Innovation, New Ideas and How The World is Changing

The Productivity Trap That’s Making You Replaceable

Jorge

Robert Redford died yesterday. He was a great actor, the founder of the Sundance Film Festival, and a fierce activist for storytelling itself.

His words about technology’s threat to creativity hit differently today than they did years ago:

“I grew up at a time when there was no television, there was just radio. You didn’t have the aggressive technology you have today. There’s so much high tech that it deprives us of being inventive on our own. Technology deprives us of coming up with our own stories. We’re relying on stories being fed to us through technology and since I grew up at a time when that didn’t exist, you had to make up your own stories.”

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: We’re becoming intellectual tenants in our own minds.

The Problem Nobody Wants to Admit

I run an AI services firm. Last week, I watched three senior executives present strategies that were clearly ChatGPT outputs; they hadn’t even bothered to change the formatting. The presentations were competent. Professional. Utterly forgettable.

This is happening everywhere. We’re outsourcing our thinking to machines that can simulate intelligence but can’t create meaning.

Consider what we’re actually losing:

  1. The struggle that creates insight. That moment when you’re stuck on a problem for hours, then suddenly the solution appears, that’s when real learning happens. Skip the struggle; lose the insight.
  2. The accidents that become innovations. Every breakthrough I’ve had in business came from fumbling around in the dark until I stumbled onto something unexpected. AI gives you the “right” answer immediately; you never discover what you weren’t looking for.
  3. The voice that makes you irreplaceable. Your unique perspective on the world, shaped by your successes, failures, and your particular brand of craziness, is your competitive advantage. Delegate that to AI, and you become a commodity.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

We’re at an inflection point. The companies and individuals who thrive in the next decade won’t be those who use AI best; they’ll be those who know when NOT to use it.

I learned this lesson early. In 2019, I automated the entire customer service system of a company that had multiple car dealerships in its portfolio. Response times dropped 90%. Customer satisfaction dropped 40%. Why? Because their clients didn’t want efficiency, they wanted to know someone gave a damn about their specific problem.

The seductive promise of AI is that it will make us more productive. But productive at what? Generating more mediocre content faster? Having more forgettable conversations? Building more businesses that look exactly like everyone else’s?

The Solution: Strategic Friction

Here’s my approach, and it’s made me more valuable, not less:

  1. Use AI as a research assistant, never as a ghostwriter. I’ll have it pull data, find patterns, and challenge assumptions. But the synthesis, the story, the insight; that’s mine.
  2. Embrace productive struggle. I block two hours every morning for deep thinking. No tools, no shortcuts. Just me and a problem. Yes, it’s inefficient. That’s the point.
  3. Develop your judgment muscle. Every time you’re tempted to ask AI for an answer, first write down what YOU think. Then check. This gap between your intuition and the machine’s output is where growth happens.
  4. Create from scarcity. Redford had radio. That limitation forced imagination. What if you could only use AI once per project? How would that change your approach?

The Real Question

Ask yourself this: If everyone has access to the same AI tools, what makes you valuable?

Your experiences. Your failures. Your specific way of connecting dots that nobody else sees. That weird perspective you developed because of that job you had ten years ago. The story only you can tell because only you lived it.

I’m not anti-technology; I’m pro-human. I use AI every day. But I use it like I use a calculator, to handle the mechanical work so I can focus on the thinking work. The moment we flip that equation, using our brains for mechanical work while AI does all the thinking, we’ve lost something we can’t get back.

Redford understood something fundamental: Creativity isn’t about having better tools. It’s about having something to say that only you can say.

The machines are getting better at imitating us. The question is: Are we getting better at being ourselves?

Don’t let yourself be replaced. Use the tools; don’t become one.

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