There is a scene that came to mind this weekend from Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s been a while since I saw it, so I found it on YouTube (linked above), and yep, it’s a match.
Indiana Jones comes face-to-face with a swordsman who puts on an experienced display of skill. Every movement is precise, and his finesse draws a crowd. The blade spins, and everyone watching expects an epic duel between two masters of their craft.
Instead, Indiana Jones calmly pulls out his revolver and ends the fight in one quick shot. The swordsman had spent years perfecting his craft, but guess what, the whole fight changed.
I’m sure this is what AI did to the way many of us do our work.
For decades, we were rewarded for becoming better swordsmen. We learned to build the perfect presentation, craft researched and validated reports that took weeks. We prided ourselves on how much we could produce and how quickly. We proved that the person who worked the fastest was the person creating the most value. I believed it too. I built a whole career on being the fastest sword in the room.
Then AI showed up carrying a completely different tool.
Today I can complete what used to take me a day, before I finish my first cup of coffee, and summarize a two-hour meeting in less time than it takes to refill my water bottle. The functional work that once consumed entire afternoons now happens while I sleep. And my first instinct, which I suspect was everyone's, was that this meant I should simply do more. More meetings, more content, more projects, more everything, faster and faster until presumably someone hands you a trophy.
Miraculously, over the past month, I have found myself slowing down. Not because I had less to do, but because for the first time in years, I actually had time and space in my brain to think.
I have begun writing down the things that I always said I was going to deliver, that didn’t happen because other priorities took over. Documenting the dream projects that I kept close and haven’t shared with bosses or business partners. I decided that I do not want AI to help me cram more work into my day. I want it to remove enough fulfillment-type work so that I can spend real time on the parts only humans can do. Thinking. Listening. Connecting ideas that do not easily belong together. Having longer conversations without an agenda. Walking away from my desk long enough for a better idea to come to me.
Some of the best insights of my career did not arrive while I was staring at a screen. They came while driving, or hiking, or sitting on a dock, or talking through a problem out loud with someone I trust. AI cannot create those moments. What it can do is create space for them, and that is a very different thing.
I think a lot of us are still trying to swing the sword faster. We are asking AI to help us answer email quicker, generate more presentations, publish more content, and check off more tasks, without ever pausing to ask whether that is still the race. Because here is the thing about a world where everyone can produce competent work in minutes. Competent work stops being scarce, and things that are not scarce stop being valuable. The scarce resources now are judgment, creativity, curiosity, taste, empathy, and original thought. AI can hand you 100 ideas in 9 seconds. It still cannot tell you which one will change someone's mind, because that answer comes from years of experience, hard conversations, mistakes, wins, and the slow process of learning how people actually think. You still own that part, and it's getting more valuable by the day.
None of this is an argument against speed. It is an argument for being intentional about where speed belongs. Let AI accelerate the functional work, absolutely. Then take some of that recovered time back for yourself instead of immediately refilling the calendar. Protect a little of it. Read something that has nothing to do with your industry. Take the walk. Talk with someone who sees the world completely differently from you. Sit with an idea long enough for it to become genuinely interesting instead of merely efficient. Creativity has never once responded well to panic, and it is not going to start now.
The professionals who thrive over the next decade will not simply be the ones who learned AI first. They will be the ones who figured out what to do with the time AI gave back.
Indiana Jones did not win because he became a better swordsman. He won because he recognized that the fight's rules had changed.
I think that is exactly where we are.
AI is accelerating our work. It does not have to accelerate our thinking. That pace is still ours to set.
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