23. Playing babysitter to all these AI ‘assistants’

Hi friends,

This month I tried playing around with Perplexity’s AI browser, Comet.

The person who recommended it to me was raving about it. “It’s super powerful! You can use it to search for deals and compare prices across sites automatically. 

Colour me intrigued! The ‘talking to a page like it’s a person’ feature sounded cool, so OK, why not, if it can help me search for quotes within my email for a piece, then, sure, let’s give it a shot. 

But, I underestimated how much time you need to get something set up.

My first attempt at setup was a nightmare. Try to log in, forgot my password, reset it, wait for 2FA codes, dig through my personal email instead of work, get locked out after too many tries.

That’s twenty minutes gone.

Once I got it to work, the agentic side was vaguely useful. It helped a bit, but not enough that I’d use it constantly.

Maybe that says more about my password hygiene (yes, I use a password manager). But it was tiresome.

Instead of enjoying the much-lauded productivity benefits, I spent more time babysitting logins than actually working. And I think it would have been faster if I did it myself.

Maybe that’s the hidden cost when you add a new tool to a working system. It’s not just about paying a new subscription fee, but also the added cognitive fee, which is the time and headspace it takes to configure, troubleshoot, and slot a shiny new tool into your workflow.

Sure, AI/technology incorporated well can help you with these things

I don’t know about you but I’m tired of seeing every tool incorporate some form of AI assistant.

Don’t get me wrong, I love exploring new tools! Sometimes bringing in a new tool can do wonders for your creativity or keep you organised.

But what all these fancy marketing copies and glowing testimonials fail to mention is that you need to invest significant time and effort to set up every new tool, including properly tuning AI features to get the most value from them.

Every tool comes with some cognitive load, which is essentially:

• Time and effort to set up each new tool⁠⁠, or properly configure and tune AI features to get the most out of them⁠⁠, which means your ability to do anything drops in the short term

• Time troubleshooting and managing tools that distract you from completing your actual work⁠⁠

• Time to set up authentication and configuration, (that’s another password to remember)

Not to mention each tool comes with an expensive subscription that charge a premium with AI add-ons (that’s about $20/month at least), which adds up fast. 

You see this in the productivity or project management tool space - way too many tools, too many assistants trying to help you get the thing done. But, you spend more time trying to get the tool to work and configuring the tool than actually getting the actual task done. 

It’s ironic, because I don’t think we’re suffering from the lack of know-how and information. We actually now have too much information. But the problem is now trying to find what’s relevant for your specific situation, and moving from learning and gathering new information to spending time implementing and thinking about how to best implement something.

 But there’s a danger of it being quick fixes, a band-aid over the real problem, so to speak.

New tools are pretty exciting. I get it.

There’s always that sense of “OMG this tool will fix all my problems and magically turn you into a wizard” - this is often not the case.

I feel this feeling more acutely as we enter October.

It’s Q4, and that’s when you start thinking: “oh shit what have I done with my year! I mean, it feels like the year just started? No wonder we’re primed to grab shiny tools that promise to squeeze more out of the last few months of the year.”

But our brains are wired to find new things exciting, that’s why they call it the honeymoon period. It’s better that we know that this is going to happen, and roll with it.

Sometimes you see a workflow that works well on paper when someone is demonstrating it, but does it work for how you’ve structured your business and the way your brain works?

So, if you’re feeling exhausted or annoyed by all the “AI powered tools out there” popping up like mushrooms and promising to automate all the tedium out of your day but yet failing to live up to those promises, you aren’t alone.

Before you add another tool to your workflow, try asking yourself these questions:

• Does it make sense for your workflow? Set aside 30 minutes to try it out with a specific task and check in to see how you’re feeling. Or designate a testing period with the free trial option

• Did you save any time with the new process? Or is it actually easier to stick to the older workflow?

• Do they have a free trial option to use as a testing period?

• Are you spending too much time troubleshooting or figuring out new tools. Know when to switch back to your old workflow or abandon the idea.

• Kiran Shahid writing for Zapier also shared these practical tips she uses to audit her existing tools and avoid shiny object syndrome.

• Set time limits: if you haven’t used something in X days, it’s time for it to go

• Enforce a 30-60 day waiting period before introducing new tools to avoid shiny object syndrome

• Ask 3 questions about each app to reduce tech bloat every quarter — are you actively using this at least weekly? Does it perform a function I can’t find elsewhere? Does my workflow suffer if I remove this app?

Now, onto an interesting study on content freshness I found recently 👇

something I’m thinking about:

Research by Airpos (published August 2025) found AI search engines favour relevant and up-to-date content.

🎯 One sentence summary

There’s a consistent link between content freshness and AI citation performance, hence if you want to earn citations in AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT, don’t just publish once, invest time to maintain and update your pages.

💬 One important quote

“Our analysis confirms that user intent has a significant impact on content freshness. Commercial queries—those most closely tied to buying decisions and customer action—overwhelmingly surfaced recently updated content. In contrast, informational queries showed greater tolerance for older pages.”

🗝️ One key takeaway

It’s not enough to publish high-quality content once. What matters most is how recently that content has been updated. For brands, content maintenance is no longer optional. Those that neglect refresh cycles risk fading from AI results—not because their content is bad, but because it’s outdated.

Other fun and nerdy things

• Cheeky AF ad campaign released by Visit Sweden for… the country in 2023. Comments on the YouTube video are also pure gold if you need a chuckle. As one YouTube commenter wrote: “I just watched an ad for an entire country.” It’s funny since I often think of ads as relevant for brands. But here’s an entire country running advertising.

• Should you pronounce ‘scone’ to rhyme with ‘gone’ or with ‘bone’? Something I didn’t know, and a very funny topic to dedicate to data analysis and visualization.

Need content help to end off the year (or to start 2026?)

If you’ve got content plans but are struggling to find time to put it all together, I’ll like to invite you to work with me!

I believe in a thoughtful, consultative approach. By investing time to understand your business, I help create content that aligns with your overall marketing and business goals. Let's discuss how we could team up to:

• Make your product the star of the show with thoughtful, strategic content

• Repurpose existing assets to help more people discover your amazing brand

• Identify and give your old, decaying content a new lease of life with a content refresh

• Share your expertise through well-researched reports and whitepapers

• Celebrate your customer successes in a way that builds trust and attracts similar clients

I have a client slot opening in November. If this sounds like you, let's schedule a conversation about how content can support your marketing goals.