Beyond Automation: The Case for Intentional Work and Living

This week, I identified four articles I tried to tie to a common theme.

Donabel Santos - Why slow, reflective work with AI is better:

While AI eliminates genuinely wasteful tasks—like manual reformatting or waiting days for data requests—it also removes the natural pauses that fostered deeper learning and reflection. When queries took hours, you had time to question whether you were asking the right things in the first place. When debugging required working through problems independently, you built troubleshooting muscles and understood systems at a fundamental level.

The risk now isn't that AI makes work too easy, but that speed without intentionality leads to shallow understanding—producing results you can't explain, modify, or fix when they break.

The solution isn't rejecting AI, but deliberately reintroducing reflection that used to happen by default. This means pausing to explain your thinking, attempting solutions independently before asking AI, and ensuring saved time goes toward more challenging problems rather than more busywork. The tools themselves are neutral—what matters is whether you use efficiency as leverage for depth or let it scatter your focus across thirty mediocre analyses instead of one thoughtful one. Slow, reflective work with AI preserves the genuine learning from the old way while removing the obstacles that never taught us anything valuable.

Your identity and the Ship of Theseus

Outsourcing our thinking to generative AI mirrors the Ship of Theseus paradox — a slow, almost imperceptible replacement of what defines us. Each time we delegate a cognitive task to an algorithm — recalling a fact, composing a message, forming an opinion — we remove one plank from the original vessel of the self. Over time, the mind we once inhabited, shaped by curiosity, memory, and struggle, is reconstructed from borrowed intelligence. The question arises: if every mental process that once defined “us” is gradually replaced by machine-generated assistance, do we remain the same person, or merely a simulation assembled from prompts and predictions?

Identity, like the Ship of Theseus, depends on continuity — the story we tell ourselves through thought and effort. Generative AI tempts us with frictionless cognition, but surrendering to it, we risk losing the texture of our reasoning. When ideas no longer bear the marks of our imperfections, doubts, and revisions, they cease to be extensions of self and become output detached from origin. Just as a ship rebuilt plank by plank becomes something else, a mind rebuilt with synthetic thought becomes a vessel adrift — efficient, intelligent, but emptied of the struggle that once made it uniquely human.

In 2025, AI-generated content is everywhere. You need to live under a rock if Gen AI hasn’t touched your life in some capacity. Few give credit to Gen AI when due. Many palm off Gen AI content innocently as their own, some would use Gen AI content with some malicious intent (remember the ongoing deepfake controversy?).

I use Wispr Flow AI-assisted dictation software for my thoughts and ChatGPT & Grammarly to rewrite my random ruminations into this article.

How running can help.

I am not a runner. Far from it. Because I mostly work from home, I don't even walk much daily, and average less than 2,500 steps daily ☹

Today, on the CBS Sunday morning show, I was inspired to see how the CEO of Atlantic Magazine benefited from running. Running opened his mind, let him think, connect with nature, and keep his body in motion. He has actually gotten faster at his marathons as he gets older!

Forget Motivation: Discipline is the Real Secret to Self-Improvement

Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk, who achieved an unprecedented feat by becoming the undisputed heavyweight champion twice (in addition to his 2018 cruiserweight title), attributes his extraordinary success not to motivation but to discipline. When asked about maintaining his drive after so much achievement, the 38-year-old explained that motivation is fleeting and unreliable—present one day, absent the next. In contrast, discipline ensures consistent action regardless of how one feels. His philosophy aligns with psychological research showing that long-term success in sports, work, or lifestyle changes depends less on desire and more on structured approaches rooted in conscientiousness, impulse control, habit formation, and what sports psychologist Noel Brick describes as the ability to complete activities "out of a sense of duty," allowing people to persist on autopilot when motivation inevitably wanes.

I’ve noticed the impact of the discipline of daily habits on two apps Roca News & Brilliant which I currently use.

BONUS: AI ASSISTED LOGO DESIGN

I also wrote another blog post this week focusing on using ChatGPT for logo design and ComfyUI for virtual clothing try-ons. To view that, click here.