I Turn Off AI When Doing These 2 Things And You Should Too

For the past few months, I’ve been relying more and more on AI to get things done. I’ve replaced Google search with Perplexity. My code editor has AI in it. My terminal runs not one but two different coding agents.

I’ve also been experimenting with changes to my workflow by incorporating more AI into it. While I get a lot out of AI, I also avoid using it when I’m doing one of 2 things.

1. Learning

As I’ve talked about in my previous posts, I use AI to learn new skills. But I only use it to create learning materials. When it’s time to use those materials to learn, I turn off AI.

When learning, you’re required to think through the lessons. You have to build your own mental model about how things work. Using AI hinders this ability by giving you answers right away.

2. Writing

I have never written a post on my blog, using AI. Sometimes, I ask AI to clean up my typos and grammar but that’s about it. I never have and never will, ask an AI to write stuff for me.

Because, like learning, writing makes you think and keep a train of thought. This might be controversial but it’s a valuable skill that I refuse to offload. No matter how you prompt it, you lose authenticity if you don’t write it yourself.

An important reason that’s common to both of these activities is that I enjoy doing them.

I also enjoy coding. It’s undeniable that I get a lot out of using AI to code. But I want to reduce my reliance on it. Because like learning and writing, coding also requires thinking through things. I don’t want to lose that ability by having AI write all my code.

If you’re using AI on a daily basis as I am, I urge you to turn it off for things you enjoy doing.