What's Cooking?

a BORROW SMART CONCEPT
The Kitchen Has Changed.
Are You Still Cooking the Same Way?

I'll be honest with you. Why not…

There are moments — more of them lately — where I look at something I spent years getting good at and wonder how much longer it's going to matter the way it used to. Not because I'm not good at it. But because the world around that skill is shifting in ways I can feel more than I can fully explain.

And I've had to make a choice. Not a comfortable one. Not a clean one. But a choice.

Two Groups. I've Been in Both.

There are people right now who are quietly compounding. Every week, a little faster. A little sharper. Not because they're smarter or working harder — but because they've picked up a new set of tools and they're doing the uncomfortable, sometimes awkward work of learning how to use them.

And then there are people doing what they've always done. People who are genuinely, legitimately excellent at their craft. I've been that person. I understand the resistance. When you've built something real with a particular set of skills, it's disorienting to feel those skills become — not worthless, but somehow less singular.

The gap between these two groups isn't holding steady. It's widening. Every week.

I don't say that to scare anyone. I say it because I needed someone to say it to me plainly, and no one did.

I Think About This Through a Kitchen Metaphor

Bear with me here.

Every kitchen has three appliances. And I've come to believe that how we think about those three appliances is exactly how we need to think about AI — and about our own work.

The crock pot is where I put the things that can't be rushed. The deep thinking. The strategy needs to marinate for days before it becomes something worth acting on. There's no shortcut to what slow time produces, and I've learned — sometimes painfully — not to pretend otherwise. That work is still mine. It will always be mine. I've stopped apologizing for how long it takes.

The oven is deliberate. Intentional heat, controlled environment, a longer window because the result is worth waiting for. Client proposals that deserve real thought. Frameworks I want to get right. Work that needs structure and texture, not just speed. I still do this work. I do it better now, because I've learned what doesn't need the oven.

The microwave is for speed. And for a long time, I think I was too proud to use it as often as I should have. Not every task deserves an oven. Not every deliverable needs to marinate overnight. Some things just need to get done — correctly, cleanly, quickly — and treating them like they're more important than they are is a form of avoidance dressed up as diligence.

None of these appliances ever replaced the others. Each one expanded what was possible in the kitchen. That's the part that took me a while to really sit with.

AI Is Not One Appliance

I made the mistake early on of testing AI on the wrong kind of work and deciding it wasn't for me. Looking back, I was putting frozen lasagna in the microwave and blaming the microwave for not tasting like Sunday dinner.

The microwave work — the first drafts, the research, the formatting, the logic tasks, the things that used to quietly consume an hour of my day — AI handles those in minutes. And when I'm honest with myself, I know exactly how many hours I was spending on work that didn't require what I uniquely bring. That time is back now. I'm choosing carefully what to do with it.

But I've also learned to put AI in the oven. Thinking through strategy alongside it. Pressure-testing ideas. Working through decisions I'd normally have to sit with alone. It's a different kind of collaboration than I expected — less "get me an answer" and more "help me think." That took some adjusting.

The crock pot? That's still mine. The relationships. The judgment. The things I know because I've lived them, failed at them, rebuilt them. No tool touches that. And I'll admit, realizing that was a relief I didn't expect.

The Part I Didn't Anticipate

What I didn't see coming was grief. Small amounts of it, but real.

There are things I was good at that I held with some quiet pride — certain kinds of work that felt like they belonged to me because of the time I'd invested in them. And watching those things become easily replicable, or watching someone with less experience close the gap in weeks because they have tools I didn't have at their stage — that stings a little.

I think that's worth naming, because I don't see many people naming it.

But here's what I keep coming back to: the crock pot didn't mourn the microwave. The oven refused to share the kitchen. They each found their place, and the kitchen became more capable because of all three.

That's where I'm trying to land.

I'm Not Ahead of This. I'm In It.

I'm not writing this from the other side. I'm writing it from the middle of the adjustment — some days confident, some days genuinely uncertain about which version of my skills still matters and which ones I'm holding onto out of habit or ego.

What I do know is that not engaging isn't neutral. The people who are compounding right now aren't special. They just decided — imperfectly, experimentally — to open the kitchen and start figuring out which appliance to use for which meal.

That's all I'm doing.

The kitchen has changed. I'm learning to cook in it again.

And I think you might be right there with me. If you are not, you just might be sleeping through miracles.

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