Lazy with AI automation or burnout without it

Most people like to take one of two stances when it comes to content automation. Either automate it all (aka vibe marketing) or keep it old school and don't automate at all.

But I don't agree with either approach.

Automating everything with AI is just as lazy as refusing to touch it at all.

I know. The AI bros will hate this and the anti-AI crowd will hate this too.

But hear me out...

When I Realized I Was Committing Brand Suicide

Early in building my content system, I caught myself doing something dangerous.

I was trying to automate everything.

Research, ideation, writing, formatting and distribution. Essentially the whole pipeline.

But then the AI hallucinated a study that didn't exist and made up numbers from another study.

That's when I realized I was putting my entire reputation in the hands of technology that couldn't be trusted.

You know those faceless YouTube channels everywhere?

These are great examples of "AI slop", aka when the entire content process is automated.

Their workflow probably looks something like this:

1. AI researches trending topics

2. Another AI writes the script using a lazy three-sentence prompt.

3. Creates an HeyGen AI avatar that reads it while stock footage plays in the background.

4. Auto-posted on a scheduler.

5. Rinse and repeat.

These videos do get views and sometimes even decent numbers.

But people watch passively because the algorithm served it up. They don't engage (or if they do its very superficial engagement). They don't remember who made it and they definitely don't become loyal followers.

Why would they? Anyone could make that content. There's nothing uniquely you about it.

So no AI then? No...

Meanwhile, we have the anti-AI crowd who are exhausting themselves doing everything manually.

They're spending hours formatting a post that could take a few minutes. Hand-posting to every platform. Manually resizing images for each one.

All while their creative energy, the thing that actually matters, drains away on tasks their audience couldn't care less about.

It's the same problem but with a different costume. Both are avoiding the real work.

I learned this the hard way.

I built an AI-powered content system. The first iteration of this system created straight up unusable content.

So I improved my prompts. Got a bit better.

Then I worked on context engineering. Better still.

But the missing piece wasn't technical. It was knowing what deserved my creative energy.

So what actually deserves your creative energy?

I realized that using AI for ideation is where most people screw up.

Ideation is where substance lives. It's where your unique perspective comes from and it's the foundation of everything else.

Your audience doesn't want to hear what a machine thinks. They want to hear what you think. The ideas you've wrestled with, the perspectives you've developed and the insights only you can provide.

Real creativity isn't the first idea that pops into your head. It's going past that surface-level thought and digging deeper.

That's what your audience follows you for.

When you outsource that to AI you're essentially telling your audience:

"I don't value your time enough to think deeply about what I'm giving you."

That's not just lazy. It's disrespectful.

From my own experience this means protecting the high-trust, high-impact work and automating the high-effort, low-impact execution.

Your ideas, your stories and your unique take should stay human. That's where you invest your creative energy.

But formatting, cross-posting and research gathering? Your audience doesn't care if AI handled those. They care about the substance you built on top of them.

The creators winning right now aren't fighting AI or surrendering to it.

They're strategic about where they deploy their human energy versus where they let technology handle the grunt work.

Three Questions to Ask Yourself

Before you automate or manually grind through your next piece of content, ask:

1. Would my audience know (or care) if AI handled this part?

   • If yes → keep it human

   • If no → consider automating

2. Is this task draining creative energy I need for the substance?

   • If yes → automate or eliminate it

   • If no → it might be worth keeping

3. Does this task require my unique perspective, or just need to get done?

   • Unique perspective → protect it fiercely

   • Just needs done → hand it off

The answer isn't all-or-nothing. It's strategic allocation of your most valuable resource which is your ability to think deeply and create something only you can create.

Because that's what builds brands. Not systems. Not hacks.

You.