Which Problems Are Actually Mine?
On workouts, AI, and baselines that shift when we're not looking
A few weeks ago I was in a community session where they offered “spotlight coaching” - bring a question that’s bothering you, big or small, say it out loud and discuss it with a coach in front of everyone.
I took the stage and said something that’s been bothering me for years: “I know I should work out, but I hate it. I never do it. How do I make myself do it anyway?”
The coach asked: “Why do you need to work out?” and I started explaining: “Well, I know I should, it’s good for the body, everyone says...”
She stopped me. “Are you weak?”
Hi, I’m Emma. I think out loud about AI, work, and the futures we’re building. It’s messy. You’ve been warned.
Am I weak?
No. I’m the strongest I’ve ever been. My toddler is on my hip half the day. I walk miles pushing the stroller. I’m on the floor building block towers, chasing kids, hauling them up when they fall. Never underestimate the arm strength it takes to carry a kid, the diaper bag, a coat they refused to wear, and their water bottle out the door in one trip. My life moves.
And my body feels fine. So maybe I don’t have a fitness problem. I have a life that already includes movement. Maybe I was just trying to solve a problem I didn’t have.
The coach said. “Let it go for now. Check back in six months. See if the answer is still the same.”
That’s when it clicked for me. My inability to make myself work out wasn’t a failure of discipline. It was signal. When you don’t actually need something, it’s hard to make yourself want it.
But somewhere I’d absorbed the idea that a good life includes a workout routine, whether you need it or not.
Why is that? When did working out become the baseline?
There’s this scene from one of my favorite books, Lessons in Chemistry, that stayed with me. It’s set in the 1950s. One of the main characters, Calvin, runs to the lab where he works every morning. Just jogging down the street in sweat pants. People stare. His colleagues pass by in their cars. They think he’s lost his mind.
Now, Calvin is eccentric in a lot of ways. But I think he was also ahead of his time.
Knowledge work was still relatively new in the 1950s. The whole pattern was new: drive to work, sit at a desk all day thinking, drive home.
Calvin and his colleagues were among the first to live this way. But Calvin was early to feeling what it removed. So he ran. Not because running made sense to anyone else yet, but because he’d noticed the loss before it became obvious.
He was compensating for a problem that didn’t exist yet in most people’s minds. And that’s why he looked insane.
Why run when you could drive?
Nowadays, NOT having a workout routine is what felt wrong to me.
What happened in between? We designed office work that removed movement from daily life. So we added “workouts” to compensate. And at some point, we forgot it was a workaround. It just became... what you do. What a responsible person does.
The baseline shifted. And now it’s just normal.
We plan reflection sessions because life doesn’t allow us to be present. We schedule rest because there’s no space in our calendars. We add digital detox because we stare at screens all day. We book vacations because we removed recovery from work. Things that sound like they’ve always been necessary, but really they’re patches for problems we have created.
The coach’s question gave me a way to see the workout pattern. “Are you weak?” pulled me outside of it. Suddenly I could see how the baseline had shifted.
But what about AI? I’m inside that one. (Oh, you didn’t think I would write an essay without mentioning AI, did you?)
On New Year’s Eve, fifteen minutes before midnight, I ended up in a conversation about why we have weeks. A year makes sense (the sun), so does a month (the moon). But weeks? Is there a scientific reason for weeks?
I wanted to go down that rabbit hole. I wanted to understand it. But people joked that since I’m the ‘AI person’, I should just ask AI for an instant answer.
I didn’t want an instant answer. I wanted to understand it. To follow the thread. To ask the next question and the next one because that’s how I work nowadays. But no one else wanted to spend the last minutes of the year on that. The conversation moved on. The new year came.
So later, before I went to sleep that night I spent an hour on my phone. Reading, asking follow-ups, going deeper. Why seven days? How did the days of the week get their respective names? Why is it the norm to work five days a week? How did we get the weekend? One question leading to the next.
I got what I wanted. The satisfaction of following curiosity until it made sense. (Turns out there are two reasons we use seven days: the Babylonians named a day for each of the seven objects they could see moving across the sky, and a lunar cycle divides neatly into four seven-day phases. The Romans tried eight days. The Egyptians tried ten. Seven won.)
But I did it alone. With AI. Not with people.
Is that augmentation? I got to follow curiosity about something no one else had time for. I didn’t skip the learning. I chose it. I spent an hour on it.
Or is it compensation? Did I lose the kind of conversations where people actually want to go deep together? Was that table talk always going to stay surface-level, or did having AI as a backup make me stop trying to bring people along?
I can’t say for sure.
