If You Are Using It Correctly, AI Creates Uncertainty. Clarity Will Come.

Some weeks, clarity arrives fully formed. You know exactly what you’re thinking, exactly what you’re writing, and exactly what you’re trying to say. Other weeks, clarity is quieter. It lingers at the edges of your mind, just out of reach, refusing to organize itself neatly into a blog post or a bullet list.

For me, this is one of those weeks.

And I want to talk about why that matters.

I don’t just talk about expanding human potential with the help of AI. I am living it. I have been moving through my own period of rapid change—mentally, creatively, and professionally. My work is shifting. My thinking is expanding. My frameworks are stretching. I am not writing about cognitive extension as an abstract concept. I am living it in real time. And the truth is, when you are deep inside your own cognitive growth, things often feel messy.

I talk a lot about AI. I talk about leadership. I talk about building Second Brains to help us think better, faster, and more expansively. I talk about upgrading the way humans think in the age of AI. But what I don’t talk about enough is how this transformation—from our old way of thinking to a new, expanded way of thinking—feels when you’re inside it. We rarely talk about how uncertain it feels when your old way of thinking no longer serve you, but your new way of thinking hasn’t fully taken shape.

We forget that cognitive growth is not clean. It is not linear. It does not follow a project plan. Sometimes it is disorienting. Sometimes unsettling. It leaves you reaching for words and frameworks that do not exist yet.

That’s exactly where I have been these past few weeks.

And in the spirit of transparency and leadership, I think it’s worth writing about. Because this is one of the core areas my work inhabits, the intersection of human cognition, AI-enhanced leadership, and expanded perception. It’s about helping people navigate change with curiosity, resilience, and adaptability.

Action Comes Before Clarity

One of the things I tell my clients regularly is this: You don’t wait for clarity before you take action. Clarity often comes because you took action.

You build the thing. You write the words. You make the decision. You lead through the uncertainty.

Through the act of doing, always moving forward, the fog begins to lift. Through the work itself, clarity starts to take shape.

That is what I am doing here, writing through the fog, not waiting for it to pass.

Leadership in this AI era requires us to get comfortable with discomfort. It asks us to operate in the gap between knowing and not knowing, between confidence and doubt, between frameworks and intuition. We cannot lead people through uncertainty if we demand certainty for ourselves first.

We have to model what it looks like to keep moving forward while the path is still unfolding.

Why This Matters for AI, Second Brains, and Human Systems

The work I am doing at haveLAB—helping leaders expand their thinking, develop Second Brain systems, and rewire cognitive architecture for the age of AI—is fundamentally about this space. It is about building mental agility, cognitive sovereignty, and perceptual range so we are better equipped to navigate complexity.

AI is changing how we think. That much is obvious. But what is less obvious is that AI is also forcing us to rethink how we expand our cognitive processes to become deeper, more capable thinkers.

It’s tempting to believe that technology provides clarity. AI generates answers. It synthesizes information. It drafts emails, outlines books, and builds plans. It feels fast and clean. But the real work—the human work—is messier. It is about how we engage with AI to expand, challenge, and refine our own minds.

That’s what Second Brain systems are for. They are not simply digital storage. They are scaffolding for cognitive growth. They hold complexity so we can think more clearly. They capture ideas so we can reflect on them later. They offload tasks so we can think bigger.

But a Second Brain is useless if the First Brain goes dormant. Real cognitive growth is uncomfortable. It requires us to sit with the questions AI cannot answer. It requires us to confront ambiguity, hold paradoxes, and operate without a script. AI might accelerate output, but it cannot replace the slow, nonlinear, human process of expanding awareness and perception.

Real Cognitive Growth Looks Like This

Cognitive growth, when you are inside it, often looks like confusion. It looks like false starts and rewrites. It looks like questioning assumptions you thought were settled. It looks like pausing to wonder why the work you were doing last month no longer feels aligned.

It looks like pulling threads without knowing what they’re connected to yet. It looks like trying to figure out what to write in your weekly blog about AI and leadership while your brain is still reconfiguring what leadership at this moment in time even means.

Cognitive growth is not a light switch you flip on. It is a lived experience.

When we try to skip this part, we stunt our growth. We cling to old structures because they feel safe. We double down on answers because we are afraid of how long the questions might last.

The leaders I work with are learning to stay in the uncertainty longer. They are learning to trust the process of thinking deeply even when the outputs are not immediate. They are building the kind of mental strength that does not require instant answers to feel secure.

That is what leadership looks like now.

AI Is Powerful. But Human Thinking Is Still Required.

AI is powerful. I rely on it daily. But I also recognize its limits. When the power goes out, when the connection drops, when the servers go silent, the human brain keeps firing. The mind keeps wondering. The body keeps moving.

AI does not eliminate our need to think. It reveals how much more we are capable of thinking when we use it wisely.

The goal is to build human systems that can think clearly with AI, but also without it—and more importantly, to think better and more deeply because of it. That is why cognitive sovereignty matters. It is why we build Second Brains, to strengthen, not replace, the First Brain. It is why we develop leaders who can hold vision without prompts, generate insight without inputs, and lead people through uncertainty without waiting for data to tell them what to do.

Moving Forward in Cognitive Growth

If you are feeling in-between clarity and confusion right now, between old systems and new, know that this is the space where the real work happens. It is where growth takes root. It is where leadership capacity expands.

Do not rush to fill the gap with easy answers. Do not mistake temporary discomfort for  failure. Do not abandon your thinking because AI seems faster.

The future belongs to those who can hold ambiguity, work through uncertainty, and keep growing their thinking in real time. That is what I am doing. That is what I help my clients do.

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