I'd press Ctrl+Z on large language models if I could.

Data centers’ energy demands are already straining grids around the US. The concentration of political and economic power in big tech is already straining everyday people’s lives. Critical thinking and quality relationships, already atrophied by social media, are poised for further decline.

And yet: the people I work with are navigating a world where AI is already reshaping what skills are valued, what work looks like, and how organizations make decisions. Opting out of AI isn’t realistic for most people I’m talking with, at least not right now. Furthermore, working skillfully and deliberately with AI can offer new insights, turbocharge productivity, provide guideposts in these times of radical change, and fuel delight.

Some principles I’m working with now, for using AI to support inner work:

Use AI consciously, not as a comfort or an authority. The question to ask before you open a chat window isn't "what can AI do for me?" It's "what am I working on and what role do I want AI to play?" Strong prompting starts with clarity about your objective and your relationship to the AI, not with the AI itself.

Build a document that tells AI who you are. The most useful thing I've done is create what my colleagues at The Purpose Project call an Inner Compass — a document that articulates my values, my working style, and what I want from any collaborator, human or otherwise. I upload it to every meaningful AI conversation. It keeps the work grounded in what actually matters to me.

Use AI as a thought partner. Several people I work with have described using AI the way they use journaling, but turbocharged — not to get answers, but to keep their thinking focused and moving. That's a genuinely useful function, as long as you stay in the driver's seat.

And challenge yourself to create bespoke tools. Beyond conversation, AI can help you build systems tailored to your specific situation — for tracking what matters, for strategic planning, for staying connected to your own thinking over time. The Career Command Deck below is my own experiment in that direction.

AI Experiment: Career Command Deck

I asked Claude to help me build a personal strategic planning tool — something that would let me see all my active priorities in one place, notice patterns, and track my own momentum over time. I wanted it to be a pleasure to work with, too, so I gave it a brief: spaceship cockpit, sci-fi aesthetic, built around my Inner Compass values.

It took five hours, start to finish.

What you see below is populated with mockup data for a fictional designer/engineer named Greg Samsa, navigating a Kafka-esque role in tech. The tool itself is real; I update a version of it weekly to reflect on how I’m doing. If you're curious what "AI-assisted development" might look like, this is one answer.

If you're a coaching client, or thinking about becoming one:

You won't find me pushing AI tools on you, or treating them as a shortcut to the work. What I do think AI can do, when used with intention, is extend the shelf life of insights, help you stay oriented between sessions, and give you a low-stakes space to think out loud. If that's useful to you, we'll explore it. If it isn't, we won't.

What I care about is that you remain the author of your own development. AI is a tool. You're the one doing the work.

If you're a potential collaborator:

Consultants, HR, organizational development specialists: as you know, many organizations are facing gaps between senior leaders’ aspirations for AI and frontline workers’ experience with it, including mistrust and uncreative, grudging use of AI tools. If you’re interested in exploring the intersection of AI and human development as a systems problem, as opposed to a silver bullet for productivity, I'd love to talk.