Building mirrors, not productivity tools

In a world of AI, we need to (hear me out)… reclaim our feelings.

Let me explain.

For most of my career, my work has been about helping people produce things.

Designing websites. Brands. Content. Campaigns. Outputs.

The brief was usually some variation of: make something. And then make it faster, better, clearer, more polished.

For a long time that made sense. Production was expensive. Skilled people were needed to create things. Designers designed (this was me). Writers wrote. Developers built.

But…machines can now produce an almost endless stream of output. Words. Images. Code. Ideas. Variations. Entire systems.

Production is no longer the bottleneck. And when a bottleneck disappears, the value moves somewhere else.

Lately I’ve been thinking about where it’s moving. I came across a line that stuck with me:

That might be a little dramatic, but there’s something true hiding inside it.

When everything can be generated instantly, the question stops being “Can we make this?” and becomes “Does this actually matter?”.

Or even more simply: How does this make someone feel?

Not in a fluffy motivational sense. In a practical one.

• Does a website make someone trust the owner?

• Does a tool make someone feel clearer about their thinking?

• Does a product make someone feel a sense of progress?

• Does a piece of writing make someone feel less alone?

Those things are harder to automate.

I’ve been noticing that the small tools I’m most interested in building lately don’t really fit into the usual productivity categories. They’re not about squeezing more output from your day.

They’re about helping people notice things about themselves and others.

One tiny project I’ve been experimenting with is a simple page where you log small wins. Nothing complicated. Just moments where something went right. Each time you open the page, one of those wins appears at the top.

It’s a small thing, but it does something interesting: it reminds you that progress exists, even when your brain is busy ignoring it. I’ve been using it since October.

Tools like that aren’t really productivity tools. They’re closer to mirrors.

They help people see patterns, progress, ideas, or emotions that were already there but are becoming easy to miss.

And that’s where AI powered (or built) tools become interesting to me. They can be a quiet assistant that helps surface insight.

• A system that notices patterns in what you write.

• A tool that asks better reflection questions.

• A product that helps you make sense of your own experiences.

What I’m most bullish on is technology that helps people understand themselves a little better.

Maybe that’s where some of the most interesting work is going?

Not just building things faster.

But building things that help people pause, notice, reflect, and feel a little more certain about where they’re going.

Production will still matter.

But the deeper challenge might be something else entirely:

Helping people make sense of their own lives, when traditional meaning is taken away.

Let me know what you think.

Talk soon,

Mark

• Available for client design work

• I’m building lots of side experiments and tools with AI help

• Read more from me on my blog