If I didn’t have AI, I wouldn’t be publishing articles every week. I’m 100% sure of that.
Taking care of our 9-month-old son with my wife has been hard.
This is a bit embarrassing to admit, but I actually thought that parents who were saying that nursing a baby is hard work were exaggerating.
Well, they were right.
Anyway. We all have our reasons why we’re tired. And when we’re tired, it’s damn near impossible to focus on your work.
That’s because any type of knowledge work requires mental energy.
And when there’s a lot going on in your mind, your work suffers.
In the past, when I had stressful periods, I would still write a decent amount, but I would never get around to publishing my drafts.
Now, I write, and my AI agents help with what comes after it. I still check what goes out. I just don’t have to carry every step around in my head anymore.
That’s made a real difference during a period when I don’t have much mental energy to spare.
The name of the game is removing friction
Most people talk about AI in terms of speed. How much faster can you write an email? How many hours can you save? How much more can you produce?
Those are the wrong questions. I focus on this:
How can I remove any type of friction in my work?
Look at it this way. We already have work, family responsibilities, bills, and all kinds of things on our minds.
If you want to get better at what you do, you need some mental space to think, come up with ideas, and focus.
That’s why I look at the things around the work itself.
In my case, I’d finish writing and think, now I have to format this article, add hyperlinks, create an image, and put it on Substack and my website.
Just thinking about all those steps took extra mental energy. And I had to do them again for the next article.
Those tasks need to get done, but the thinking and writing are where I have something to contribute.
So I’ve set up my AI agents to handle the repeatable publishing work. I still check what goes out, but I can focus on creating without having to do every step afterward.
That’s what I mean by removing friction. You make it easier to do the work you care about. And I’ve seen the same thing happen for people around me.
My father speaks English and Dutch as his second and third languages. Before, he regularly ran his communication by other people. Now, with AI, he has more confidence handling it himself. He knows what he wants to say. He has help expressing it.
My friend Kian runs his own Substack while working full-time and raising a child. AI helps him keep it going alongside everything else in his life. I can relate to that. Having something you want to share and having the energy to get it out into the world are two different things.
Then there’s my friend Chris, who runs a sales training company. We talk every week, and when I told him how I use agents, he wanted me to show him.
His dream was to run more of his business from his phone. He’s often in meetings or on the go, so he wanted to dictate what needed doing, then read and approve the work.
We spent about 20 minutes connecting his apps and setting up a central place for his material.
Now, his meeting transcripts feed into a process that prepares follow-up steps and drafts emails. He can spend more of his attention on meetings and solving problems, the work he loves.
My wife uses AI at home too. She often speaks to it instead of typing, asking it to help find things we need for our son. With browser access, it can help with the shopping instead of only giving her another list of things to do.
These are ordinary parts of life.
Communicating, raising a family, running a business, and making time for something creative. That’s why I find this so useful. You can start with a problem you already have.
What could you take off your mind?
If you want to get to the next level in your work, look at how much of your attention goes to everything around it.
There will always be bills, paperwork, emails, and things to sort out. Doing every little task yourself can leave you with very little energy for the work that’ll actually help you move forward.
That’s why I think it’s worth looking at your work as a system. You figure out which tasks repeat, how you want them done, and where you need to check the result. Then you can get help without having to explain everything from scratch every time.
It’s also why I created AI Pro. In the course, I share the mental models I use and show you how I automate repeatable tasks with AI agents. So you can focus on the core of your work without feeling drained by everything around it.
If that’s something you’re interested in, check out AI Pro here.
Removing friction is how I use it too. I use a system called AIOS to put structure into the way I write and publish, and like you I still check what goes out. One thing surprised me though. I expected freedom from the tasks I saw as a waste of time for decades, but reality hit hard: I discovered brain fatigue, the sensation of running out of power and slowly shutting down. Once those tasks were gone, a belief showed up that I had never decided on: my worth is my output. Basically the friction was also carrying something. So the first question I ask now, before handing a task to AI, is what that task was doing for me that I never questioned. That's the practice I call first questions… asking yourself what others, or your own habits, have already answered for you.
Good day
May I ask what agent(s) you use?