A Special Announcement: NCAA Tournament Selection

Quick question before we start…

How much AI will you use to pick your NCAA bracket this year?
And will you spend less time on it… or obsess over it even more?

The 34th edition of the Cox Family Fun 4 Free Tournament launches Sunday, and prizes are bigger than ever, “double-big” since both of our companies doubled this past year.

• 🥇 $500 — 1st place
  
  
  

• 🥈 $250 — 2nd place
  
  
  

• 🥉 $100 — 3rd place
  
  
  

• 😅 Last place always wins something
  
  
  

Invite your friends. It costs nothing, except courage and thick skin.

Last year’s winners were Aaron Fox, Davis Trasen, and Antonio Miliarese.

We’ll send the private link by Monday.

Now back to our regularly scheduled productivity crisis.

AI Was Supposed to Save Us Time…

A recent Wall Street Journal article pointed out something many leaders are quietly experiencing:

AI isn’t making work disappear, it’s making it more intense.

We were promised:

“Automation will free your time.”
“Efficiency will reduce workload.”
“You’ll finally relax.”

Instead, most leaders are thinking:

“Great… now we can do ten times more stuff.”

When output gets faster, expectations follow immediately behind.

• Reports multiply
  
  
  

• Decisions accelerate
  
  
  

• Revisions pile up
  
  
  

• Standards climb
  
  
  

Congratulations, you just upgraded the engine while flooring the gas pedal.

The Super Pac-Man Effect

If you ever played Super Pac-Man, the goal seemed simple: clear the maze and avoid the ghosts.

During my annual two-week visits to see my dad in Florida, he’d take me to a restaurant bar, hand me a roll of quarters, and say, “Have fun.”

At beginner level, the game is slow and manageable.

This phase cost him a small fortune.

But once you learn the patterns, everything changes:

• You move faster
  
  
  

• You plan routes
  
  
  

• You anticipate trouble
  
  
  

• You chase higher scores
  
  
  

You don’t play less.

You play like your life depends on it.

Ironically, I played longer but spent fewer quarters because I stopped dying every 30 seconds.

That’s exactly what happens when organizations start mastering AI.

What Actually Happens After Adoption

AI removes friction from routine work:

• Reports appear instantly
  
  
  

• Analysis happens in seconds
  
  
  

• Drafts generate on demand
  
  
  

• Data patterns pop out like magic
  
  
  

But the time saved doesn’t turn into free afternoons.

It turns into new expectations.

Leaders immediately start asking:

• Can we improve this?
  
  
  

• Can we automate the next step?
  
  
  

• Can we run more scenarios?
  
  
  

• What else can this thing do?
  
  
  

The maze gets bigger.
The targets get higher.
The ghosts get faster.

Why Work Feels More Intense

Expectations explode.
If something that used to take two days now takes ten minutes, nobody says, “Great, let’s stop there.”

They say, “Perfect. Now give me five versions.”

Improvement never ends.
AI delivers first drafts, not final answers. Someone still has to verify, refine, sanity-check, and occasionally stop it from hallucinating your quarterly forecast into a science fiction novel.

Opportunities multiply.
Automation, pricing models, forecasting, dashboards, decision tools, every improvement reveals three more things you could optimize.

Excel didn’t eliminate analysis. It created people who build spreadsheets no one else understands.

AI is doing that… at warp speed.

A Strategic Pause Most Leaders Skip

Many organizations assume they must build everything themselves.

But AI evolves faster than internal committees.

Strategic leaders ask:

• Is this something we must own?
  
  
  

• Is there a partner already doing this well?
  
  
  

• Would outsourcing reduce risk and speed results?
  
  
  

In Super Pac-Man terms, you don’t win by memorizing every square of the maze.

You win by recognizing patterns and using advantages, including power pellets.

AI Is Changing Leadership Work

The real shift isn’t less work, it’s different work.

Manual tasks decrease. Decision pressure increases.

Leaders spend more time:

• Improving systems
  
  
  

• Asking sharper questions
  
  
  

• Making faster decisions
  
  
  

• Testing new ideas
  
  
  

• Managing bigger consequences
  
  
  

The goal isn’t to slow down.

The goal is to survive at higher speeds.

Final Thought

Smarter tools don’t create easier jobs.

They create faster games with higher stakes.

AI didn’t remove the maze.
It removed the training wheels.

And the leaders who win won’t be the ones who try to escape the maze… they’ll be the ones who learn to run it faster, smarter, and with fewer quarters than everyone else.