“Hey ChatGPT, how do I learn to think again?

AI is a nasty bastard. As it should be.

This post is the result of a limiting belief I had. Still have. I consulted ChatGPT about it: “Challenge me.”

It all started three weeks ago, when I dived into an AI rabbit hole for the “AI Generated Content” course I’m lecturing at Artevelde University of Applied Sciences.

AI Generated Content is not about AI tools or teaching students how to prompt for great content. Making Italian brainrot? No can do. This course is about the human in the loop. How to keep thinking when artificial intelligence is a continuous invitation to stop thinking? What mindset thrives in the Age of Automation?

Saying “No!” to AI is not the answer. Saying “Yeah!” isn’t the answer either.

My own AI workflow is messy. (And not quite sustainable, environmentalists will point out.) I often start conversations in ChatGPT 5.2, take some of the answers to Gemini Pro, make a couple of detours to NotebookLM, and manually put everything together. Not quick and dirty—mostly dirty.

I could turn my workflow into something more elegant and more efficient. I won’t. The messiness is the point.

I get the best results when AI starts prompting me. When it tells me: “Good job, Tim! But we need to answer a couple more questions.” Oh shit, really?!

Really.

Using AI is not about removing friction, but adding it.

That’s a message most organisations don’t quite get. But what do you get if you rely on AI to cut costs and speed up workflows? Short-term wins: hopefully. Long-term losses: definitely. Why?

1. When companies use the same AIs to “optimise” workflows, they will eventually work along the same lines. With brands, strategies and products converging, price becomes the battleground.
2. Talent craves challenge. The brightest minds don’t gravitate towards the easiest jobs—that’d bore the shit out of them. When talent runs off, only lazy thinkers remain.
3. If you have optimised your workflow so much that decision-making feels effortless, you’re no longer striving for excellence. You’ve automated mediocrity.

And then, suddenly, something happens that disrupts your nicely optimised workflows. Bummer. Your smartest thinkers are gone. You’ve forgotten how to make decisions yourself.

“Hey ChatGPT, how do I learn to think again?”

Ouch.

If an organisation wants to keep thinking, it needs to add friction. It needs messy workflows. F. thinking.

I’d love to share that message beyond my AI Generated Content course. But here comes my limiting belief:

I’ve no clue how.

Give me an audience and I’ll bring energy to the room. But I don’t know how to become a keynote speaker. Where do I find an audience willing to add friction? How do I sell a keynote?

So I asked ChatGPT to act as my mentor. It asked me:

“If this idea is so aligned with your identity…

Why haven’t you built it already?

What stopped you?”

To cut a too long story a little shorter: this post is the first step in “unstopping” myself.