Before you ask AI anything, ask yourself this first.

A few weeks ago I asked AI whether I could combine yogurt and coffee for breakfast.  I'm not proud of it. I really didn’t need AI input on this. But in that moment, it felt easier to ask than to think.

And the moment I hit send, this question popped up:

When did I stop trusting my own brain?

It turns out I'm not alone. And it turns out the science is keeping track of this new phenomenon.

A 2025 study from MIT's Media Lab found something that should make every knowledge worker uncomfortable. Participants who regularly used AI to help write showed weaker brain connectivity, lower memory retention, and a fading sense of ownership over their own thinking. And EVEN AFTER they stopped using the AI, their brain activity remained sluggish.

The brain, it seems, doesn't rush to take back the wheel once it's handed it over.

A separate study from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon surveyed 319 knowledge workers across hundreds of AI-assisted tasks. The finding was stark: the more people trusted AI-generated outputs, the less cognitive effort they applied. Confidence in AI directly correlated with diminished analytical engagement.

There's even a name for it now: Cognitive offloading. The process of shifting memory and problem-solving to an external tool.

It's not new — we did it with calculators, with GPS, with Google. But AI takes it further than anything before it. Because this time, we're not just offloading our math. We're offloading our reasoning.

Now — I want to be clear about something.

I'm not anti-AI. I use it every day. I believe it's one of the most significant tools of our lifetime. And I think the people who refuse to engage with it are making a serious strategic mistake — which is exactly why I don't just promote its use, I facilitate workshops to help teams actually implement it in their work in a meaningful, intelligent way.

But there's a difference between using AI as a tool for growth and using it as a replacement for thought.

A Harvard researcher put it well: "If AI is doing your thinking for you — whether through auto-complete or letting it write the first draft — that is undercutting your critical thinking and your creativity."

The question was never whether to use AI or not. It's always been how.

And as someone who works with organizations navigating change, my biggest concern is that the skills that matter most right now — adaptability, judgment, critical thinking, creative problem-solving, the ability to make decisions with incomplete information — are exactly the ones we're at risk of letting atrophy.

And YES, atrophy is the right word. Because this isn't about intelligence. It's about use and practice.

The brain works like a muscle. What you don't use, you lose. Not dramatically, not overnight, but quietly, gradually, in ways you might not notice until the moment you really need those capacities and they're not as sharp as they used to be.

So what do you do about it?

The same thing you'd do for any muscle you don't want to lose.

Train it deliberately. Regularly. Even when — especially when — it would be easier not to.

In Future Proof, I talk about a concept I call Changeability— the practice of deliberately exposing yourself to discomfort, uncertainty, and novelty before disruption forces you to. Not because suffering is the goal, but because that's how the brain stays sharp. That's how adaptability gets built.

And right now, one of the most powerful forms of changeability that you can practice is choosing to think.

Read something that challenges your assumptions. Make a decision without immediately asking AI what it thinks. Write your first draft with your own words before handing it off. Sit with a problem long enough to actually wrestle with it — not just long enough to type it into a prompt.

These aren't romantic ideas about returning to a simpler time. They're deliberate cognitive choices. Small acts of mental initiative that go against the path of least resistance.

And every time you make them, you're building something AI cannot build for you: the capacity to think clearly, independently, and creatively under pressure. ;)

Ask yourself every time you reach for the tool: am I using this to think better — or to avoid thinking altogether?

That question alone is worth more than any AI prompt guide ever written.

Your brain is worth the workout.

And if you want a framework for keeping it sharp — through change, through disruption, through whatever comes next — that's exactly what Future Proof was written for.

You can get your copy in Spanish, English, digital or physical — and very soon as an audiobook for Spanish listeners in AMAZON: https://a.co/d/0hErMZ3k