AI Can't Think for You: Why Email Management Still Requires Your Brain

The Shipwreck Scenario: When Quick Fixes Fail Knowledge Workers

Shipwreck scenario: your boat’s gone down and you are at sea, treading water, exhausted, about to give up.

Just before you do, a couple of rowboats appear on the horizon, one towing the other. Hope is restored.

When they get close, you learn that the captain of boat one isn’t giving rescue away for free. He’s selling boat two. At a rip-off price. It’s expensive, but what is the alternative? You empty your pockets and climb over the side.

As you row away you note a number of tiny geysers coming from the bottom of the boat. It’s full of holes! You’re sinking again, looking for ways to plug the holes in your boat, and fantasising about to ways to punch some holes in the vendor.

The AI Email Management Promise: The Holy Grail of Productivity?

One of the things that keeps cropping up in conversations with clients is the hope that the latest improvements in AI will soon mean that they’ll no longer need to check their email. They’ll simply get summaries of content received - and actions to take - each day, and that will be the end of dealing with their inboxes themselves.

For knowledge workers worldwide, this may well be the most eagerly awaited promise of AI. The holy grail. Free at last!

Why AI Can't Fully Manage Your Inbox (Yet)

Free? Well, not quite…Because, for a good while yet, you can’t actually trust that your AI has complete and up-to-the-minute understanding of your world, even with access to all your files. That solution is currently as leaky as a busted rowboat. The purveyors of AI are approaching a market of billions of people drowning in a sea of inputs touting a shiny boat riddled with holes. A shiptech scenario.

Of course, buying a leaky boat makes no sense if you can swim well, or already have a hole-free boat. But most people have no system for managing their inputs effectively, so someone is going to get very wealthy selling this solution. Sigh. Modern day cut-throat profiteers of the stormy seas that are today’s work environments.

Don’t get me wrong. I think AI is going to be game-changing in many domains. I love how it’s already supporting surgeons with image analysis, for example. In the aftermath of a stroke, AI analysis of what type of stroke has occurred is leading to faster, more relevant treatment in the UK, and taking patient outcomes from 16% to close to 50% in terms of regaining functional independence. Amazing stuff.

The Knowledge Worker Reality: Your Brain Is Still Your Best Tool

But knowledge workers, who by definition are paid to think, will always have a large subset of work that requires them to think, decide, and prioritise. That is how they add value. No thinking, no value. No value, no job. AI can already do some of the grunt-work, but the very purpose of knowledge workers is to do the thinking that AI cannot.

For the foreseeable future, there is simply nothing that has the flexibility and up-to-date context-sensitive, nuanced decision-making ability of your brain. AI can’t do it well enough, so you’ll want to get used to doing it for yourself.

The Real Solution: Systematic Thinking and GTD Principles

Protecting Time for Strategic Decision-Making

What does doing it look like? Not complicated - you need to protect time to think and decide systematically what has come at you in the last little while. Protect it because this is your real work. Not just something you squeeze in between meetings. How much time depends on the nature of your work and the amount of responsibility you are holding. It’s unlikely less than an hour per day, and probably not more than two.

If you protect that time, you will have more perspective on what is coming at you, and become more strategic in choosing where to focus your effort for the rest of your day.

The Choice: Build Your System or Patch AI's Holes

It’s that, or try and let AI do it…while you get busy trying to find and fill the holes….

‍