Conversations about productivity often tout the benefits of a streamlined, automated, frictionless workday. We are told we need to optimize our workflows and be as efficient as possible so we can do allthethings, and do them faster.
Generative AI promises to make it even easier to mass-produce content at the push of a button.
But this obsession with productivity can do more harm than good. As a consultant, you are hired for your judgment and perspective, not for your ability to produce widgets or content faster than your peers.
The more we automate and streamline our workday, the more our capacity for deep work and critical thinking atrophies. Productivity of this kind is the enemy of deep work, and deep work is essential to building your authority. Wrestling with your ideas and capturing them on the page is a deliberate, messy, and rigorous process essential to developing a cohesive body of work that builds your authority and your business.
The price of removing intellectual friction.
In a society that is addicted to the hustle, productivity feels fantastic. For many of us, checking off all the tasks on our to-do lists is incredibly satisfying.
But being productive isn’t the same as making an impact; it’s just easier to measure.
If you have a list of 15 tasks to complete, and you complete every one, you have most certainly been productive. But is productivity the right thing to measure? Were the tasks on your list worth your attention? Did they actually move you closer to achieving your goals? What was the point of each of those actions? Or was checking the box the point?
Measuring impact is much more difficult, especially if you aren’t crystal clear about the objective. Unlike productivity, which can be measured immediately, it often takes time to know whether your work achieved the desired result. Even more troubling, it’s almost impossible to know how much of that result can be attributed to the work you did, as opposed to work done by others, environmental factors, or pure dumb luck.
And so we revert to optimizing for productivity.
Our collective obsession with productivity explains much of the hype around generative AI. There’s something attractive about the idea of doing more, faster — especially for those of us who look at our ever-growing to-do lists and wonder whether we’ll ever catch up. And it’s that fear of constantly falling behind that drives so many people to treat writing as yet another task that can be outsourced to the robots.
When you remove the intellectual friction created by wrestling with your ideas and instead rely on generative AI to churn out an ever-increasing number of articles, your perspective — the one thing that differentiates you from your peers — slowly erodes until you sound like everyone else in your field.
At that point, you’re adding to the noise, not the conversation.
Authority development requires friction. It requires you to step off the content treadmill and stop kneeling at the altar of productivity. It requires you to make a conscious decision to do fewer things, better. It requires you to slow down and carve out time for deep work and critical thinking.
The power of the pause.
“The pause is where leadership happens.”
This insight was shared by Kiki Wilkinson, a leadership development consultant and a member of my Writing Practice community. It is a powerful observation because the pause is where so much of value happens — including leadership, discernment, deep thinking, and clarity.
Friction creates that pause.
In a frictionless environment, there are no pauses. By adding friction to your environment, you create opportunities for deep thinking, which allows nuance and depth to emerge in your writing. And when nuance and depth emerge in your writing, they emerge in every other aspect of your work.
The search for balance.
Too much friction can keep you from accomplishing your goals. Too little friction can dull your capacity for critical thinking and deep work.
Like many of my clients, I sometimes have a hard time starting a writing project or sticking with it until it is finished. I love the practice, but the closer I get to finishing a piece, the more I feel called to deep clean my house and reorganize my sock drawer. If we push through this resistance through sheer willpower, we may become so frustrated and exhausted that we start doubting ourselves. Generative AI certainly can remove that friction so we can meet our deadlines, but it also dulls our thinking and flattens our voices, making us indistinguishable from our peers.
The key is to remove the operational friction that keeps me from finishing my article without removing the intellectual friction that keeps my thinking sharp. For me, writing in community and being accountable to and for the members of that community strikes the perfect balance. Being in the same virtual space with others who are writing and refining their articles keeps me focused on the work. Pushing through the initial discomfort of the blank page to wrestle with a complex idea and make it presentable to my peers keeps my thinking and writing sharp.
Finding this balance when working with generative AI was a bit more difficult.
I was more than a little reluctant to adopt generative AI when it hit the market in 2023. But I knew I needed to understand its strengths and weaknesses so I could advise my clients on how and when to use it effectively.
Once I dove in, I found it was easy to spend hours playing with this new tool. I’d give a simple prompt, and AI would respond and then offer a next step. Out of curiosity, I would take it up on its offer, following it down every rabbit hole. Before I knew it, I had a fifty-page document in response to what started as a simple question.
I love these kinds of rabbit holes, so I knew I needed to add friction to my use of generative AI or risk wasting hours of time playing with nothing to show for it.
To add the necessary friction to my use of generative AI, I adopted an AI usage policy that requires me to make a $10 donation to EarthJustice or the Natural Resources Defense Council for every 30-minute session with generative AI. That bit of friction ensures that I plan out my session before I open the application and that I keep those sessions focused on a single goal. It also counteracts at least a small portion of the negative impact these tools have on the environment.
And while generative AI is often touted for its ability to remove friction from your workflow, you can also use it to add friction to your authority-development efforts by prompting it to push back against your thinking, point out holes in your logic, and challenge your assumptions.
The intentional use of friction for authority development.
If you’re trapped on the content treadmill, churning out content and feeling exhausted by the effort, and you’re relying on generative AI to keep from getting exhausted, this will feel uncomfortable at first. But incorporating friction into your workflow will ensure that every piece you write serves as a cogent, nuanced, and powerful business development asset. To get started:
1. Step off the content treadmill and commit to writing just one original, high-quality article every month.
2. Before you write a single word of your next article, conduct a rigorous SOAR analysis. Think critically about who the piece serves, the objective of the piece, the difference it will make to the reader, and the impact it will have on your reputation. This ensures your writing has depth.
3. When you’re ready to start writing, write your first draft as quickly as possible. In my workshops, people have 20 minutes to write a shitty first draft. The point of this draft is to get the ideas out of your head and onto the page, so write without turning to generative AI.
4. Shift your attention from the algorithms and faceless masses to a single prospective client. Write to and for them. And address a challenge they are navigating right now so you can use the article to nurture that relationship.
5. Prompt your generative AI tool of choice to discredit your article by poking holes in your logic, demonstrating where your argument fails, pointing out your unsupported assumptions, and making a counter-argument you failed to address.
Clients don’t hire you for your ability to produce a ton of things quickly. They hire you for your judgment and perspective. They hire you for your thinking.
You can do more, faster, or you can do less, better.
It’s your choice.
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Erica Holthausen is an authority development strategist and the founder of Catchline Communications. A veteran writer and editor, she equips consultants with the tools to share their perspective through original, high-quality articles that build authority and serve as powerful business development assets. In addition to writing for their blogs, her clients have been featured in Inc., TD Magazine, and Harvard Business Review. To learn how to turn your expertise into recognized authority, join The Authority Lab, a free monthly Q+A for consultants. Register here.
