AI Makes It Easy to Produce, But Harder to Become.
If everything gets easier, what becomes your job now?
This week I sat down to write and realised something slightly embarrassing.
I could finish faster than ever.
AI can hand me ten angles, three intros, a neat structure, and a punchy ending in minutes. It’s like having an over-achieving intern who never sleeps and never asks for context.
But instead of feeling relieved, I felt suspicious. And it’s not because the writing was bad but simply because it was “fine.” And “fine” is how you accidentally publish a version of yourself you don’t even recognise.
So as the year ends, I keep coming back to one question…
“If everything gets easier, what becomes your job?”
Identity
I read Atomic Habits when it first came out, and I still come back to James Clear years later because he keeps returning to the same idea without dressing it up.
“My life becomes a vote for the person I’m practising being.”
That really resonates for me because I already live with a version of that question in the background. I still feel the distance between who I am on a high-output day and who I want to be when I move with intention. But each year that gap gets clearer, and each year I get a little better at spotting the habits that pull me towards the person I respect.
AI has made that identity loop almost seamless.
Producing has become easy, almost casual, which means I can create faster than I can metabolise what I think. I can keep the momentum going while my compass stays stable and the work, at least the work that counts, lives in a different place now. It lives in what I choose to repeat, what I choose to protect, and what I choose to leave alone.
So now, I can’t help but wonder, “if the tools keep removing friction, what kind of person am I rehearsing?”
The new job
AI gives us options on tap, and while it may sound like freedom, these very options can end up running the day.
So this is where the job gets redefined.
For years, we defined life by how much we produced and shipped and it proved who we are. If we produced more, we were deemed more capable. But now, as quantity and polish have become cheap, we become defined by what we choose.
A smaller menu
If I live in the menu, I will never get anything done. So I treat the process like an editor-in-chief.
It looks like taking a small amount of output, then cutting quickly. I then remove anything that feels too clean, too universal, too eager to sound smart and I keep the line that still has blood in it.
Then I rewrite until it feels there.
AI is a shortcut, yes, but that shortcut only works if I have judgement. Otherwise, I just publish faster.
So yes, we become connoisseurs. We get better at spotting the difference between polished and true, and we learn to hear when a sentence sounds like it could belong to anyone, then we bring it back to ourselves.
Becoming
As Mr Clear points out, identity lives in the repetition. So I become what I practise, and I practise it in what I keep, what I cut, and what I repeat.
So this is what I type into my personal AI assistant in the last week of the year.
“You are my chief of staff and editor. Help me reflect and refine my habits through my outputs. What kind of person do I rehearse each day? Look at my drafts, plans, strategies, or messages and tell me what it reveals about my defaults. Name the patterns. Show me where I overproduce, overpolish, or avoid the decision. Show me where I choose clarity and restraint.”
The Bottom Line
AI will keep making it easier to produce. So the advantage shows up when we stay stubbornly personal, keeping our judgement, our taste, and our standards.
Because if everything gets easier, my job becomes becoming.
All the Zest 🍋
Cien