I’m really bad at taking PTO, but I was recently encouraged to take some time off to recharge, which speaks volumes to the culture and people at Hightouch, especially my boss, Rachel. I decided to take her advice and step away from the screen and keyboard. Which means, this week I’m officially OOO for the rest of the week (this is also your reminder that life is more than work).
But I didn’t want to leave you hanging while I was gone. So I thought I would share something I’ve been thinking about but haven’t quite found the right medium for until now (as well as a list of my favorite recent reads down below).
Whose opinion is that, really?
AI is changing every industry and every job in some way, but one thing I find myself thinking about again and again is the concept of summarization and synthesis. And it’s something I’ve been thinking about both in my work life and my personal life.
Summarizing is repeating a perspective that’s not your own. It sounds right, but you couldn’t actually articulate why it’s right or wrong.
Synthesization is taking something in, understanding it, and putting out a perspective that’s uniquely yours. You can actually articulate why it’s right or wrong — or at the very least why you’ve reached the conviction that you have.
Why knowing about it isn’t the same as knowing it
A conversation with my younger brother drove this concept home for me recently. He’s four years younger than I am, but much smarter than me (case in point: he just completed a Master’s degree in one year). We chat often, and he shared a really powerful analogy with me that’s since been branded into my brain.
“Some people are really good at talking about baseball. They know all the little details about the teams, the stats, the history, the stadiums, and even the technique. But playing baseball is a lot different than talking about baseball. At some point, you have to actually throw the baseball and swing the bat. And knowing everything about baseball is not the same as being good at baseball.”
My litmus test
AI aggregates and disseminates information, data, creative, and content faster than ever before, but if there isn’t conviction behind it, it’s all meaningless. Here are some great questions to ask yourself as a litmus test on whether you’re simply summarizing, or if you’re moving into the more meaningful synthesization space (and some I try to continually ask myself):
Could you explain this and articulate my decision/thinking process without a slide deck or a project plan built by AI?
Could you actually think through this problem and do it by hand?
Can you actually articulate why you believe what you do because you worked through the problem yourself?
Note: I’m not saying don’t use AI. I literally use AI every day, but the reality is that there are no shortcuts to greatness, and greatness means understanding a problem yourself, having a real point of view, and being able to make and articulate clear decisions based on it.
My favorite reads for the month
One of the great ways to improve your ability to synthesize is by reading, and I read a lot.
But the most impactful stuff I read falls into three buckets: (1) it’s really helpful, (2) it’s really interesting, (3) it makes me feel something emotionally. Truthfully, this is the litmus test I try to use for my own writing. Here are three things worth reading.
The Most Famous AI Writing Tic Is Also the Most Mysterious: If you spend any time on social media, you’ve probably started to sniff out AI writing. This is the best breakdown I’ve read on why everything now sounds the same.
After “AI-First” Comes “AI-Only”: A really interesting perspective on AI from a tech founder. Truthfully, I’m still digesting this one.
Email, Lifecycle & CRM Marketing Knowledge Base: My friend (Jacques Corby-Tuech) put together this awesome knowledge base for pretty much every question you could ever think of as it relates to lifecycle marketing. There’s some really helpful stuff in here, especially on the measurement side of things.
One more thing…
Folks keep telling me again and again that the AI skills library is one of the most useful things about this community, so I wanted to remind folks of this awesome resource. Also, it’s really hard to track down the people who are on the cutting edge of all this AI stuff. If you have an AI use case that’s actually helped your team, I’d love to feature it and share it with the community. I put together a really simple form that you can fill out here. Once you do, I’ll review it ASAP and get back to you on the next steps.