🎯 Excitement Is Not a Strategy

/in /by

AI Creativity Chronicles​
Because it’s never too late
to play with the future.

🎬 Practicing in Public

This is one of my new, daily Practicing in Public videos on TikTok β€” a little series I started as my own experiment in Following the Juice. 🧭 Short, unpolished, thinking-out-loud video riffs. A way to show up, stay creatively awake, and let the ideas find me in real time instead of waiting until I’ve got them perfectly figured out.

This particular one got at something I’ve been chewing on for a while. πŸ‘‡

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Acceleration without intention is just noise. Or worse.”

πŸ€” The question nobody seems to ask

I’m deeply excited about the AI revolution β€” no doubt more than most people my age. But I don’t want to be distracted by it like a “shiny object.” ✨

Excitement is not a strategy.
​I’ve lived through the internet revolution and the digital video revolution. I know what a genuine tectonic shift feels like. 🌊 This is one. But tools don’t provide meaning by themselves.

AI is a tool, not a destination.
The real question isn’t what can it do?
​It’s what are we using it for?

For sure, to me at least, it’s not about making money more quickly.

🧭 Following The Juice

Finding meaningful work is not a no-brainer, and it’s not simple.

The guidance I use, I call Following The Juice. What lights me up? In a recent conversation with a group of business owners, I named it The Joy Filter. Where is there authentic enthusiasm? πŸ”₯ Where does the energy actually move?

For me, right now, one of the answers is: daily videos. πŸŽ₯ Which is why my new TikToks exist. It’s not a content strategy. It’s a practice. A way of staying in the conversation with my own curiosity expressed, no longer private.

πŸ’¬ Your turn

What are you solving for?

What are the questions, the challenges, the things you actually care about that AI can help you accelerate and amplify?

Tell me. πŸ“© Reply to this email. I read them all.

(And if you want to follow along with my daily Practicing in Public video series, it’s on my TikTok. I’d love to hear from you there. πŸ‘‹)

πŸš€ If you’re ready to move from tools to strategy

This is the conversation I have with clients every week β€” helping founders, coaches, and experts translate their AI excitement into videos, websites (yes, I still do websites 😁), and strategy that actually builds their authority.

πŸ‘‰ [Book a free convo]

I’d love to hear where you are and where you want to go.

Creatively yours,

Jon Leland
​The AI Over 50 Guy

🎸 Dylan’s Warning Was About AI (He Just Didn’t Know It)

/in /by

AI Creativity Chronicles​
Because it’s never too late
to play with the future.

“He Not Busy Being Born Is Busy Dying.”

Bob Dylan wrote that line in 1964. He had no idea about doom scrolling. No idea about AI-generated content flooding the internet. No idea about algorithms designed to keep you passive, consuming, numb.

But he nailed it anyway.

Because the crisis he was describing isn’t technological, it’s existential. And it’s been here a lot longer than ChatGPT.

⚑ This Contrast Cuts Deeper Than It Looks

Here’s why this contrast matters.

On one side: Cognitive Surrender.

Not laziness. Something more insidious. It’s the quiet outsourcing of your mind to the scroll, to the algorithm, to the AI that will happily generate whatever you stopped bothering to think about yourself.

Doom scrolling is cognitive surrender. Couch potato TV binges are cognitive surrender. Hitting “generate” and accepting the output without engaging is cognitive surrender.

On the other side: Creative Agency.

Standing strong as a human in the loop. Bringing your judgment, your taste, your curiosity to whatever you’re making, especially when you’re using AI to make it.

This is the difference between AI as a replacement and AI as a collaborator. Between shrinking and building. Between dying and being born.

The building blocks on that right sideβ€”Human in the Loop, Self-Expression, Personal Sovereigntyβ€”aren’t abstract ideals. They’re daily choices.

They’re the difference between someone who uses AI to amplify their voice and someone who uses it to avoid having one.

Dylan was describing this same contrast. The daily choice each of us is making, whether we are aware of it or not.

As I keep saying, it’s never too late to play with the future. πŸš€

But you do have to play.

πŸ” Something to sit with:

Which side of the image feels uncomfortably familiar right now, and what’s one thing you could do this week to embrace your Creative Agency?

Ready to stay in the loop?

If you’re a founder, coach, or thought leader who wants to build authentic authority online through video, strategy, or a web presence that actually reflects who you are, let’s talk.

πŸ‘‰ [Book a free consult call]

No pitch. Just an honest conversation about where you are and where you want to go.

Let’s do this!

Jon Leland
​The AI Over 50 Guy