Stop Making Peace with Pain: The Hidden Cost of Normalizing Inefficiency

"I don't really have any pain points to automate," one CEO told me during an AI workshop last week. "I don't do repetitive work like other people in the company do."

Then, almost as an afterthought, he mentioned how he spends six hours manually editing every report his team sends him before sharing them with clients.

I had to stop him right there.

"Let me get this straight. You spend six hours painstakingly editing reports by hand, and you 'don't really have any pain points to automate'?" He couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony.

This is what happens when we normalize pain: we stop seeing it as pain. We make peace with inefficiency so completely that we don't even recognize it anymore.

I'm guilty of it too. Just last week, I caught myself 45 minutes into meticulously comparing AI outputs, before realizing I could have asked AI to do the comparison for me. In one minute.

We do this everywhere. A COO I met recently complained that AI vendors were "holding him hostage" by charging for enterprise security features. "I mean, I get that it’ll help, but I don't like feeling manipulated," he said.

I had to ask: "If someone was selling jet packs outside your stadium right now—real, working jet packs that could eliminate commutes for your entire staff—would you feel manipulated by the jet pack vendor?"

He laughed. But that's exactly what we're talking about. These aren't just productivity tools. They're jet packs for the mind. Cognitive augmentation for redefined ‘AI’.” As Greg Shove put it, they're "testosterone for the mind"— especially for knowledge workers, whose primary capital is intellectual.

Brad Anderson, President of Qualtrics, recently shared his vision of an AI-powered organization on Beyond the Prompt: "Every person, every department, every day." That’s a huge, aspirational goal! But here's what leaders miss: that includes you. If you're not identifying your key use cases, why would you expect others to?

Anderson practices what he preaches. He blocks time every day to explore new tools, try new approaches, and share discoveries with his team. But most leaders do what my CEO friend did: they exempt themselves from the very transformation they're trying to drive.

Breaking the Pattern

The solution starts with something I've advocated for years: keep a bug list. Not software bugs—human bugs. The things that annoy you, frustrate you, eat your time.

Because here's what I've learned: what's true for innovation generally is true for AI-powered innovation specifically: problem recognition is a necessary precondition to solution finding.

Remember that Facility Manager at the National Parks Service? His breakthrough started with a simple prompt: "It stinks that..." Once he named his pain point, he built a solution in 45 minutes that's saving thousands of days across the park system.

But first, he had to stop making peace with pain.

Your Next Move Matters More Than Your Next Meeting

Here's what I want you to do right now:

1. Write down three painful things you've "made peace with" in your work. The inefficiencies you've stopped seeing. Make an AI Bug List.

2. Block 30 minutes tomorrow, like Brad does, to explore how AI could help.

3. Share what you discover. Because somewhere in your organization, someone else has made peace with the same pain, and as a lead user, you owe it to them to share what you’ve learned.

The biggest barrier to AI transformation isn't technical capability. It's our ability to recognize opportunities we've trained ourselves to ignore.

So stop making peace with pain. Start making war on inefficiency.

Your future self will thank you for those six hours back.

Related: Redefine AI: Augmented I
Related: Beyond the Prompt: Greg Shove
Related: Beyond the Prompt: Brad Anderson
Related: Keep A Bug List
Related: Catalyze AI Success: The Power of Dedicated Innovation Capacity
Related: 45 Minutes That Saved 20 Years
Related: Try This Now to Build AI Muscles

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