Hard is good. Even if it feels bad

“Blog post about the journey in writing not the final output and in creatives and why AI robs us of that journey.”

This was my note to myself, and, like so many other notes about writing blog posts, I thought it would get moved along my calendar, day by day, week by week, until at some point I faced facts: I will not write this blog post.

"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing." – John Dewey

But not this time. Oh no. Today, I have had enough of actual work, and instead, I will turn my rather frazzled brain to this document, so good luck, dear reader. I have no idea how this will go. 

Of course, what I could do is simply open up ChatGPT and plug in all the things I want to talk about and boom, there’s my blog post. But that’s kind of what this post is about. In fact, it’s not kind of, it is. It’s about the journey. Man. Not the destination. 

OK, where to start? Let’s see. 

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." – Thomas Edison.

There we go.

It took me a while to warm up to LLMs. ChatGPT, in particular. What got me hooked was when I had to go through pages upon pages of full names, email addresses and company names and put them all into columns in a spreadsheet, but the original document was a PDF, and when I tried to copy/paste them, all hell broke loose. Eventually, I threw it into ChatGPT and asked it to do it for me and lo and behold, it did. It took moments to do something that would have taken me a couple of hours to do. I was converted. And that’s how easy I am. 

"Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat." – Denis Waitley 

This is the kind of task I want technology for. You know that quote by Joanna Maciejewska;

“I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.”

A-freaking-men. 

But then, you know, you’re sat there staring at a blank page and you have to be CrEaTiVE and you can’t be, you just can’t be. So you crack open that tab and ask ChatGPT to give you just a little nudge in the right direction.

Juuuuust a little one. 

It’s a slippery slope. 

“Very few people want to actually do the work. They want the benefits of having done the work. But the work is the work. It is non-transferable.” – Jess Wheeler

The next thing you know, we’re skipping all the “hard” stuff. But the hard stuff, especially when any kind of creativity is involved, is where the good stuff is. I mean, there’s a reason for shower thoughts. For that proven method of stopping what you’re doing and getting outside and then BOOM. It hits you. And that’s it. That’s what works. What sells. Whatever you’re trying to do, that’s when the good stuff comes. 

It’s not going to come from a prompt. 

"Failure is the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently." – Henry Ford 

But we’re outsourcing all of this to ChatGPT, asking it to summarise entire books we haven’t read (and haven’t paid for), brainstorm ideas we haven’t thought through, and generate insights we haven’t earned. We’re basically middle managers of our own creative lives, delegating away the mess, the frustration, and – crucially – what comes with that; the growth. But we’ve labelled it efficiency, and who doesn’t like efficiency? 

Except … doing the work is the point, people. 

We’re cheating ourselves. We’re robbing ourselves of everything that comes with the hard stuff. Jesus, I mean, it’s a lesson we’ve been taught all our lives and teach our children; you work at something, you get better at it. You cheat? Not so much. 

I know it’s so very, very tempting to treat the final product, whether it’s a presentation, a marketing campaign, or a blog post, as the thing that matters most. But as Ann Handley writes so succinctly:

“The process of creating something is where the meaning lives. It’s not the thing, it’s the making of the thing.”

If you skip the doubt, the dead ends and the frustration, you also skip the part where you learn something. Because the real value of a project isn’t in the polished deliverable – it’s in the effort it took to get there. That’s where you grow. That’s where you develop taste, judgment, and discernment. It’s where you build your voice.

You can’t automate becoming good. You’ve probably seen that recent MIT study suggesting that relying heavily on ChatGPT for writing tasks can lead to a decline in cognitive engagement and memory, potentially creating "cognitive debt" where users struggle to perform tasks independently after relying on AI.

Doesn’t that just terrify you? It terrifies me. So much about this day and age makes me think of the humans in Wall-E. 

I read this newsletter (which you should really subscribe to) about embracing restrictions by Jess Wheeler, and this is what I’m going to think about every time I’m tempted to skip the hard stuff.

“Sometimes your best fighting is done when backed into a corner.”

Often, those very restrictions so easy to loath are what forces us to be creative. Creative solutions never came from anything easy. We need the pressing deadline. We need the blank page. We need the “Fuck this, I’m going for a walk” because, segue back to the top; that’s where the good shit happens. I like this quote Jess included:

"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” – Orson Welles

When technology rids us of all limitations, do we really get more creative – or do we all just end up in a bland soup of mediocrity? It’s the latter, and I’ll die on that hill. For now. 

Aside: This is a whole other blog post, isn’t it. Are we all succumbing to the Great Blanding because of AI? 

I think you get the gist of this ramble by now. 

If you’re working on something important – something that matters to you – maybe don’t skip the part where it’s hard. That’s the part that makes it yours. That’s the part where you learn. And that’s the part that makes it all worth it.

Now I have to go and think of what image to use for this blog post, which I already know is going to be a bloody nightmare.

Oh wait, I just had an idea. Thank God.

Edit: I’ve snuck in this photo I took of Christopher Keatinge giving a talk on OOH. This sums up this blog post nicely. The original image was the Wall-E one up there.