Articles

AI Isn’t The Problem… Our Stasis Is

Most people talk about change like it’s something that happens around them.

Markets shift… technology evolves… culture moves…
And yet we hold on to our thinking as if we are the one fixed point.
As if the only thing that never changes… is us.

That’s stasis.

And it’s dangerous… and it’s something I am constantly thinking about.
You can see it most clearly in how we talk about AI.
“AI can’t be creative.”
“It’s all AI slop.”
“It’ll never replace real thinking.”

Maybe.

But when we dismiss new tools with old assumptions or the current culture… that’s not insight.
That’s stasis dressed up as certainty.
I was reminded of this again in a recent conversation I had with Eric Pratnum on his The Unfolding Thought podcast, where we went deep on creativity, entrepreneurship and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.
It’s wild how often we see the world clearly… but not ourselves.
I am finding myself checking in on my own states of stasis more and more these days… and it’s a work in progress…

Some days I catch it… some days it catches me.

And the more I look for it, the more I realize how subtle it can be.
It doesn’t always look like resistance… or fear… or a refusal to learn something new.

Sometimes stasis wears a very convincing costume.

It shows up as confidence.
It shows up as “I already know this.”
It shows up as advice we give others but won’t use ourselves (“do as I say, not as I do”).
It can even show up as nostalgia… the belief that things were somehow clearer, simpler, better before the world changed.

But every time I slow down and really examine it, I find that stasis lives in one place…

The gap between how fast the world is changing… and how slowly I’m updating my own mental models.
And maybe that’s the real work now…
Not keeping up with the world… but keeping up with ourselves.

Not chasing the next big idea…

But noticing the small moments where our thinking stops moving.
Because nothing in my life has ever gone wrong from learning something new.
Things tend to go wrong when we cling too tightly to what we think we already know.

So I’m trying to stay open.

To stay porous… to stay willing to admit that the world might be showing me something I don’t yet have language for.
And if you’re feeling that tension too… you’re in good company.

Like I said, some days I catch it… some days it catches me.

Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.