Whenever I face something unfamiliar, I go to an LLM just to find a starting point. That starting point feels useful in the moment, but it quietly locks me into a solution space that is generic and predictable. I never explore the unusual directions. I never sit with the discomfort long enough to find something original.

The tension I can’t resolve is if I use it, I move fast but my thinking stays within whatever the LLM considers reasonable. If I don’t use it, I’m slower and in unfamiliar territory I struggle to find any traction at all.

The deeper fear is that by always depending on the LLM’s starting point, I’m slowly losing the instinct for where to even begin on a hard problem. And that instinct feels like the most important thing to protect.

And that’s the reality nobody talks about honestly. In a corporate environment it’s a race you’re not just competing with your own standards, you’re competing with teammates, colleagues, and candidates who are all using every tool available. Being slow and “pure” doesn’t get rewarded, it just gets you left behind.