Over the past few months, I’ve been asking myself this question:

“Am I getting stupiderer?”

My eldest son is sharp as a razor. He literally does not miss anything and his memory is out of this world. Not a day goes by where he doesn’t say:

“Dad, do you remember when…?” (nope).

I went to his school earlier this week and saw a painting he did. I asked him whether it was a Zebra, and he said:

“You know it’s a Zebra Dad, you can see the stripes.”

He’s not even 6.

Compare that to me who has only the occasional moments of quick wittedness, and can’t remember whether he took one of his ‘brain health supporting’ supplements 30 minutes ago. The comparison is quite stark.

I’m drawn to the conclusion that at his stage in life, he’s just using his brain more (and there’s probably also less crap in it).

I’ve not actually counted the number of prompts I write in a day. It could be more or less than the above number. Either way - it’s a lot.

For example, an influencer I work with got 2 DMs from companies that want to do brand deals with him, and he WhatsApped me the conversation where they’d provided their e-mail addresses for me to follow up.

Now, I could have used my brain to look at the e-mails, and re-type them into my Outlook ‘To:’ field. But did I?

Did I bollocks.

I dumped the screenshots in Claude and asked it to pull out the text. Why did I do this?

And herein lies the trap.

You now probably have a habit of asking AI first for EVERYTHING.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard these expressions.

“We need to become an AI first organisation”

“We need to be re-inventing our business with AI”

“We need to be collaborating with AI for everything”

I’m not against this (I’m a heavy AI user) but the other day I caught myself.

What if AI isn’t quite as good for everything as we thought? And am I losing confidence in my own abilities because I’m putting to much confidence in AI.

I’ll say that again.

Am I losing confidence in my own abilities?

Everyone says "use AI as a thinking partner." But Educator Mike Kentz argues that's exactly what's making us worse. Because a thinking partner is a crutch, and AI is a sycophant that "desperately wants you to like it."

So instead, treat it as a sparring partner that's trying to beat you. His mentor, sci-fi author Ken Liu, said this:

So instead of "What do you think about X?", ask "Ask me questions until you understand my problem better than I do," then answer them yourself. You're essentially using AI to surface what you think. (Mike Kentz)

My example is e-mail subject lines. I have a bit of an obsession with headlines (subjects, social media hooks, ads, book titles etc) and I’ve been ‘collaborating’ with Claude recently to the point where I’ve:

Now - I’ll never copy/paste a subject line, I’ll always have a fiddle with it first so it ‘feels’ more natural.

But looking back, I’d dedicated to much time and effort to being able to improve my subject line writing, that it put my ability to write into doubt full stop.

Looking at the data, my performance pre and post AI showed very little difference (not that e-mail open rates are even accurate).

And not just that, the mental fatigue and time consumed when generating, checking, scoring and re-writing an e-mail subject line was getting close to pure insanity.

So now, I write 3-4 subject lines from my own brain first

I then ask Claude to generate some options to see whether any come close (or to give me more inspiration on different angles)

Then I write the final thing myself.

Memory science backs this up with something called ‘The Generation Effect’.

You remember and understand things better when you generate the answer before seeing the right one. AI bastardises this by default because it gives you the answer first.

So…. write your rough answer / draft / hypothesis BEFORE you open Claude. Then use AI to pressure-test it. This reordering is what separated the "cognitively stronger" group in the MIT study. (The Generation Effect)

So concerned about AI infiltrating my brain, I now added this to my Claude personalisation for every response:

Is adding this prompt essentially saying: “Use your own brain dummy?” - probably - but at the same time, I’m an avid learner, so if AI has any suggestions on how I can use my brain better I’m open to it.

Is this the ultimate paradox? i.e using my brain to ask AI to tell me how to use my own brain? Again, maybe.

But just like breaking any bad habit, it comes with repetition.

Rory Sutherland (Ogilvy vice-chairman) said this:

Now find a video of him and imagine him saying it in his voice. His interview with Chris Williamson is great (Dirty Little Marketing Secrets That Always Work).

Nobody re-reads the essays they wrote at university but they improved their brain whilst writing them. AI "shortcuts from the request to the delivery and bypasses the very part of the journey that is valuable."

His warning to creatives: AI tempts you to "leap straight to finished" and congratulate yourself on "ok but not exceptional results." (Monday Morning Memo) · (MAD//Fest)

Either way, here’re some more non-AI methods you can use to nurture your own brain.

From my experience, the more hours I use my brain in higher gears throughout the day, the less the quality of my work is.

i.e hours using my brain and quality of work have an inverse correlation.

Cal Newport said (New York Times, 2026): just as we belatedly realised diet and exercise matter, we're about to realise "mental fitness" matters - and we're "rapidly losing the ability to think deeply at all."

His prescription is to deliberately learn a hard skill that demands focus and gives a clear improvement signal (an instrument, a sport, a craft). So you keep the muscle of deep concentration fit so it's there when you need it. (NYT) · (In defense of thinking - Cal Newport)

Another thing I asked Claude this week:

Here’s what Claude said:

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Critical thinking

Problem solving

Creativity

This matters most for your actual goal. The risk isn't AI itself — it's cognitive offloading, outsourcing the thinking so consistently that the muscle wastes. A few rules that keep AI a sparring partner rather than a crutch:

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As with all AI responses, the utility of this is questionable.

The book recommendations are good.

Method 4 was the only thing I’d not heard before.

And I think that using AI to attack your own reasoning is a dangerous game.

Sure, use it to get some opposing / alternative views, but you don’t want to be using AI to add more bias to a thought process that’s potentially already biased.

And I don’t want to treat every AI output as a claim to be verified, it’ll defeat the point of using it in the first place.

Use your brain.

Before you start clawing for Claude.

Ask yourself “Shall I use my own brain first”.

Trust yourself.

You’re better than you ‘think’ ;)

Now go paint yourself a Zebra!

Until next time.

Adam

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P.S - Want me to help you find you best AI use cases? Reply with what you’re struggling with, and I’ll help where I can.

P.P.S - 3 extra goodies for you:

1. Claude for e-mail subject lines:

How I get 52.98%+ opens on a newsletter to 190k subs here

2. Turn followers into brand partnerships (without relying on agencies)

5 day e-mail course on how I've delivered $500k+ in 6-months for influencers here

3. Resource vault

Everything else I've produced over the past 3 years here.