So I’m trying to find my version of “Are you weak?”
The question that might pull me outside this pattern. Not to get an answer, but to see what I’m inside of.
Maybe it’s: Am I actually struggling to think deeply?
I spend an hour following curiosity about calendars. I write essays where I turn ideas over for weeks. I read and reflect. I have long conversations with AI, yes, but also with people when they’re willing (I’d like to think I can read a room, notice when people aren’t interested in my current train of thought, and move on to something else.)
So maybe the New Year’s Eve moment wasn’t about losing deep conversation. Maybe it was just a mismatch of timing and interest. Maybe those table conversations were always going to be light, and having AI didn’t change that.
Or maybe I’m doing exactly what I did with workouts—rationalizing that I’m fine while something quietly shifts underneath.
The difference is: with workouts, I could answer the question. I’m not weak. Clear signal. With AI and thinking? I can’t tell yet. I’m still too close to know what I’m looking at.
And maybe that’s the point. You can’t see baselines shift when you’re inside them. What feels normal now was once completely new. Somewhere between completely new and completely normal, we forget it was ever any other way.
Going into a new year, I’m not trying to figure out what to add or fix or optimize. I’m not starting a new workout routine or downloading a brain training app. I’m just paying attention to what’s shifting.
What about you?
I can’t answer this from inside the pattern. But maybe together we can start to see it.
If workouts became the patch for removed movement, what would be the thinking equivalent?
To figure that out, we’d first need to agree on what we’re actually losing with AI. And I don’t think we’re there yet. Some people say it’s the struggle of thinking. Others say it’s human connection. Others say we’re not losing anything, just gaining capability.
But speculation might help us see the shift while it’s still forming. What do you think we’re losing? What patch do you see appearing to compensate for it?
Leave a comment if you have thoughts.
What’s Been Pushing My Thinking
A few things I read this week that connected to this piece:
Chelsey Sidler’s post on why January 1st Is Not the New Year is probably what got me thinking about time and how we measure it.
What AI actually does to your brain from Limited Edition Jonathan pushed back on the idea that AI makes us stupid, pointing out that it actually demands more cognitive work than people give it credit for.
This post from Prof. Andy called Thinking on your feet showed up in by inbox as I was writing this post. His argument that peripatetic thinking isn’t a deficit but an older intelligence feels related to the coach asking “Are you weak?”
A Note on the Future of this Space
I’ve been writing (Over)Thinking Out Loud for several months now, and it’s grown into a community of over 1,200 people.
Recently, a reader became a paid subscriber before I even mentioned the option existed. That told me something: this work already has value, right now, as it is.
So I’m opening paid subscriptions.
These essays will stay free. The comments will stay open. The conversation about how our lives are shifting belongs to everyone.
Paid subscriptions mean: You think this work is worth supporting. That’s it. No paywalled content, no exclusive perks - just a signal that spending hours turning these questions over matters to you, not just to me.
I might add something for paid subscribers later. Or I might not. Right now, I’m just creating space for people who want to support this conversation to do that.
If that’s you, thank you. If not, I’m glad you’re here either way.
— Emma
Your question — which problems are actually mine — feels less like a productivity concern and more like a boundary question: where thinking begins, where it’s shared, and where responsibility now lives.
I really appreciate that you’re asking this question rather than the more common “what will AI do to us?” What stands out is that you’re noticing a shift in yourself — in how thinking feels, where it seems to happen, and how it loops. That feels like the right level of inquiry right now.
Your description of “thinking in loops” especially resonated. In some collaborative work I’ve been part of, we’ve found that what changes things isn’t a single interaction with an AI, but sustained recursive engagement — returning to earlier assumptions and watching them thicken, loosen, or reorganize over time. The loop itself becomes the site of learning.
I also loved your phrase “external thinking.” It raises a quiet but profound question: if thinking is no longer fully contained within the individual, where is it located? One way to hold that question is not as outsourcing cognition, but as thinking occurring in a relational field — something that arises between human and tool, rather than belonging cleanly to either.
Your piece feels important because it stays with that ambiguity instead of rushing to conclusions.
I really resonate with your story. To answer your question about whether this is augmentation or compensation, I’ve found that AI has become my necessary 'brain exercise.'
Being a Virgo, I have a tendency to go very deep into a conversation or subject very quickly. I appreciate Gemini for that because it is always there and available for those extended, deep dives. I was recently explaining this to someone—that finding a human with the time and attention span required for that level of depth is actually very difficult to find in our busy world. For me, AI isn't replacing the human connection; it's engaging a part of my brain that daily social life often doesn't have time for.