You can't 'do AI' before you sort it

The big pile problem: why AI feels impossible to start

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When I look at a mountain of clean laundry, many machines in one pile, I simply cannot make myself start. Where do people even begin? What if I start and don't finish in one go? Will I leave the rest or need to put it somewhere else? My instinct is to move the pile into a room, close the door, and sneak away. Of course, that doesn't solve anything. And now I also carry the mental load of knowing there's an unresolved mess in my house.

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This is what happens in many organizations with AI. No wonder it feels hard to start. You can't have a real, grounded conversation about "Do AI" as one abstract obligation. You can't design a helpful first step if everything is mixed into one heap. It is paralyzing. Especially if you don’t know the first things about folding .... or AI. 

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So, as with laundry or trees, people close the door somehow (aka 'This is not a good time', 'This ia such a busy time'). They park AI as a very important but future priority. They sit in meetings where everyone nods seriously about its importance, and nothing changes and everyone drags their feet.

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Our  prefrontal cortex simply shuts down under this level of overload - it is big and hairy and scary.  It is called ‘Cognitive Load ’, it is real, researched and well-documented and nothing to be ashamed of*.

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The one minute rule

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You can't work with 'all the trees' the real shift comes from one tiny commitment. Take care of one tree, or zoom out to oversee the forest. That is the only task to focus on.

Underwear with underwear. Towels with towels. Bed linen with bed linen. T-shirts with T-shirts, a stack for the kitchen. Suddenly, you are looking at three towels and five pairs of socks and 10 kitchen towels. Now it feels like there is a plan and you did barely anything. I did not commit to putting it away, i commited to the 1 minute of sorting and after that the action plan presented itself.

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The same principle applies to AI adoption. Instead of "We need an AI strategy," try giving yourself permission to spend a short, focused moment on sorting the heap:

• "Strategy," what AI should and shouldn't do for us.
• "Tools," which platforms or models we may want to experiment with, what do we have, what do we need.  Do we know, or should we ask someone who knows to explain.
•  "People," where our team is today and what they're ready for, who is ahead and eager.

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Once those categories exist, you can have real chats. You're no longer trying to solve prompting, tooling, transformation, upskilling, cost-saving and reporting to our investors on it, in one breath. You're asking: "Which of these do we touch now?" and "What's the smallest next step inside that a category?"

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Interestingly, brain imaging studies show that naming what you're looking at, researchers call it "affect labeling," calms us down. Sorting is literally calming** so you can easily move now. 

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It moves itself

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Your brain releases dopamine not at the finish line, but in anticipation of completing a task it believes is achievable. It just feels good that "we can".  We have therewith enabled ourselves to move forward.***

Now you see the AI categories, simply start and get a feel for what chopping wood looks like in practice.

Maybe you start with prompting: one concrete task you already do regularly, and an experiment in how AI could support it. Ask an expert to show you and the team some tricks. Maybe you start with your team: one conversation to understand where they're confident, and where they're curious. Maybe you start with strategy: a short, sharp discussion about what AI is for in your organization, in the context of your real work.

Just don't try to 'do' the "AI forest" in one go. It is impossible, and you'll be in a fog  in minutes and 100% demotivated by the end of the week.

Sort it, name it, and pick one thing to begin.

Like:

• One feasible experiment for the next six weeks
• One conversation about where your team really is
• One visible use case you could tackle in weeks 

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From there, you'll see the plan shaping up.

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*Earl Miller & Jonathan Cohen, "An Integrative Theory of Prefrontal Cortex Function" (MIT/Princeton, 2001) **Matthew Lieberman, "Putting Feelings Into Words," UCLA (2007) ***Teresa Amabile & Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011)