How my work started moving forward once I stopped chasing new AI tools

Hello, this is Yamaguchi.

This might be sudden, but how many "AI tools to try later" do you have saved in your browser bookmarks?

At one point, I had so many that I didn't even want to count them.

The anxiety that "if I fall behind, it's over"

Every time I open social media, topics about new AI tools flood my feed.

"This is insane," "So-and-so is now obsolete," "If you don't use this, you'll be left behind."

Every time I saw words like these, I felt a sense of unease.

Even for me, someone who makes AI a pillar of my work, it was the same. The fear that "I might be missing out on an amazing tool" was always somewhere in the back of my mind.

So, every time a trending tool came out, I would sign up, try it out, configure it...

And here is the embarrassing part.

Most of the tools I tried that way, I stopped opening by the following week.

Every time I added a tool, my workload increased

Looking back calmly, something strange was happening.

To try a new tool, you need to register an account. You need time to learn how to use it. You need the effort to migrate from your current workflow.

In other words, the tools that were supposed to be introduced to "reduce work" were actually creating new work.

Moreover, during the time I spent testing these tools, the work I was supposed to be doing didn't advance even a millimeter.

Only the satisfaction of "I did AI research today" remained, while my newsletter wasn't written and my projects weren't moving forward.

It feels like I'm becoming an expert on AI, but my business is at a standstill, isn't it?

At the time, I hadn't realized that.

I tried stopping the "chase"

The turning point was a rule I decided to commit to at one point.

Only try a new tool if you can immediately answer how it will reduce your current workload.

If you can't answer immediately, ignore it no matter how much everyone is talking about it.

At first, I was anxious. I worried, 'What if I get left behind by the times?'

But what actually happened was the opposite.

My interactions with the AI I already used became deeper, and the amount of work I could delegate to it kept increasing.

When you think about it, it's obvious: tools become faster when you 'master' them rather than 'switch' them. After all, there are no chefs who buy new knives every month (laughs).

It was 'one deep' rather than 'ten shallow'

Since switching to mastering my tools, I have felt a clear change.

Back when I was shallowly touching ten different tools, I was a 'beginner' with every single one. Since I had to start by remembering how to operate them every time, my work actually slowed down.

But once I started mastering one, an 'accumulation' began to form in my interactions with the AI.

It learned about my business, my writing habits, and common request patterns. Because I keep working with the same partner, the need for explanations decreases. My own precision in how I make requests also improves.

Every time I switched to a new tool, this accumulation was being reset.

What I was trying to gain by searching for 'amazing tools' was actually something that could only be obtained by mastering the AI right in front of me. The difference in the depth of the relationship had a much greater impact on my work than the difference in tool performance.

I couldn't realize this until I actually tried it.

I didn't have to chase it, and I was still on time

There is one more thing I understood after stopping.

Truly important evolutions come to you without you having to chase them is that thing.

Updates that are truly valuable will naturally reach your ears through your usual information channels within a few weeks. If you try them then, you will be perfectly on time.

Conversely, many of the things I jumped on the moment they were released were not even being talked about a few weeks later.

Knowing about something as breaking news and actually mastering it are two different things.

There was a much greater distance than I had imagined between being well-informed and making my work easier.

That said, I still get a bit restless sometimes (laughs).

To be honest, there are still nights when I find myself scouring summary articles about AI tools late into the night.

That sense of anxiety hasn't completely disappeared.

However, when that happens, I try to ask myself this:

So, if I install that, which of tomorrow's tasks will actually decrease?

This one question usually brings me back to my senses.

If you are currently tired of chasing information about new AI tools,

it might be worth trying the option of "stopping the chase" for once.

Rather than increasing the number of tools, handing one task over to the AI right in front of me has changed my daily life much more reliably. At least, that was the case for me.

Thank you for reading until the end today.

Yamaguchi

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