When does AI help—and when does it hinder our agency? In this thoughtful episode of Rhythms of Focus, we explore the delicate balance between using powerful tools like AI and staying connected to our own creative process. Together, we reflect on ancient wisdom, modern technology, and the vital tension that fuels genuine discovery.

Listeners will learn:

• How the “tension of not knowing” nurtures creativity.

• Why AI can both empower and erode agency.

• A mindful way to stay engaged with our work’s unfolding.

Featuring the original piano piece “If You Feed a Squirrel.”

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#ADHD #WanderingMinds #MindfulProductivity #Agency #CreativeFocus #ADHDAdults #AIandCreativity #FlowState #IntentionalWork #RhythmsOfFocus

Transcript

I've got a problem. I don't know how this works. I don't know how to write this. I don't know the best order. I don't know where this new idea fits. Maybe I can get AI to do this.

Wow. AI has become quite the thing, more than a flavor of the month it's found its way into so many of our apps and tools.

Using a simple Google search now returns with an AI formulation of my query first.

There are AI apps that are used to, break down tasks and help us get moving forward. There are AI things that help us think through how to build an entire book among other possibilities. But the more powerful a tool I find, the more caution it requires. So how much caution does AI require?

The More Powerful the Tool, the More Caution it Requires

There's a rather ridiculous statement. I remember hearing in medical school a sort of backhanded joke towards this pharmaceutical world. Something like this, "Hey, there's a new medication let's use it before it has some side effects."

We often look around at our tools as these unmitigated positives, especially when they first start out.

Some promise, some efficiency, sometimes some clear boost to something we desire opens the door and there's no going back.

As humans, we use tools. The spoken word itself is a tool by which we ask and receive our wants and needs and nuance.

Socrates' Warnings Against the Written Word

Even the written word though can be of concern.

I wanna quote a story of Socrates, but before I do, it's important, dear listener, for you to know that I found this reference using ai. The story goes that an ancient God called Theuth first discovered numbers and calculations, geometry and astronomy, as well as the games of checkers and dice, but above all else writing.

And this God Theuth was excited about his inventions and came to the King of Egypt, Thamos, and he would describe the positives and negatives of these inventions. And one day he said, "oh, king, here's something that once learned will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory. I've discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom."

Thamos, however, replied, "Oh most expert Theuth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the father of writing your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are.

"In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it. They will not practice using their memory because they'll put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside completely on their own.

"You've not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding. You provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they would've come to know much, while for the most part, they will know nothing.

"And they will be difficult to get along with since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so."

Now, even as a writer myself, I absolutely love that paragraph. There are plenty of times where I thought, for example, that I was ready for an exam 'cause I went over the notes over and over again only to realize that it wasn't that I'd known the material, I hadn't remembered them from the inside. I could just recognize them.

So here we are with ai and again, the more powerful the tool, the more caution it requires.

A Discovery without AI

I want to describe a recent experience I had.

I'm inviting you into some of my thinking process lately about this concept I've been working on called The Eight Gears of Work. I go into some detail about it in episode 33, and in short, these eight gears are as follows. There's "Be", how we are without any intention, I should say.

There's consider where we reflect on it. There's our approach where we start dealing with the emotions involved. There's a visit where we are with the work, whatever we do, whether we do anything or not, there's our beginning where we start to iterate. There's complete, which is where we dedicate ourselves to completing the task or project.

There's schedule where we line ourselves up in some synchronization with other people or other times. And lastly, there's perform, where we do things with real live stakes.

And in any case, I was thinking of it as a way to represent, how to manage our sense of, I don't wanna, in the midst of it all,

So what's the spectrum here? What is the line from one end to the other? And my first response was effort.

But then I quickly realized that that was wrong, but I didn't know what was right. Is it engagement? Is it agency? Is it that extension into the world? How does it relate to those? I don't want a feelings. Why is it that the further you go, the stronger those feelings can become?

I had a strong temptation to take the currently 200 plus slide keynote presentation, all my process thoughts on the matter, and then maybe, uh, however many thoughts I have in my my Devon Think app where I have a ton of text files and just throw 'em into my AI app.

And say, here, please make sense of this, but what was that impulse?

The Vital Tension of Not Knowing

There's this tension that comes from not knowing. Creativity is about discovering something in the act of creating it. When we don't know something, we hold on to that not knowing. Maybe we write our questions, maybe we write what we wanna explore, but that feeling, that tension that lives within us when we get an answer to something from elsewhere, we risk bypassing that important path of growth through ourselves, where that release of tension that would come from discovery would create an effect within ourselves.

In the regular visits to the project. I kept coming to the words extension and engagement, and I suddenly realized this focus on agency, this skill and ability to decide and engage non-reactively, not on doing, for example.

So in this reflection, I came to this realization, oh, I've modeled this perspective of agency. Now, I don't know how entertaining this is to you, but for me it was important because now I have a way to describe and help people with those "i don't wanna" feelings in an even better way. I have a more solid foundation within myself that I could then translate.

If I had asked AI to solve my problem, maybe it would've come up with something like this maybe. But I doubt it, more importantly, it was crucial that I did not rely on it to prematurely resolve that sense of tension within me.

Tension and Agency

That tension without irony is exactly what agency is about. Our ability to sit non reactively with our emotions, with our sensations, where ideally, that they can no longer be driver, but instead messenger, had I allowed that tension to be a driver, I would've jumped right into the AI to give me the answer, Hey, tell me what, what, where I need to go.

And so AI is certainly powerful. But I wonder how much of our recent concerns that are bandied about on the internet relate to this idea? Could AI be something by which we abandon our sense of agency?

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