All the productivity in the world is worthless if you're being productive towards the wrong things.

If your AI tools are helping you sprint in a direction you never consciously chose, you're not being efficient, you're being efficiently lost.

I've finally named the practice that keeps me grounded; Purpose Prompting.

It's the daily habit of asking yourself what you actually want before any algorithm gets to decide for you... then using AI to deepen that clarity, not replace it.

Pen first. Then pixels. Then back to pen.

Purpose Prompting is part of something bigger I've been working on, what I call purpose-proofing AI.

It's the idea that as these tools reshape how we work and think and create, we need deliberate practices to protect what makes us distinctively human.

Not by resisting AI, but by making sure we bring our why to every interaction with it. To understand it well enough to consciously choose when it should, and when it shouldn't be used.

It's become central enough to how I think that it's right there in my Linkedin headline.

This essay is a practice behind the philosophy.

I wrote the whole thing up this morning, and I would very much love to hear your thoughts or questions as I want it to be an enduring explainer so more than happy to come up with a clearer v2 incorporating what you beautiful souls think! 🥰