AI builds my presentations now. It drafts and designs my slides—saving me real time and boosting productivity in many ways—but it still can’t build my full-day, seven-hour workshops.
A workshop is a different story. While AI can sit in on the Zoom call, I still need to talk to the client, ask follow-up questions in real time, gather the client’s real use cases, build the agenda, and decide the training flow. I could feed all of it to AI for a draft agenda, but I’d still have to review every line. At that point, I might as well do the thinking myself.
In order for AI to actually work for me, it needs clarity from me—and clarity comes from thinking first. Otherwise, it’s just a productivity trap.
AI makes anything look polished, but you decide how to make it better
On the surface, AI-built slides look great. What AI can’t tell you is whether a workshop flows logically, whether attendees can absorb the information at that pace, or where the room needs a break. I can. That’s my job.
This Morning
The daily digest for entrepreneurs and business leaders
Thinking is the step we skip, and AI can’t do it for you
Most of us skip the thinking step because we don’t have time for it given all our meetings, unrealistic deliverables and last-minute fires. That’s not a criticism—we’re all running from one meeting to the next, and a quick prompt in AI with an instant answer is hard to resist.
But if you want AI to be productive, you have to decide what you want it to do, how it should do it, and what information it needs. That is thinking. I’ve tried delegating it to AI, and I keep finding that I already know what I want. Sometimes it’s faster to think everything through and do it myself.
Preparation decides how much AI can do for you
Preparation is where your thinking turns into something AI can actually use. It’s like hosting a dinner party. AI can suggest a theme, recipes, and a plan. You still decide what makes sense, then do the shopping, chopping, and arranging yourself.