For years, I avoided burdening others with unfinished thinking, so I stopped thinking out loud entirely.

AI became the thinking partner I never had, and my writing and businesses have improved because of it.

Research links heavy AI reliance to measurable declines in independent problem-solving ability.

Two guardrails, self-awareness and directed engagement, keep AI from replacing my own thinking.

I've always thought better out loud, in conversation, bouncing an idea off someone until it sharpens.

But I rarely do that.

I have always worried about burdening other people, and asking them to listen to me while I brainstorm ideas has always felt exactly like that. There's a cost to asking someone to sit with your unfinished thinking, listening to you ramble, while you try to figure out what's really happening inside your head.

I mostly decided it wasn't fair to ask. And my thinking was restrained, without even being aware of it.

Over the last couple of years, I've begun to work with AI pretty intensely every day: writing, planning, thinking through problems in my businesses, mapping outreach initiatives, working out ideas before they're ready to say out loud.

It has changed how I work.

A Different Kind of Burden

But I've become genuinely concerned about what AI is doing to my brain even though I continue to use it for hours most days. The research on the cognitive impacts of AI use has been trickling in, and it isn't reassuring.

There are some disturbing terms being coined around our brain on AI. Shaw and Nave (2026) coined "Cognitive........

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