Don't Skip the Friction
I’ve been thinking about how quickly AI can take us from an idea to a finished artifact: a plan, proposal, analysis, learning design, project charter. It only takes seconds. The quality is quite variable.
But when we invest more time in making something, we naturally ask more questions because the stakes are higher. The time it used to take to design and develop solutions often came with time to think about how and why we were doing it, and those questions introduced strategic friction and surfaced the need for alignment that made the downstream product better.
One practice I’ve started using is asking AI to slow me down before I ask it to produce anything:
• What am I missing?
• What assumptions am I making?
• What needs to be decided first?
• Where do you need more context?
• What have I not considered that I should?
• What would make this substantially better?
I work through those thought friction questions, add the missing context and strategy, and only then move into prototyping and production.
Sometimes a little productive friction is exactly what the work needs.
What question do you use to bring more intention and thought friction into your process with AI?
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