Use AI to Get Closer to the Work

I've been thinking a lot lately about where AI actually helps me versus where it worries me. The worry is real: it's easy to let it do the thinking instead of just the fetching.

What I've landed on is that most of my use is in the small moments. Not the big, dramatic “AI automated my life” workflows you see everywhere. The quiet, unglamorous stuff: pulling information together, interacting with my computer, clearing the path so I can actually think.

When I add them up, the common thread is this: AI gives me back the time I used to spend on logistics, so I can spend that time actually thinking. The unfortunate truth about working at a big company is there is A LOT of distractions so finding time to sit with your thoughts can be difficult. So far, AI has helped me buy that time back.

Concrete examples from the last few months:

Synthesizing feedback from my design team across Figma, FigJam, PowerPoint, and written notes to help capture everything in one place and help me read it all.

Estimating available design capacity for a quarter using Excel before I had to make commitments. Pressure-testing a plan by asking what I'm assuming, what's missing, and where it could fail.

Turning a concept into something clickable fast enough that the team can respond to the experience instead of the description.

In every one of these cases, the collating and data transfer used to be a huge part of the work. Now, AI can help me bring it all together so I can spend quality time thinking, not clicking a mouse.

AI takes the first step, pulls things together, and gives me something to react to. I still decide what matters and own the judgment. But I get to the actual thinking faster, and with less friction between the idea and the thing.

Tools like Microsoft Scout are where this is heading. An agent that can go fetch, translate, and surface what you need, in the form you need it. It's not perfect yet, but it's improving leaps and bounds every few days.

The principle that keeps applying: use AI to get closer to the work, not farther away from it.

Closer to the source, closer to a working prototype, closer to the real question. That's less flashy than handing AI a whole job. It's also more useful to me.