These days, it’s tempting to work at a distance. Go hang out in the pool and let a swarm of agents do the hard part. Avoid those pesky details! But the truth is that when you’re building software or pursuing any creative endeavor, staying out of the details doesn’t produce the best results—and it won’t begin to do so anytime soon.
At first glance, the main reason we humans need to stay in the details is to catch mistakes. But this reason won’t last: Agents will trend toward perfect execution of any well-specified task.
The actual reason is something more subtle: Working in the details changes our minds. When you spend time in the nooks and crannies of a problem, you’re loading facts into your memory, allowing your brain to creatively recombine and reevaluate those facts later on, even in the background. The time spent in the details is an investment in having the next good idea.
Is it possible to skip this step? Yes—the same way it’s possible to make it through a cocktail party having read a summary of a book instead of reading the book itself. But when the goal is excellence, there’s no substitute for putting in the time.
AI offers each of us a choice: We can get lazy and achieve good-enough, or work hard—perhaps even harder than ever!—to reach new heights of excellence. You can already start to tell who is taking each path.
