The One About AI
Where to start?
I’m a technological-resister so AI was never going to be the ‘it’ thing for me.
But over the last year I’ve witnessed some of my favorite people using it in ways that support them in their lives and businesses.
Solopreneurs are completing business proposals without spending hours trying to create something new from scratch
A friend with ADHD used AI to give her interview prompts and help organize her thoughts before the panel interview
A data scientist client who lights up with all the possibilities she sees for AI to advance healthcare insights
I see the value of AI tools and it thrills me to see these people lifted by the support it offers. Reframe’s mission is for all people to have career power, and using AI can make many of the tasks of job development faster and easier. That’s no small thing.
And, as someone who has spent my career witnessing brilliant women underestimate themselves, I’m deeply concerned about women offering their hard-earned career milestones to a large language model run by billionmales.
I don’t want women relying on technology alone to interpret all of what they can do, and all of what is possible for their futures.
We’ve got it backwards
When it comes to job seeking and career development we’ve (often) got it backwards. At mid-career I see a pattern of asking, “How do I translate my skillset for something else?” and listen to people spend energy asking “What else is out there?”
We start with what is advertised and try to fit ourselves into it.
We wait and see if a better job comes along.
We need to be taking a pause to get clear with ourselves first, about what we want to do and what will serve us right now in our lives. And if that intentionality seems like a luxury, I'm here to tell you it is not. What we want isn’t superficial – it’s the forward momentum that is going to sustain us in a marathon of our back half of our career.
Naming what we want to do more of doesn't mean we will do it all the time in our next job. But it does mean we are connected to our desires and the knowledge of what makes us feel smart, capable, powerful, focused, badass, in service to others – you name it.
There is no right answer
Asking Claude or ChatGPT what else you can do with your skill set is going to give you an answer but it’s not going to be the “right” answer because there is no right answer. There is only what you know inside, what you name for yourself, and what you put on paper as your educated and inspired best guess as to what’s next for you.
Then you try to make it so. And that’s where you take action.
AI can absolutely help you with ideas; but you need to feel inspired by those ideas, curious, excited, motivated by those ideas. You need to believe those ideas are worth trying. As helpful as Claude is to organize my proposal, if I don’t believe in the value of the service I’m providing, I’ll just make an excuse not to send it.