Everyone's talking about if AI will replace them, but I think there is a bigger existential question we should be worried about, which is, are we replacing ourselves? Every week, there's a new update with AI and how it can edit your videos for you. It can script everything you want. It can reply on demand. It can remind you to reply. It can do anything. But wait, in six months, it gets even crazier. And we're all just like stressed and wondering, is the singularity finally here? Is there a tool that could solve all of my problems? I believe when you start chasing tools, trends, and tactics without checking in with yourself, you start to drift. Not all at once, just slowly. You make one little tweak here for the algorithm, one pivot for the platform, one post that you used AI to write that you wouldn't have written a year ago. And next thing you know, you're sitting on a whole body of work when you look back at the last six months or a year that you barely recognize. It doesn't feel like you. You're not even really sure who it's for. And in this AI era of content creation, it's not that the bar for content has risen. It's that the entire bar has just completely disappeared. There is no clear standard. There is no bar. There's just the experience you're creating for people when they're stepping into your world, whether that's a video, a podcast, a sub stack article, whatever it is. And I believe the creators who last, who sidestep the entire AI conversation, they aren't the ones that are mastering the latest tools available to them faster. They're the ones that are gonna be building a world that's unmistakably theirs. They're the ones whose work feels alive when everything else feels hyper optimized. You know what I mean? Like, I come across it every day when I'm going through a Reddit post, an Instagram post, a LinkedIn, whatever. There's just the perfectly created piece of content. It feels like it hits all of the notes, but yet somehow hits no notes at all. And it's just disconnected. So if you've been feeling restless lately, maybe it's not a sign that you need to keep up with everything going on. Maybe it's just a sign that you need to come back. Come back to your instincts, come back to your standards, and come back to why you are building or creating and sharing everything you're creating and sharing in the first place. A simple exercise for you today, before you post, create, or pivot anything you're doing, ask yourself, would I be proud of this if nobody saw it today? If yes, you're on the right track. If no, the algorithm isn't your problem, you are. But the good news is you're also the solution, and you are the reason why anyone wants to consume what it is that you're creating and sharing. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you're stuck because you're blind to something. I had a call last week with a client who said, I know what I want to do. I just don't know why I'm not doing it. And that sentence hits like a red flag for me because when someone says that, it almost always means that there's something deeper that they can't see. It's right there. I just don't know why I'm not doing it. The truth is AI can help you with 95% of the process. It's amazing. I love AI. It can organize your thoughts. It can sharpen your content. It can save you hours. But that last 5%, the stuff that actually moves you forward, it usually comes from another human. And there's a gap between how you're showing up and how you wanna show up. And it's hard to close that gap alone because the thing that's holding you back isn't your discipline. It's not more willpower. It's a blind spot. And sometimes it takes a real live person to be speaking with you to reflect it back to you. Not to tell you what to do, but to help you see what you already know and just make sense of the mess. So if that's you right now spinning your wheels even though you have all the tools, you've taken the online courses, you've watched the YouTube videos, don't beat yourself up. You don't need more motivation. You need a mirror. And that's why I love being able to work with people one on one. It's not the cheapest route, but in my experience, it's been one of the most effective ways to help people achieve real change. If you're interested in working one on one with me, just send me an email. My email is hi@dylanschmidt.com, and we can chat more.