Potential Unbound

What happens when reality doesn't follow the playbook? Professional athletes, poker champions, and chess grandmasters have long understood a critical performance secret: reviewing game footage is essential for improvement. The NFL quarterback studying defensive formations, the poker pro analyzing betting patterns, and the chess master reviewing opening theory—all rely on the same fundamental principle: captured experience becomes the foundation for future success. Consider how a professional football team prepares each week. They don't just practice plays; they meticulously review film from previous games, identifying patterns, weaknesses, and opportunities. This footage provides objective reality, showing exactly what happened rather than what players thought happened. The New England Patriots under Bill Belichick became legendary for their film study discipline, allowing them to anticipate situations before they developed on the field. Similarly, poker professionals like Dani...

The conversation around artificial intelligence's impact on work and thinking has reached a critical inflection point. As we navigate this technological transformation, we face a fundamental choice that will shape not only how we work, but how we think and innovate. The question isn't whether AI will change our professional landscape—it's whether we'll use it to enhance our cognitive capabilities or allow it to atrophy them. The Two Paths: Complacency vs. Enhancement The Path to Mental Complacency AI presents a seductive trap: the ability to delegate our thinking and creativity to machines. When we treat AI as a replacement for cognitive effort rather than an amplifier of it, we risk what can only be described as "brain rot"—a gradual erosion of our critical thinking abilities. This path looks deceptively productive. We complete tasks faster, generate content more efficiently, and solve problems with less effort. But underneath this apparent productivity l...