September 5, 2026

Is AI really more efficient?

Here’s an observation about AI:

I have a presentation coming up.

The subject is positioning.

I have published tens of thousands of words about positioning.

So I thought...

“This is a perfect use case for AI!”

I uploaded a messload of my articles, transcripts of my podcast episodes, and PDFs I had written, and asked it to outline a 90-minute talk about positioning.

It did what I asked.

It wasn’t bad.

But it wasn’t MY talk.

The flow and rhythm felt foreign to me.

If I were to present what it gave me, I would have had to rehearse it for a long time before it was a smooth performance.

After dorking around with the AI approach for a couple hours, I gave up and pulled out a piece of paper and a pen.

And then I slowly and methodically outlined the talk in a progression that made sense to me.

“Slowly and methodically” might sound inefficient, but the pen and paper approach took a lot less time overall than the AI approach.

I’m starting to think the ability to slow down might be a new superpower.

(NOTE: once I had the outline, I used AI to convert the handwritten notes to a Google Doc and then had AI convert the Google Doc to a nice-looking slide deck. I’m totally fine with AI doing grunt work.)

Yours,

—J

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