The app for independent voices
For most of my career, spending more focused hours doing the work usually led to better results.
Before AI tools could reliably draft, code, and synthesize, the limiting factor was how much focused thinking I could do myself. A productive day meant sitting down with a blank page or a messy dataset and iterating until the argument or analysis held up. That sometimes meant spending days on one article, or arguing through a research strategy with colleagues until we had a plan we trusted.
In that world, I had two options to increase my output:
Improve skills
Work longer
But this logic no longer holds for many knowledge tasks.
Two Skills That Now Drive Output
Instead of optimizing for hours spent doing, the time has come to (sometimes) redirect our energy toward Scoping and Evaluation. Both require real subject-matter knowledge.
