Author of seven books, including The Accidental Creative, Herding Tigers, Die Empty, Daily Creative, The Brave Habit. I help creative pros and leaders to be brave, focused, and brilliant every day.
The compounding advantage of AI as a thinking partner
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This week on the Daily Creative podcast, I had an incredible conversation with Vasant Dhar , Christopher Mims, Aden Bahadori, and Brett Granstaff about AI and creativity. We dug into the big questions, such as what does it mean to create when machines can think, and how do we keep the soul in our work while using these powerful new tools? There’s one idea from the conversation that I can’t stop thinking about: we’re all searching for the breakthrough moment, that dramatic leap that’s going to change everything. But Vasant made this point about Roger Federer that really landed... it’s not about the big leaps. Over time, Federer won a vast majority of his matches, but a slim majority of points. However, that slight edge in points gave him a huge advantage in Win/Loss percentage. It’s about the tiny, repeatable edge you get in every single action. When you compound those small improvements consistently over time, they transform your results far more than any sporadic burst of genius ever could. Here’s the tension I’m wrestling with: AI promises speed, and it delivers. The question is whether we’re actually getting better or just faster. Speed is seductive, but what really matters is what we do with the time we get back. Are we using it to think deeper, iterate more thoughtfully, explore the ideas we never had space for? Or are we just filling the space with more output? Because the real skill... the thing that separates meaningful creative work from generic content... isn’t what AI can do, it’s the quality of the questions we’re asking. Machines can process information and generate options, but they can’t (yet) ask that revelatory framing question. They can’t contextualize the problem or draw the unexpected connections that unlock something new. That’s still distinctly human work. It's intuition. It's emotional logic. Christopher Mims talked about how expertise is the key to getting real value from these tools, and I think he’s onto something crucial. The deeper you understand your craft, the better you can prompt, probe, and push AI past the generic answers toward something original. It’s not about automation, it’s about knowing how to get to the results that matter and using these tools to do it better and quicker. It was inspiring hearing how Aden and Brett use AI in their film work through Tachi AI. They treat it like infrastructure. It handles the tedious assembly work, the rough cuts, all the busywork that drains creative energy. That frees them up to focus on what actually matters... the emotional core, the story, the craft. They’re not using AI to create for them. They’re using it to clear space so they can create at their best. To do the iterative grunt work so that they can focus on the craft. It's so funny that in the 1800's Ada Lovelace first conjectured that a machine could make art, and the crucial choice we’re making every day is whether these tools become a creative crutch or a creative amplifier. My take? Own your creative process. Don’t outsource your thinking. But do let AI help you explore more territory, iterate faster, and expand what’s possible. This week, use the technology to multiply your options, not replace your judgment.
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Todd Henry
Author of seven books, including The Accidental Creative, Herding Tigers, Die Empty, Daily Creative, The Brave Habit. I help creative pros and leaders to be brave, focused, and brilliant every day.
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