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Here's a thought experiment for you:
Imagine waking up tomorrow and 90% of your to-do list has already been handled. Not by an assistant or by a colleague—but by an AI agent that worked through the night, autonomously, on your behalf.
This exact percentage will depend on how much of your work is knowledge work—research, writing, analysis, organizing, email. But for many of us, it's a lot. This isn't science fiction anymore—it's starting to happen now.
So I've been experimenting 🙂
If you've followed my work for a while, you know I've been averse to using AI—especially in my writing. I'm a professional writer. I want my work to have a human touch—and my own voice.
This hasn't changed—but something else has.
AI has moved from being a tech demo to being genuinely practical. Not for replacing human creativity or connection, but for building what I've started calling an “intelligence layer” underneath the work I do—a layer of strategizing, reasoning, and doing that I can then stand on to bring the human elements: taste, judgment, ingenuity, and above all, connection.
Last week, I watched an AI tool called Claude Cowork navigate my Home Assistant setup—a complicated, techy smart home system that had become a mess over years of tinkering. I watched it click through menus, reorganize rooms, rename devices. It did in an hour what would have taken me an entire afternoon. If I could justify doing the task at all, given how tedious and unimportant it was.
I watched it work. Seeing every action built the trust I had with the tool, in a way that no product demo ever could.
The next morning, I walked to the Apple Store and bought a Mac Mini. I wanted to run an autonomous AI agent called Moltbot that could handle this “intelligence layer” without my interventions. It now has access to my drafts, my calendar, and my email (read-only). It suggests articles I should be working on (like this one). It asks me questions about my ideas, so it can summarize them, so I have more raw material to work with for articles. It prints me a morning briefing. It's a harbinger of what's coming.
I wouldn't recommend my particular setup to most people—it requires technical know-how and also risk tolerance that most people don't have or want. But here's what I would recommend: start preparing for what I'm calling The Guidance Economy.
We're about to shift from doing knowledge work to doing what I think of as “guidance work.”
When AI agents can handle most of your to-do list, you're no longer rewarded for execution speed. You're rewarded for knowing what matters. For pointing powerful systems at the right problems. For setting clear intentions.
Think about it: if 90% of your tasks are done for you, then choosing the right 100% becomes everything. The opportunity cost of working on the wrong thing is real. You're not just wasting your own time anymore—you're wasting the capacity of systems that could be doing something far more valuable.
This is a big reason why I wrote Intentional.
The book is about following through on your goals by aligning them with your values. But it's about something bigger too. In a world where AI handles more and more of the “doing,” the ability to set clear, meaningful intentions isn't just a productivity skill—it's becoming the foundational capability for working in an AI-augmented world.
The Guidance Economy is coming. Technical skills will help, and I'm happy to guide you through the tools I'm using if that's something you want—just reply to this email and let me know. If you'd like, I can do a video on Claude Cowork, which I'm finding extraordinarily useful.
But the skill you should be doubling down on right now? Becoming more intentional.
Intention is about to become everything.
Chris
