Don't outsource thinking to AI
Wrestle with the ideas yourself.
Clarify your thinking.
If AI writes it, AI did the thinking, not you. Don't take the easy way out.
"No one can compete with you on being you" - Naval Ravikant
Who you are as a person, is your biggest moat in this AI era. Your thinking, your opinion & your perspectives may be imperfect, but at least it stands for something. Your voice comes from your repeated choices.
Love it or hate it, it's you. You stand out. You can build your following of people who share the same perspectives. You may trigger and piss off people who disagrees, and that's okay. It's better to stay you.
No one can compete with you on being you.
Every time I pass my LLM's something I wrote that are often times quite direct and and ask it to summarise it or rewrite it or to "make it better", it always smooths it out. After 100 AI-polished posts, you sound like everyone else.
In entrepreneurship, the majority is never right. If they were, they'd know how to build great things, grind through uncertainty and create great wealth. If they were, we'd all be rich now.
But we're not all rich. The majority never will be.
In anything that you do, when there's a lot of competition, it means the majority have already arrived. Whether or not it's correct is beyond the point. The point I'm trying to make is wherever the majority is at, it will be default be competitive.
On the other hand, if the scene is empty, and you're the only one doing what you're doing, that's quite dangerous too. There's a reason why it's empty. The idea isn't proven. If it works you should aim for some exponential gains, but if it fails, know that it's more likely that not that it will fail.
When the world goes left, try going right. See what happens. And pivot accordingly. That's the balance you have to find.
Learn to become a better thinker. It's not easy, but the struggle is the point. Figuring out what to say something clearly IS the skill.
If all you do is prompt some LLM, copy its output and use it as your own, you're not only diluting your message to sound like everyone else, you're also removing the reps required to get good at all the meta-skills needed.
To learn how to think critically, to learn how to write well, to have the hollistic arguments to back your points up.
However, we can't run away from AI today. It's here and it's here to stay. I use AI every single day myself.
Here's how to actually use AI:
- Brain dump your thoughts. Write in your own words, whatever that comes in your mind. Do it yourself because this is the source of truth, the more points you can give it the better. If you give it 5 words and ask it to write for you, AI can do it's best to guess it but it's often the water-ed down, "majority"-version of whatever you're thinking (which can be good or bad, depending on what you're looking for). This is where you build your thinking muscle.
- Write the first draft yourself. Properly try to write it to your best ability. Be it a task delegation instruction, a workflow, a thought process, whatever it may be, hone your skills to write clearly and in your own authentic & impactful way. This is where you build your writing muscle.
- Use AI to tighten/polish/structure. This is where you tie up loose ends and get cover any blind spots that you may have missed out.
You're giving AI your raw clay. It helps you shape it. But you made the clay.
Ask yourself - If someone reads your blog and then meets you, do they think "this is exactly how they talk" or "huh, they sound different than I expected"?
If it's the latter, you're probably not being authentic. You're putting on some facade for whatever reason.
Be yourself. The haters will hate you regardless, but the ones who are with you will connect with you on a much deeper level. You stand out EVEN MORE now, when the world sounds the same.
Don't let AI smooth you out.