Win With Flynn

What is the meaning of this?

Meaning does mean something, right? It’s in the name.

You make the PowerPoint deck or write a blog post to express an idea. But a funny thing happens. You learn and grow and change your perspective as you put in that work.

Maybe your hypothesis is a bit off. You change your mind, flip sides, or come up with something altogether different.

That process is important and meaningful.

Technology can steal a bit of that from you.

If it’s meaningless work, the “I’m just here so I don’t get fined” type of work, Artificial Intelligence is your new BFF, like Luke and R2.

But if the work does mean something, you have a genuine interest, and you care, human crafted always means more.

To you and your audience.

Generative AI is undeniably badass. I’ll probably use some to edit this post, although I’m learning that the robots don’t appreciate my style like you — my dozens of readers.

AI is becoming prevalent, accessible, and pretty damn good. The better questions are about what we send to the robots and what we keep for ourselves. The choices we make.

Let me take you back to the late 80s because the late 80s were rad.

Back then, you could have some friends over to the house to play Legend of Zelda. If you got stuck, you could call the Nintendo Powerline and ask them how to take down Gleeok. But it’s easy to see that calling for help doesn’t feel the same as doing it yourself.

Likewise, your rich neighbor can hire an army of sherpas to get them to the top of Mount Everest, but that doesn’t make them mountaineers. It makes them luggage.

Sometimes you don’t care if you are luggage. If I’m headed to relax on the beach in Maui, I do not feel compelled to sail there. Stick a bag tag on my forehead and ship me off. I’ll rest my eyes and dream of coconut shaved ice.

Meaning is a derivative of effort, and you get to choose where to put your effort. So, you get to choose where to get your meaning. That is a big responsibility.

Meaning is not outcome based. It’s input based. It’s process based.

Like the billionaire entrepreneur and their spoiled kid. Daddy can’t stop working and kiddo can’t stop the booger sugar. They have both seen the mountaintop. Both want to stay. Only one of them knows what it means to be there.

True meaning is derived from the struggles, challenges, and personal growth encountered on the path to achievement.

Enter, the Easy Button.

Staples introduced the “easy button” to signify a quick solution to everyday problems. And their heart was in the right place. Those tasks lack meaning for most, so please, automate them away. Nobody needs to spend their career reordering three-ring binders.

Staples even sold the buttons. We had a few around the office and we’d hit them in a mostly sarcastic, somewhat ironic, not really easy but made it look easy kind of way.

Like, “Hey, I just closed a 12-million-dollar deal and made the quarter, only took 18 months of consistent follow-up and a few years off my life.”

“That was easy.”

It’s good for a chuckle among somewhat educated white-collar cubicle workers.

The new easy button is different though. It’s not ironic or sarcastic or any of that good stuff. It’s actually useful. It’s a problem solver. It takes the task for us, from soup to nuts.

The new easy button is our employee. It’s our day laborer. Our temporary help. All rolled up in robot form and ready 24x7x365.

It’s even right here as I write this post.

So, does that mean that you don’t do anything anymore? 

It depends. 

It depends on what you choose to do in the first place.

If you run a big business with lots of employees, you already have an easy button. For the work you don’t want to do in that corner office, you can ship it off to Susie in accounting. Email it over to Johnny in finance.

The AI Easy Button ® allows everyone to do the same. Send off the work they don’t enjoy or derive meaning from to the machines.

Most people’s jobs are a smorgasbord of things they truly enjoy, along with a sprinkling of tasks they wish would spontaneously combust.

Hopefully it’s just a sprinkle.

Maybe the company needs you to do it, maybe you are the most qualified, or maybe you are the one the customer likes. Sometimes, it can feel good when the team needs you for things. It’s an ego stroke. But that grows old, even for the largest of egos.

The question you need to ask is what you want all to yourself and what gets sent to the robots, virtual assistants, employees, and temporary workers.

Meaning is the measuring stick. 

Most people that have been in a job for a while will start farming out parts of the work. Maybe it’s to someone on their team that is eager to learn. That’s good for both of you. You push off the things that mean less to you, they get their hands on new knowledge, and you both feel better at the end of the day.

Jimmy Iovine tells a story about getting started as a studio engineer. He was working at The Record Plant as an assistant, and the lead engineer, Roy, had OCD. He didn’t like touching the equipment that others had touched. He brought in Jimmy as his button pusher. Jimmy learned every detail of how Roy did his work because he was acting as his hands. He was pushing all the buttons. Learning every step in the process.

Eventually, Roy got bored, and Jimmy got good. 

Eventually, Roy just pointed Jimmy in the right direction and let him do all the work. He handed it off because it didn’t carry the same meaning for him anymore.

I get asked every year why I put in the time to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Why do the dry brine? Why take days in advance to prep all of the side dishes? Met Market will do it all for us, they’re just down the street. It’s delicious and it’s more affordable than you might think.

So, it’s worth asking, what is the meaning of this Thanksgiving tradition?

My favorite holiday is about more than finding the easiest method to get a bird carcass in my belly. If that’s all it is, point me toward the nearest Costco with a five-dollar chicken.

I may change my tune on this down the line but for now, I get a lot of meaning out of the preparation. The labor. The creativity. Making the meal for my family. 

Especially now, I’ve got two little sous chefs that I can work with. And that’s part of the day as well. Not just sitting around and watching the tube. We’ve got this project to work on, it’s called Thanksgiving dinner, it’s called entertaining the old folks while we still have them. 

We will make mistakes, we will screw up and burn the bird, and we will make it work. 

Extra potatoes.

We will listen to music, and we will have some laughs. We will create new things and new traditions, and we will keep the old stuff that we love and enjoy.

That’s quite a bit of meaning in my book.

No easy button in sight.

It’s not about perfection and it’s not about being on time and it’s not about making the effort as low as possible.

What is the meaning of this? It’s an important question to ask yourself before you offload the work, the labor, and the effort.

Because you are also offloading the process, the inputs, the lessons, and the learning.

You get to choose what you derive meaning from and you get to choose how to use these easy buttons. Just understand what is lost when the effort is removed.