There was a point when I realized the order had changed.

Before, I used to think first—often messily, sometimes slowly, sometimes unnecessarily. Only after that did I ask. For confirmation. For clarification. For a better angle.

Lately, it’s been happening the other way around. I’ve started to skip the thinking itself—the part that can be tiring.
A question comes up, a decision point, a fragment of a thought—and I reach for it immediately. Not because I wouldn’t be able to think it through. But because I didn’t feel like walking that familiar inner path again. That detour where things get confusing before they become clear.

With AI, it felt easier. Smoother. More polished. And above all, less exhausting. Even the responsibility of asking felt lighter, and it spared me from my own doubts.

At first, I called this efficiency. I had a real eureka moment.
The secret was out. The how-to was clear. From here on—only forward. The sky was the limit.

I told myself:
“I’m not taking thinking away from myself. I’m just shortening it. Making it more efficient.”

And that was partly true.

But along the way, something very small—and very important—disappeared. Those few seconds of silence before you ask anyone. When the question is still just sitting inside you. When you’re still weighing it. Still adjusting it before you say it out loud. When you still have control—over the matter, over yourself.

My inner monologue began to fade as my thinking grew more superficial. Not dramatically. Not overnight. It just got quieter. Shorter. Sometimes it didn’t even start.

It wasn’t that I had no thoughts.
It was that I didn’t wait for them to ripen.

This change didn’t come from laziness. It came from a new kind of reflex. When there’s a tool that responds instantly, you ask before you think. You structure before you allow any mess. Even though something valuable is often born precisely out of that mess.

At the time, I didn’t feel the danger. There was no sense of loss. On the contrary—everything felt efficient, controlled. Only in hindsight do I see that this was the point where thinking stopped being a process and became merely a questionable outcome. The question itself became the result.

Eventually, this started to affect my performance and the quality of my work.
What I learned wasn’t that AI is bad. It was that thinking isn’t only about answers. It’s also about the sometimes pointless-looking detours that lead there.

I didn’t regret this right away. I kept it as an observation. I knew I’d have to deal with it sooner or later.

Now, as I continue to learn how to use AI tools more consciously, I see clearly that this is only the beginning of the questions—and the problems—that come with it.

I’m open to what comes next.