Man, AI is the new drug of choice for tech folks.
The leaders and the board want all the things from AI. And rightfully so...they want efficiency and improvements, as they should.
But if you're like me, you're building custom solutions for everything. I made an app to play Uno with my kids. Seriously.
This is the dopamine phase of AI's rollout. We need to be aware of that.
Making new things feels amazing, like "Why didn't I think of this before??"
(That's a tell, btw. You probably didn't need it, lol 🤔)
The new shiny things always feel like progress, but they rarely mature well.
Real maturity is almost invisible. It's the stuff that held its value through the exciting phase and now it's settled into being boring-but-useful.
Three years ago, content research took hours. It was boring and tedious and didn't produce marginally better quality than what AI produces now.
But now researching with AI is a "boring" use case. No one's excited about it.
Same with content repurposing. Super cool the first few times you do it, then it's table stakes from there.
The most powerful use cases with longevity tend to be the boring ones.
But here's the thing...AI is not-so-slowly going from force multiplier to infrastructure.
And what becomes infrastructure vs what fades out will be the things that started as problems looking for solutions, not the other way around.
The wise thing to do now is take inventory of problems, especially the ones you've written off as "just the way it is."
What are the boring, repetitive tasks that drain my team every week?
Where's the friction we've become numb to over time?
And what do I wish I could hire an intern to do?
Focus more energy on creating simple solutions to those things, no matter how boring they are.
Because if I had to guess, those will still be around long after the shiny new things have faded.