There's a specific way a lot of people have started using AI that feels reasonable on the surface but tends to produce weaker outcomes than they expect: making a decision first, then asking AI to check it. "Does this plan make sense?" "Is this the right call?" "Can you sanity-check this approach?" These questions feel like due diligence. In practice, they're often asking AI to validate a decision that's already been made, and AI is structurally not very good at that particular job. The distinction that matters here is sequence. AI brought in before a decision is formed and AI brought in after a decision is formed produce genuinely different kinds of value, and most people default into the second pattern without realizing the first would usually serve them better. ------------- Context ------------- When AI is asked to evaluate a decision that's already been presented as the plan, it tends to find reasonable support for that plan, because the framing of the question shapes the response. Ask "does this make sense" about almost any coherent plan, and a capable AI model will generally find a way to say yes, with some caveats, because most reasonably constructed plans do make some sense, and the question as framed is oriented toward confirmation rather than genuine challenge. This isn't a flaw exactly. It's a reflection of how these tools respond to framing. A question asked in a confirmatory posture tends to get a confirmatory answer, unless the plan is genuinely and obviously flawed. The subtler problems, the ones that a good second opinion is actually supposed to catch, are much less likely to surface when the question is framed as "check this" rather than "help me think through this from scratch." Contrast this with AI brought in before a decision has formed, asked to help explore the problem itself: what are the options, what are the tradeoffs, what am I not considering. This framing produces a genuinely different quality of engagement, because there's no existing conclusion for the response to gravitate toward. The AI is helping construct thinking rather than validate a thought that's already complete.

OpenAI put out a ton of new stuff this week including the public release of the GPT-5.6 family of models, the new ChatGPT Work app that will be merging Codex and ChatGPT capabilities, a new voice mode, improvements to the speech-to-text dictation, and more! I break it all down for you here, enjoy! Want to save time, get more leverage, and stop figuring this AI stuff out from scratch? I put the clearest map and support inside the AI Advantage Club

There's a season where you're doing everything right... You're showing up. You're putting in the work. You're staying consistent. And it still feels like nothing is changing. No momentum. No big breakthrough. No proof that it's working. This is the moment that separates people. Not because the work got harder... but because they mistake a lack of results for a lack of progress. What I've learned after decades in business is this: The invisible season is where everything important gets built. Your discipline. Your resilience. Your standards. Your identity. The results come later. Success rarely announces itself while it's being built. It compounds quietly... until one day everyone calls it an overnight success. If you're in that season right now, don't quit. The work you're doing today is building the life you'll eventually be grateful you didn't give up on.