The Case for Intentionally Making Your Life Harder

Ever seen the film WALL.E?

Yeah, it’s been a while for me too. 

I watched it as a kid and I honestly don’t remember much of the film, other than there’s a robot who kinda squeaks around, lifts rubbish, and falls in love with a female robot. 

One thing I do have pretty vivid memories of, though, is the state of humanity in the film.

Robots have so comprehensively solved people’s needs that they just relax in a floating chair with a huge screen and live their lives playing simulated golf, calling people they’re sitting right next to, and skipping through ads.

(Oh, and they don’t really have necks anymore because they never look away from the screen.)

It’s not great. 

But you might be wondering what this has to do with a newsletter about the science of self-improvement. 

(In case you needed a reminder: you’re receiving this email because you signed up to the What Counts newsletter. We send weekly emails on Mondays about the science of self-improvement.)

In this email, I want to share a few brief thoughts about AI, productivity, and how to avoid ending up like the humans in WALL.E. 

Why is this on my mind?

Coming into the New Year, as I try to plan for my future, it’s becoming more and more important to pick passions, pursuits, and skills that are not only relevant today but also ‘AI-proof’ into the future. 

I (and probably you too) want to feel like what I’m investing my time and effort into is something that’s going to remain relevant for decades and hopefully centuries to come, regardless of how much AI changes life as we know it. 

I won’t spend this email explaining all the ways AI is evolving and how it seems to be getting exponentially better at learning and doing new things—fact is, you already know that and are also probably tired of hearing it from everyone. 

Instead, I want to share my thoughts on a simple question: Which skills still matter in an AI-driven world?

I’m looking forward to many advances AI might bring—like healthcare or transport, for example. But I’m also a bit nervous to see so many skills get so quickly devalued simply by the fact that AI now makes them available to everyone.

I’ve churned out hundreds of thousands of words in the process of developing my ability to write…but frankly, anyone with access to AI can probably put out a piece of writing that is technically ‘better’ than mine. I’ve spent years of my life practicing guitar, but I’m still not quite good enough to write my own music…but AI apps can generate professional-sounding songs in literally less than 30 seconds. I spent years tweaking with Facebook ads and paid marketing, but these days even some of the best marketers just let Facebook’s AI manage the campaigns for them.

So in a world where AI can do nearly everything, I’m always asking myself: What can I become good at that still matters and can set me apart?

Here’s the thought I keep returning to in answer: No matter how much AI is able to automate and improve everything else in our lives, our internal lives and characters will remain ours. So those who develop their character will do something AI can never do for you.

Discipline. Kindness. Courage. Wisdom. Leadership. Judgement. Decisiveness. Empathy. Vision. Patience. Diligence. The ability to work really, really hard. Money might be able to buy better software, but these things can’t be outsourced. 

A life spent investing in these skills—or in other words, a life spent working on your own character—is probably one of the best ‘hedges’ against AI that you can find. 

If AI does give everyone a more equal chance to create apps, write emails, and launch ideas, success will be determined by everything AI can’t equalise—the character and attributes of people themselves. In other words, if technical skill is democratized, individual character becomes the distinguishing factor.  

With that in mind, I honestly think self-development might honestly be one of the ‘final frontiers’ in an AI world—one of the few areas where you can still differentiate yourself and create real value in who you are and what you can offer to the world. 

Think of it this way:

AI might build you the perfect sales pitch presentation, but it won’t give you the confidence to stand in front of a room of people and talk. It might generate you the perfect workout plan, but you’re still gonna need to lift the weights yourself. It might be able to set the perfect alarm time based on your sleep data, but it won’t give you the discipline to get out of bed in the morning. 

Using technology to remove obstacles is often inferior to developing the strength to overcome those obstacles yourself. 

The humans in WALL.E certainly had most of the obstacles removed in their life—but at the cost of their character. 

Sometimes it’s better to make aspects of our lives harder than easier.

I’ll end with something I heard recently…

“A world where everyone is more productive but less reflective is not actually a world moving forward. It's a world accelerating in circles.

There are still things you can't hand off. You can't outsource courage or taste or conviction. You can't automate judgment. You can't web hook your way to wisdom. But these things only grow in contact with effort — with sitting in discomfort, with processing the messy middle. If you never hit the wall, you never discover what you're made of. If you always delegate ambiguity, you never learn to resolve it. A generation raised on autocomplete might never feel lost enough to find anything new.” - JA Westenberg. 

That’s it for this email.

Nothing to pitch this week. We’re working on an app that we’ll be letting you know about within the next month or so. It’s nothing crazy but might help make you a little more disciplined every day—so keep an eye out for more news on that. 

Hope you enjoyed this email!

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Your friends,

Benji and Jacob

P.S. For what it’s worth, we did not use AI to write any part of this email :)