There are a thousand opinions about how good AI is or isn’t, and I’m not wading into that today. I want to talk about something smaller and more personal: one specific way I use it that has quietly made me a better man, a better friend, and a better leader.
Most people know the rubber duck trick by now, where you talk a problem out loud to something that just listens until the answer surfaces on its own. I’ve written about that before. This is a cousin of it, but set up on purpose, it does a lot more than let me hear myself think.
Start with the premise: I’m a work in progress
For any of this to work, I have to admit something up front. I’m not a finished person. My sense of right and wrong is solid, and I know what it means to be a good man. But I still get offended sometimes. I still do the occasional double take at something that genuinely earned one. There have even been moments where a situation made me flat-out angry. I know, shocking.
Feeling all of that is just being human. The part that actually matters is what I do with it next.
The gap between the feeling and the response
I lean Stoic in how I try to think, and the core of it, at least the part that stuck to me, is that you don’t control what happens, only how you meet it. The line I keep in my pocket puts a number on it: life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. I believe that completely.
Here’s the catch. My first reaction is often not my best one. Especially when it’s a negative one. That gap, between what I feel in the first hot second and how I actually want to respond, is exactly where things go sideways or come together.
So I built myself some sparring partners
This is where the AI comes in. I’ve set up a handful of tailored agents whose entire job is to help me think, not to think for me. I talk to them almost every day.
- A no-BS one that calls me out on my own nonsense and won’t let me off the hook.
- One that knows my work situation, names redacted, so I can pressure-test how I’m handling something before I handle it badly.
- One that helps me weigh my hobbies and tells me, plainly, when I’m setting myself up to fail.
Each one is built to push from a specific angle. Together they give me something I have a hard time giving myself in the moment: a second look.
It does not tell me what to do
This only works because I’m not handing over the decision. I’m borrowing a perspective, not a verdict.
I can take a flash of anger and, a few seconds later, be looking at the same situation through a calmer lens. I can bring in a shiny new idea and have something remind me of the fifty ideas I already had, then ask me honestly where this one fits among them. The AI doesn’t decide anything. It widens the frame so the person making the call, me, is working with more than a gut reaction.
The reflecting is still mine to do. I just appreciate getting the chance to do it before I open my mouth, instead of after.