When to let a model write your memo (and when not to).

We use language models every day. We also write a lot of things by hand. The line between the two is more useful than people make it.

Let a model write: meeting notes, summaries of long documents, first drafts of recurring artefacts (status updates, briefs that follow a template), translation, formatting.

Write yourself: the strategy memo, the resignation letter, the email to a client whose project has just gone wrong, the document that names a thing for the first time. The work where the writing is the thinking.

The principle is simple. If the value is in the words being correct, a model is fine. If the value is in the act of writing — in being forced to think the thought all the way through — a model robs you of it.

The harder cases are the ones in the middle. The board paper. The proposal. The all-hands. We tend to draft these by hand and use a model to pressure-test them, not the other way round.