objection do you dread most, and what do you usually say to dodge it? 

Some examples of "taking it to the next level" questions:

• Why does that matter?  
• Who says so? 
• What happens if we flip this entirely? 
• Have you considered that the thing you think is your weakness might actually be your most interesting story?

Dumpster Fire

People online confuse shamelessness with strength and authenticity. And the internet rewards it with increased exposure. 

Every week someone proudly broadcasts behavior that should've inspiresd a quiet moment of self-reflection and maybe a long walk. Now it gets posted ... and monetized.

Cruelty gets rebranded as “telling it like it is.” Refusing nuance becomes “standing your ground.” Public humiliation passes for entertainment. Meanwhile, basic self-awareness is treated like weakness ... which is unsettling considering civilization more or less depends on people occasionally feeling embarrassed by and stifling their worst impulses.

I’m not supporting toxic shame or repression. I’m just suggesting that more attention be paid to the small internal voice that says, “Maybe don’t turn every selfish thought into content.” That voice used to help people coexist. Now we train ourselves to ignore it because algorithms prefer confidence over reflection.

Everything now is performance. Outrage is content. Ignorance has a Patreon tier. People treat accountability like it’s an attack on creativity instead of the bare minimum requirement for living among other humans without turning every interaction into a public crisis.

But the algorithms love it because frictionless vanity scales beautifully. Thoughtfulness does not. Reflection doesn’t trend. Nobody goes viral for quietly reconsidering their opinion after reading a book and taking a walk.

We’ve built machines that reward visibility over wisdom, then act surprised when culture turns into a nonstop competition to say the most emotionally charged thing with the least amount of thought behind it.

I still think people are capable of better. I’m just no longer convinced the internet is particularly interested in helping.

Messiah or Villain

The reaction of writers to AI is interesting. One crowd treats it like a messiah. Another treats it like a villain.

For me it boils down to that, for effective writing, the fundamentals still matter. Probably more than ever. Good ideas are still rare. Taste still matters. Judgment still matters. 

A machine can produce a thousand sentences before breakfast ... but most of them still need someone who knows the difference between finished and merely generated. Because AI doesn't magically make a mediocre writer brilliant. It just lets a good writer spend less time pushing the wheelbarrow and more time deciding where the bricks belong.

Most technologies are far less dramatic than the people arguing about them. In my experience, technologies tend to be multipliers: They make good habits more productive and bad habits more obvious. So, when I think about AI, I keep coming back to the same conclusion I reached with other transformative technologies: 

Learn to think. Learn to write. Then learn the tools.

Not because the algorithm demands it. Because your time is worth more than pretending the clock stopped in 2018.

Overthinking

 

Along with checking for proper spelling, my editing process includes double-checking words to make sure they mean what I think they mean.

Recent examples: 

Panacea. I used it to mean "cure-all." I was right, but I felt compelled to double-check.

Same thing with proscribe. It looked wrong. Did I mean to use the word prescribe? 

And the same overthinking had me arguing with myself about infer. Was I confusing it with imply?

 

NOTE:

Proscribe means to forbid or outlaw while prescribe means to recommend.

The writer implies (hints), and the listener or reader infers (draws a conclusion).

 

Upscale Oops!

The upscale restaurant had an upscale bathroom.

An interior decorator made it feel comfortable and welcoming. More like a living room than a bathroom.

But as the restaurant soon learned the designer lamp and lampshade that were perfect for the design aesthetic were a failure for installation in a bathroom.

Oops!

"Please do not throw trash in the lampshade." Just a few words on a Post-It note tell a full story.

Polished vs. Interesting

 

We've confused being polished with being interesting. And I blame that on ChatGPT, Claude, and the rest of the AI gang.

Not because AI is bad at writing. It's often annoyingly competent. It can organize ideas, tidy up sentences and produce something perfectly acceptable in seconds. That's exactly the problem. "Perfectly acceptable" is becoming the new default.

The result? We're wallpapering the internet with competence.

But as a writer, my goal is not just competence. It’s about developing memorable ideas … and they rarely arrive dressed sensibly. They stumble in sideways. They start as a throwaway comment, a ridiculous comparison, or a question that makes everyone in the room pause for a second longer than feels comfortable. Creativity has always had the manners of a scruffy dog. It wanders off the path, rolls in something questionable, then somehow comes back carrying exactly what you needed.

Algorithms don't really do that. They smooth the edges. They average things out. They're brilliant at predicting the next word. Less brilliant at inventing the sentence that shouldn't work but somehow does.

That's why I'm becoming suspicious of anything that feels too neat. The perfect LinkedIn post. The flawless marketing framework. The universal formula for creativity. They all remind me of hotel artwork. Technically fine, but nobody has ever gone back to look at it.

Maybe the competitive advantage isn't working harder to sound professional. Maybe it's refusing to sand off the rough edges that make your thinking recognizably yours. Different has always looked a little weird at first. That's usually how you know it's worth paying attention to.

Don’t confuse being competent with being compelling. They're not the same thing. One gets approval. The other gets remembered.