Happy Thanksgiving, friends!

I’ve written a couple new posts over the last few days, and it’s reminded me that blogging—something I drifted away from—is still incredibly valuable. It takes real mental work to take an idea, process it, refine it, and share it, but that’s exactly what a blog is meant to capture: the living record of what we’re thinking and learning. With the help of AI, this is becoming a habit I can do daily without burning half my morning. If you want to read the recent posts, you can find them all here

Scott Adams, creator of the popular Dilbert comic, popularized a simple but brilliant idea: success doesn’t require being world-class at one thing. It requires being pretty good at several things—and combining those abilities into a “talent stack” that gives you an edge most experts don’t have. That idea has always resonated with me, because it’s exactly how my life has played out. I’ve never felt like a true “master” in any single discipline. But I’ve always been pretty good at a lot of things: - Accounting - Marketing - Bookkeeping - Writing - Persuasion - Organizing - Human relations - Communications - Empathy - Psychology - Education - Teaching - Construction - Building And honestly, I could keep going. People have called me a jack-of-all-trades. And they’re right. My success in business, writing, teaching, and relationships hasn’t come from being the best in any one domain—it’s come from being strong across many. But something new is happening now, and it’s changing the game completely: AI is upgrading every single part of my talent stack. Not replacing it. Not diminishing it. Amplifying it. And the best example is happening right in front of me as I’m writing this article. I’ve written books. I’ve run a publishing company. I’m a pretty good writer. But when it came time to publish something intended for bookstores or national circulation, I always hired editors—professionals who could take my drafts and polish them to a level I couldn’t reach on my own. Not because I lacked ideas, but because writing at a professional level requires clarity, objectivity, and distance… things humans struggle with when we’re tangled in our own thoughts. Now, when I sit down to write an article like this, I effectively have a professional editor at my elbow. AI helps me shape thoughts, refine structure, and tighten language. It bridges the gap between what I mean and what readers will actually understand. It gives me the one thing writers rarely have: an unbiased mind.

For as long as humans have measured their days, time has been viewed as the one resource that cannot be stretched, paused, bought, or reclaimed. We can learn new skills, regain lost money, and rebuild strength, but time has always marched in one direction. Yet the rapid rise of artificial intelligence challenges this assumption. For the first time in history, ordinary people can multiply their effective time by outsourcing the very processes that used to consume it: remembering information, exerting mental energy, and grinding through long hours of research or problem-solving. In this sense, AI functions as a modern time machine—not by bending the laws of physics, but by changing the mechanics of human productivity. Human capability has always been shaped by three core variables: memory, mental energy, and time. Memory determines what we retain and how quickly we can access it. Mental energy dictates how long we can focus and how efficiently we can work. Time limits everything else; it is the container that holds all other human efforts. Traditionally, improving any of these three required years of discipline. To grow in knowledge, one had to study. To gain skill, one had to practice. To conserve mental energy, one had to rest, plan, and pace oneself. Progress was real but slow. The internet dramatically changed the memory equation. Instead of storing facts in our heads, we learned to store them online. Search engines externalized memory; a person could retrieve answers in seconds that once took hours of flipping through reference books. But while the internet provided access to information, it did not remove the effort required to sift through results, interpret data, or make decisions. The mental energy cost remained. Searching the web still drained focus and demanded time. Knowledge was accessible, but it was not yet effortless. AI is the next leap in that evolution. It does not merely store information; it organizes, interprets, and applies that information. When someone uses AI to complete a task—whether it’s analyzing a document, drafting a response, solving a technical problem, or clarifying a complex process—they bypass the slow steps of searching, verifying, understanding, and synthesizing. In effect, they borrow a second brain, one that never tires and never forgets. Memory becomes infinite. Skill acquisition accelerates because the barrier to entry collapses. A person no longer needs to “know everything” in order to do something; they simply need to know how to ask.

Yesterday turned into one of those “suddenly everything is happening at once” days. Business demands shot up — I’m now shoulder-deep in a major application that requires clarity, precision, and a ton of information. And today I’m spending the entire day at a speech and debate tournament with three of my kids. So the pressure was on. But here’s the surprising part: I never actually got stuck. Not once. Every time a form asked a nebulous question…every time a government field was worded in a way that made no sense…every time I would’ve normally paused, second-guessed, Googled, or spun my wheels… …I just asked my AI clone.And instantly — boom — I had the answer, the reasoning behind it, and the next step. That was the pattern the entire day. There was no “fog” moment. No “I guess I’ll figure it out later.” No frustration spiral. Just forward progress. Honestly, I didn’t even realize how efficient I had become until this morning. I submitted the whole inquiry in about an hour. Realistically, the old version of me would have taken several days to plow through all that material. And it would have eaten up my whole evening. Instead, Wendy and I ended the day completely free — watching Naked Gun and laughing at the dumbest jokes ever written for film. If I had done this the old way, we would’ve never had that night. The realization hit me today: AI didn’t just help me work faster — it kept me from ever getting bogged down in the first place. It let me stay focused without having to be focused. It removed the friction that normally slows me down. And it bought me back time I wouldn’t have had. This is the shift happening in my life right now: AI is unlocking a level of efficiency and clarity I didn’t even know was possible.