Let me ask you something honest.
When was the last time you sat with a problem? Not Googled it. Not prompted it. Just sat with it.
I'm talking about real thinking. The kind where you stare at a wall for twenty minutes and your brain does the heavy lifting. No ChatGPT. No Claude. No shortcuts.
If you're like most entrepreneurs I talk to, the answer is... you can't remember. And that should worry you.
Here's the thing. I love AI. I've built my business around helping people use it. I wrote a whole book about it. But I had a conversation on the King Moves podcast recently with my co-host Justin that stopped me in my tracks.
He asked a simple question: "Are our brains going soft?"
And I didn't have a good answer.
Think about what's happened in the last two years. You used to wrestle with ideas. You used to sit in the discomfort of not knowing the answer and work through it. Now? You type a few bullet points into a prompt and let the machine do the cognitive work for you.
We hide behind the word "efficiency." And yes, it is more efficient. But there's a cost.
Your brain is a muscle. And if AI is doing all the reps for you, that muscle is getting weaker.
I had a business coach years ago who made me block out "thinking time" on my calendar. No devices. No internet. Just me and my thoughts. Maybe a pen and paper. At first, it felt ridiculous. Like I was wasting time. But it turned out to be one of the most powerful habits I've ever practiced.
Because here's what AI can't do. It can't imagine something that's never existed. It looks backward, at patterns and data and what's already been said. Your brain looks forward. It connects dots that don't seem related. It creates from nothing. That's your superpower, and you're letting it atrophy.
So what do you actually do about it?
1. Put thinking time on your calendar. I'm serious. If it's not on your calendar, it's not real. Block 30 to 45 minutes, two or three times a week. Go for a walk. Go for a run. No earbuds. No podcasts. Just you and your thoughts.
2. Stop defaulting to AI for everything. Before you open ChatGPT, ask yourself: "Can I work through this on my own first?" Give your brain the chance to struggle. That's where the growth happens.
3. Use AI to set up your thinking, not replace it. This is a trick Justin brought up that I really liked. Ask your AI: "Based on what you know about me, what should I be thinking deeply about this week?" Let it give you the prompts. Then close the laptop and go think.
4. Practice small acts of cognitive effort. Justin shared something that hit me. He realized he was using GPS to navigate routes he already knew by heart. Ten times on the same road, still turning on the navigation. His brain had gotten that lazy. So he started turning it off. Small thing. Big principle.
You don't need to abandon AI. That would be foolish. But you do need to be intentional about when you use it and when you don't.
The entrepreneurs who win in the next decade won't just be the ones who use AI the best. They'll be the ones who still know how to think without it.
Your brain is your most valuable business asset. Treat it like one.
Put that meeting with your mind on the calendar today. Your future self will thank you for it.
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