AI and the Modern Writer: Threat or Creative Partner?
How I’m letting go of “perfect” posts and learning to write like myself again
TL;DR: I’ve been wrestling with how to create meaningful content in an AI-saturated world. Here’s how I got unstuck, learned to use AI as a thinking partner — and finally stopped chasing perfection. (At least working on it). Like anything in business, it’s about using AI where it adds value, helping you move faster without losing your voice or what your business stands for.
I've been struggling with unfinished content now for three months. Incomplete posts sit there, taunting me—half-formed thoughts about industry trends, abandoned hot takes, fragments of relevant advice. Each one starts with promise and dies somewhere around the second paragraph when the voice in my head whispers: "Am I using the right words? Is it clear? There are so many other people out there better at this than me."
The irony? AI was supposed to make content creation easier. Instead, it made me question everything I thought I knew about authentic writing.
Building a personal brand feels like performing surgery on yourself while everyone watches. You know you need to share your ideas to grow professionally, but every post makes me question, was it good enough? I have plenty of opinions—strong ones, actually—about everything from how people say “AI is easy” to the way companies have failed using technology due to culture. But translating those thoughts into content that feels authentic rather than performative? That's where I get stuck.
So naturally, I turned to AI writing tools. They could help me sound more professional, more polished, help me crack the code of professional content creation.
It doesn't work like that.
The Authenticity Trap
I'm spent 200+ hours experimenting with different AI models. I can prompt-engineer my way to decent marketing copy, solid research summaries, even halfway decent code. But ask any AI to capture my actual voice? The result is always sanitized, safe, and completely forgettable.
The real problem: AI amplifies whatever you put into it. Feed it generic thoughts, get generic content. Feed it your genuine perspective, and it can help you articulate ideas you're struggling to express.
Stop asking AI to create content and start using it to help think through your own ideas. Instead of "Write a post about AI and business," I began with "I think the biggest AI failures I've seen aren't technical—they're cultural. Companies are trying to force AI into workflows that were broken to begin with. Help me explore why fixing culture matters more than buying better algorithms."
Now, AI becomes a thinking partner rather than a replacement brain.
Why Perfect Content is the Enemy
The pressure to create content that matches what successful creators are doing is paralyzing. I follow writers who seem to effortlessly produce insightful, well-crafted pieces daily. Their posts get hundreds of comments. Mine got three likes and a "great point" from my friends.
But here's what I've learned after months of struggling with this: the content that resonates isn't necessarily the most polished. It's the most honest.
Look at Mark Noguchi's early Instagram posts which were not polished. Just iPhone shots of plate lunches and spam musubi with captions, Food Network would have cringed at the presentation. He was not trying to package Hawaiian food for outsiders, he was sharing what actually mattered to him: his grandma’s dishes, hidden lunch spots, and the way food connects our island community.
The same principle applies to written content. Readers can sense when you're trying to sound like someone else or when you're recycling conventional wisdom. They can also sense when you're sharing something that genuinely matters to you, even if the execution isn't perfect.
How AI Is Becoming My Confidence Builder
Now I use AI differently, and stopped looking for perfection in my writing. I now use it to workshop my ideas before sharing.
I dump all my scattered thoughts into memos or a google sheet —no editing, just a stream of consciousness, rambling about whatever's bugging me. Those messy transcripts go straight into Claude, not for content creation, but for sense-making. I'll ask it to pull out the main thread from my rambling or spot where I'm contradicting myself.
Then I write. But once I have something down, I use AI like a brutal editor who isn't afraid to hurt my feelings. "Where does this argument fall apart?" "What would someone who disagrees say about this?" "Which parts sound like I'm trying too hard to impress people?" The feedback is usually uncomfortably accurate.
The final test is reading everything out loud—if it doesn't sound like something I'd actually say to a colleague over coffee, I keep rewriting until it does.
The Reality Check Nobody Talks About
Look, this isn't some magic productivity hack that'll have you cranking out daily posts without breaking a sweat. It still takes time, it's still work, and honestly, some of my posts are still messier than I'd like. But here's what I've learned: people don't follow polished content factories—they follow humans who have something real to say. That comes from your actual experiences, your genuine failures, the lessons you learned the hard way.
No AI can manufacture that for you. So embrace the mess a little. Better to share something imperfect but authentic than to stay silent waiting for the perfect post that never comes.
Owning Your Voice in an AI World
My biggest mental shift was realizing I wasn't competing with the creators I admired—I was competing with silence. Every time I didn't share an idea because it wasn't "good enough," I let someone else fill that space with their perspective.
Sharing your thoughts will always feel vulnerable because you're putting your thoughts into a space where anyone can judge them.
The writers building authentic personal brands aren't necessarily the most talented or experienced. They're the ones willing to share their real perspectives, admit when they're figuring things out, and trust that their unique combination of experiences has value.
Your voice matters not because you have all the answers, but because you have a perspective shaped by experiences only you have lived. AI can help you express that perspective more clearly, but it can't create authenticity where none exists.
Let AI do what it’s good at. Repetitive tasks, organizing your thoughts, acting as a thinking partner — that’s where it shines. But the heart of the message? That still has to come from you.
AI will keep getting better at mimicking human writing. But it will never have your specific frustrations, your particular insights, your weird way of connecting dots that others miss.
P.S. This post reflects how I approach AI in business too: use it where it adds value — to organize, accelerate, and clarify messy thinking - but never let it replace the insights that make your work uniquely yours.
That’s how I use it in my own writing and how I help businesses turn scattered ideas into meaningful, well-structured outcomes.
