Beware: Don't Outsource Your Thinking to AI
Here's a trap I'm seeing more and more — and honestly, it's one I have to watch that I don’t fall into myself.
AI tools are remarkable. They can draft, summarise, research, reframe and refine at a pace none of us can match. But precisely because they're so capable, they create a seductive temptation: to hand over your thinking the moment a task gets hard, complex, or just a little uncomfortable.
And that's where things can quietly go wrong.
The effort that builds expertise
There's a reason difficult thinking feels like work — because it is. When you wrestle with a tricky problem, sit with ambiguity, or push through the fog of a complex decision, you're not just producing an output. You're building something in yourself. You're developing judgment, sharpening instincts, and deepening your understanding in ways that simply don't happen if you skip straight to "ask the AI."
If you always let AI do the heavy lifting, you gradually lose the very capacity that makes you valuable. The goal should be to bring your thinking to the table first — even if it's rough, incomplete, or uncertain — and then use AI to supplement, stress-test, and refine it. Not the other way around.
But here's what AI genuinely cannot do
It cannot access your intuition.
And your intuition matters more right now than perhaps at any other point in your career.
So much of what EAs do — especially at a senior level — is cerebral. It's logical, analytical, sequential thinking. Reading the situation, assessing priorities, structuring communication. That's all cognitive work, and yes, AI can assist with plenty of it.
But intuition operates on a completely different frequency. It draws on your emotional intelligence, your lived experience, your values, and yes — even your spiritual awareness of what feels right or wrong in a situation. It's your subconscious mind quietly processing everything your conscious mind hasn't quite caught up with yet.
That moment when something feels off about an email before you can articulate why. The sense that a decision your executive is leaning toward isn't quite right, even though you can't immediately put your finger on it. The read you have on a person or a room that no amount of data could produce.
That's intuition. And it's irreplaceable.
A different way to work with AI
Think of it this way: AI is an extraordinarily capable assistant. But you are still the executive in this relationship.
Do your thinking first. Sit with the problem. Let your intuition weigh in. Form at least a preliminary view. Then bring AI in to help you develop, articulate, and refine what you've already started to work out.
This way, AI amplifies your thinking — it doesn't replace it. And you stay sharp, stay grounded, and stay genuinely irreplaceable in your role.
In a world where AI can replicate so much of the cognitive work we do, your intuition is becoming one of your most important professional assets. Protect it. Trust it. And whatever you do — don't outsource it.
A question for you to ponder
What do you think — do you have a practice for staying connected to your own thinking and intuition when AI tools are so readily available? I'd love to hear how you're navigating this - click here to send me a quick message :)
All the best, Steuart