THINK FIRST, AI SECOND

Summary from the TLDR Founders newsletter

We are starting to see the long-term cognitive cost of "AI First" workflows: our brains are literally disengaging. An MIT study found that students who used AI at the start of a task showed lower neural activity and memory retention than those who did the work themselves. The fix is not to ban AI, but to change the sequence. Always force yourself to draft the structure or outline before you open the prompt window. By treating AI as a "Devil's Advocate" that critiques your existing thoughts rather than a generator to create them, you keep your cognitive edge while still leveraging the speed of the model.