Lately I’ve been thinking about something I didn’t expect to think about. Not whether AI will replace jobs, or whether companies should adopt it. I spend most of my week in those conversations already. This is something far more personal.

I think AI has changed me. That sounds bigger than I mean it to, but stay with me.

Today, roughly ninety percent of my work touches AI somewhere. My emails usually start there. Research starts there. Meeting notes turn into actions on their own, and presentations begin with a draft instead of an empty slide. If someone looked over my shoulder for a day, they might wonder whether I ever actually make anything anymore. Some days I wonder the same. Somewhere along the way I became the director of my own work instead of the person crafting every piece of it.

And honestly? Most days I love it. I move faster than I ever have. Ideas become reality in hours instead of weeks, and things that used to sit on my to-do list for months actually get done. It’s hard to imagine going back.

But that’s only half the story.

My brain feels different

I didn’t notice it immediately. It happened slowly. Instead of asking myself how do I make this, I started asking: is this good enough? Does it answer the question? Does it achieve the outcome? Can I move on?

That’s a completely different way of thinking. Less creating, more deciding. Less building, more directing. Some days I joke that I’ve become the world’s most overqualified quality assurance department. Approve. Reject. Rewrite. Repeat. It makes me laugh, because there’s some truth in it.

AI also did something I never saw coming: it cured a little bit of my perfectionism. For years I rewrote emails, moved commas around, changed a title six times, tweaked presentations that were already perfectly fine. Not because they needed it, but because I felt they represented me. Somewhere along the way that shifted. I no longer ask whether every sentence sounds exactly like Femke. I ask whether it creates value. That’s a very different question. And oddly enough, I think my work got better because of it. Not because AI writes better than I do, but because I finally stopped polishing things that were already done.

Then I asked myself the question I ask leadership teams all the time

Does this actually make me happy?

I expected an easy yes. After all, AI removed so much of the work I never enjoyed. So why was I even asking?

I looked back over my week. The moments that stayed with me weren’t the ones where AI saved me an hour. They were all human. A customer suddenly understanding something. A conversation that went completely off script. Someone walking into my office with a half-finished idea. Standing on a stage. Watching confidence grow in another person.

That’s what I remembered. Not the prompts. Not the workflows. The people.

Maybe we’ve been asking the wrong question

For years the question was: what can AI automate? It’s an important question, but I don’t think it’s the most interesting one anymore. The question I’m sitting with now is different.

What do I never want to automate?

Not because AI couldn’t do it, but because it’s the part that makes me feel alive. For me the answer turns out to be surprisingly easy. Building relationships. Helping people see new possibilities. Creating communities. Being on stage. Having conversations that leave both people thinking differently. That’s the work I hope always stays mine.

There’s one more thing. Many of us still try to prove we’re useful by showing how much we produce. Maybe AI will force us to prove something else. Not how much we make, but what only we can contribute. Knowledge is getting cheaper. Execution is getting faster. The human part is becoming more valuable, not less. Trust, judgement, creativity, humour, empathy, connection. Those things don’t disappear when AI arrives. They become easier to see, because so much of the noise around them does.

I don’t have a conclusion

Honestly, I’m still figuring this out. Maybe that’s exactly why I wanted to write it down. Because I have a feeling this conversation is only just beginning.

We spend so much time asking what AI will do to our organisations. I’m becoming far more interested in a quieter question: what is AI doing to us? Not to scare us. Not to replace us. But to make us rethink what makes our work meaningful in the first place.

I don’t know the answer yet. I just know I’m asking better questions than I was a year ago.

And somehow, that feels like progress.