Here's the practice:
Pick one problem this week.
Solve it without AI. For 20 minutes.
If you get stuck after 20 minutes, AI is still available. But for those 20 minutes, you're on your own.
That's it. That's the whole practice.
When you work without AI — even for 20 minutes — something shifts.
You have to actually think. You have to hit a wall and stay with it. You have to try something, watch it fail, and adjust.
That process — the frustrating, stuck, "why isn't this working" process — is not just how you solve problems. It's how you learn. It's how you remember. It's how the knowledge you already have stays accessible.
Cognitive science calls this retrieval practice. The act of trying to remember something strengthens the memory. The act of struggling with a problem and working through it strengthens your problem-solving patterns.
When you hand the problem to AI before struggling with it, you skip the struggle. And when you skip the struggle, you skip the learning.
Along with the no-AI block, here's a second practice:
When AI gives you code, explain it out loud before you use it.
Not in your head. Out loud. To yourself. Or to a colleague.
"I needed a function that takes this list and filters it by X. Here's what the AI suggested. The reason this works is..."
If you can't explain it, you shouldn't ship it.
You don't need a whole morning. You need 20 minutes.
Block it on your calendar. Call it "deep work" or "no-AI session" or just put it in your calendar as a meeting with yourself.
Treat it like you would treat a 1:1 with your manager. It's non-negotiable.
It will be uncomfortable. You will feel the urge to reach for AI. You will feel slow. You will wonder why you're doing this.
That's the point.
The discomfort is the signal that you're actually doing something — not just consuming AI output, but building something yourself.
After the first few sessions, something shifts. You start to remember what it felt like to actually solve a problem.
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