rage against the machine
the time to become more weird, imperfect, and human is now.
Welcome to Good Work - your weeklyish work therapy appointment.
Each week you’ll get an idea to consider and an exercise to put it into practice, plus my POV on a reader question about work. The goal will always be to push you toward more good work, because I think you’re capable of it.
Today’s idea
The time has come for us to talk about AI and how it intersects our desire to do good work. This essay took me much longer than my normal week to write, because this shit is, philosophically, extremely confusing.
Here’s where I’ve netted out:
For the world: we need to lean into our humanity with deliberate intensity, now.
For yourself: the best way to differentiate yourself right now is through showing effort, process, vulnerability, personality, thoughtfulness, perspective, and creativity.
For your job: the job market is going to be ugly while we stumble toward a new normal, and your unique collected context + how you’re perceived by others will help keep you employed.
1// we need to lean into our humanity with deliberate intensity, now.
AI is extraordinary. It will make us faster, clearer, and more capable than we’ve ever been. It’s also insanely dangerous if it dulls us down to being its mouthpiece.
The future I hope for is one where we harness AI as a tool to create better outcomes by multiplying our ability to positively influence the world around us.
The future I do not hope for is one where we default to the direction of LLMs, outsource our strategic thinking, or forget how to dream up something so crazy AI would never recommend it.
We’re at a point of divergence between these two futures, and it’s our job to collectively push things in the right direction. To do that, we need to reinforce the importance of the role of the human mind in all its strange glory, in work and in life, with vigor, urgency, and certainty.
2// the best way to differentiate yourself right now is through showing effort, vulnerability, personality, thoughtfulness, perspective, and creativity.
LLMs have, unfortunately, rendered your outputs largely uninteresting. Anyone can create an output in minutes now - polished, organized, professional.
It’s now your inputs that are interesting - how’d you think of an idea? Where did you find inspiration? What worked and what didn’t as you were building or creating something? Which of your experiences or perspectives crafted what eventually became the output?
I want to acknowledge that sharing your inputs, vs. your outputs, feels completely unnatural. From a very young age we were asked to do homework in private, and submit a completely finished, perfect product for grading. The tables have turned, and now you’re being graded on how you approach your homework vs whether the homework is correct.
Take comfort in sharing unfinished thoughts - no one thinks you’re perfect. In fact, they want to see that you’re not, because it’ll make them feel more secure in their own imperfections. To stand out and catch people’s attention, the time has come to lean into the work-in-progress version of yourself that highlights your special, unique brain and creative, earned perspectives.
3// the job market is going to be ugly while we find a new normal, and your unique collected context + how you’re perceived by others will help keep you employed.
Your productivity is no longer your edge. Neither is your fact retention or your data analysis or your volume of output.
Your employability edge is twofold:
your differentiated collected context - all the stories, learnings, connections, and experiences you’ve gathered throughout your life, and how they position you to think differently than everyone else in your role or field.
your personality and how it feels for others to work and create with you.
I do not know what the future of work looks like, but I’d bet my savings that humans will continue to value humans who are enjoyable to work with and bring a unique perspective that might give their company a leg up against competitors.
If AI compresses informational advantage, then reputation, trust, and community hold exponentially more weight.
Figure out what makes you unique, and start to get comfortable standing out instead of fitting in.
In practice
The real practice here is in making the non-obvious, more effortful choices across work and life. Embrace friction and effort, and place more focus than usual on your process than your output. It’s going to feel strange, until it starts to feel familiar and comforting.
This is the worst AI will ever be, which means it will only get more and more tempting to use it for everything. Instead, explore where you can make your unique POVs, experiences, personality traits, etc obvious, differentiating, and liberating.
Some thought starters:
Instead of checking in with a connection using an AI generated email out of your life CRM, send a text with a photo of something that reminded you of them.
Instead of looking for affirmation or summarized bullets from your favorite LLM ahead of performance reviews, take a few coworkers to coffee to understand how you can be a better partner.
Instead of asking AI to edit your writing to make it ‘clearer’, find a peer editor to give you feedback, or put your own editing hat on to maintain your voice and make sure you don’t sound like a psycho robot.
Instead of posting an LLM approved story arc on Linkedin, share your experience the way you’d tell someone about it over coffee.
Instead of scrolling an algorithmic feed of what a data set thinks you want to consume, deliberately go off your beaten internet path to discover new topics, creators, or information that it would never serve you.
Instead of getting overwhelmed with unlimited food delivery choices from ghost kitchens, ask a few friends for their favorite restaurants in the area.
Instead of starting with a list of topics AI suggests, allocate some additional brainstorm time for you to reflect on what topic you feel most compelled to start with.
Instead of learning a little about a lot, go deep on an obsession or curiosity.
Instead of asking AI for career advice, send the scary email and ask a human you respect or admire.
We’re all on this journey together, and I’m figuring it out right alongside you. Have these conversations with your peers, your friends, and your mentors - we’re stronger and more confident in community.
Office hours
Q: When should I leave a stable but soul sucking job?
A: The annoying (but true) answer is, it depends.
On the one hand, stability is important - in order to take risks, you need a solid foundation both financially and mentally. Stability provides you with a playground to experiment and to get things wrong along the way with more upside than downside.
On the other hand, in my opinion, no amount of financial stability is worth losing or sacrificing who you are. You only get to do this life once.
Re-center yourself on what your goals are - not a role or title, but a type of life you want to have. What are all the paths that can get you to that life? Is there another one available to you now that would protect the integrity of your soul? Take that one.
See you in the comments,
Leaning into the work in progress! ✊
F yes