Hey! It’s the weekend and we have a great topic to slow down and think about AI in our lives.
At a Glance
In this piece, you will learn how to:
Shift from using AI for speed to using it for reflection
Try three simple reflection recipes with your AI tool
Build a regular practice of slowing down in your work and life
This post is prepared with Guest Author - Sam Illingworth. Creator of Slow AI
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The Cost of Speed
Many corporations try to sell us AI on its speed. Faster drafts. Instant summaries. Productivity on tap.
But speed is not always the goal. If you only use AI to move faster, you risk missing the very insights that could change how you work.
What if you used AI to pause instead? To reflect, notice, and create space for thinking that speed would otherwise erase.
When I first started using AI tools, I measured value by how much I could produce. More emails in less time. More options in fewer minutes. On paper, it looked like progress. In practic,e it was thinner thinking.
That realisation led me to create Slow AI, a weekly newsletter where I explore how to use technology not to accelerate but to deepen. It is about treating AI as a tool for reflection, attention, and awareness rather than simply a productivity engine.
The faster I moved, the more I skipped over the small details that might have taught me something. I crossed things off rather than sitting with them. I wrote without asking if it matched what I truly wanted to make.
Speed gave me output, but it stole attention.
Why AI is Built for Reflection
Reflection is the practice of stepping back to examine your own actions, decisions, and assumptions. It is not just about looking backwards but about using that perspective to guide what comes next.
In business, reflection helps leaders and teams avoid repeating mistakes and identify the values that drive their choices. In education, it can help both staff and students to explore their sense of belonging. Beyond work, reflection can anchor personal growth by making us more aware of the habits that shape our lives.
The difficulty is that reflection takes time, and in cultures focused on speed it is often the first thing abandoned.
This is where AI can help. AI mirrors. It reframes, summarises, and spots connections. Those same skills that make it powerful for drafting also make it a tool for reflection.
Used in this way, AI becomes less of a productivity engine and more of a mirror. It can:
Surface assumptions you did not notice
Reveal blind spots in your decisions
Slow the urge to jump to the next task
The key is not rapid prompts but reflective prompts that create a pause, and with it a new direction for your approach.
Recipes for Reflection
Here are three concrete practices you can try with your AI tool of choice:
1. The project mirror
After finishing a task, paste in your notes or draft.
Prompt:
What patterns do you see in how I approached this? What do these patterns suggest about how I work?Write down the answer. Highlight one phrase that surprises you.
2. The assumption check
Take a piece of your own writing.
Prompt:
List the assumptions behind this text. Which ones might be worth questioning?Choose one assumption to either explore or avoid in your next piece of writing.
3. The future ripple
Describe a recent decision.
Prompt:
If I repeated this choice every week for a year, where might it lead.Reflect on whether that outcome aligns with your values.
Each recipe takes five minutes. Each one shifts you from autopilot into awareness.
Building Reflection into Practice
Reflection is not a one-off trick. Like exercise or meditation, it only works if you make it a practice.
Try these approaches:
Time-box it. Set a 10-minute slot at the end of your week for one reflection recipe
Stack it. Tie reflection to an existing habit, such as after a meeting or at the end of a writing session
Capture it. Keep a simple record of the AI’s answers. Look back over time and notice the patterns
The point is not to outsource your reflection. It is to give yourself a structure that makes pausing easier.
Schedule it with ChatGPT. You can ask ChatGPT to do something for you or simply ask you something according to schedule. Check here
Why Slowing Down Matters
We live in a culture obsessed with speed. AI often feeds that obsession, promising more efficiency, more productivity, more output.
But there is a long history of counter-movements that remind us that speed is not the only measure of value. The slow food movement taught us to savour rather than consume. Slow travel invited us to notice the journey rather than rush to the destination. Slow scholarship encouraged depth over constant publication.
Slowing down with AI fits in that lineage. It is not about rejecting technology but using it differently. When you treat AI as a tool for reflection, you notice the values behind your choices, the blind spots in your habits, and the lessons hidden in your own work.
That is the practice I return to each week in Slow AI: using technology not to accelerate, but to deepen. The shift comes from the question you choose to ask, one that makes you pause rather than rush.
How do you use AI to reflect rather than accelerate? Share your thoughts in the comments. We would love to learn from your practice.
This post was created together with Sam! Thanks, Sam!
We love to explore new & fresh angles on AI, new practices of applying AI in life and work. If you are a Creator or know someone who may be interested in collaboration with us, share this post.
Have a great weekend and don’t forget to slow down sometimes (to accelerate even more in the future!)
Working on a new educational framework to humanize the future of learning. Would love your feedback 🌸https://open.substack.com/pub/devikatoprani/p/the-circle-of-accessibility
This is such a powerful mental model. We're obsessed with doing more with less, but using AI to question our assumptions and catch what we're missing is the real unlock.