The human mind is our greatest asset.

Yet, with technological advancements, we have reduced the use of our brains and started relying more on technology to help us navigate the world around us.

Pocket calculators, especially the ones in our smartphones, eliminate the need to exercise our brains to solve everyday mathematical problems.

GPS systems reduced our need to memorise routes and understand which turn to take to get home.

Now, AI apps have come to reduce the need to think and reason about trivial to complex problems.

As I've been using these apps, like Perplexity, for my day-to-day research, programming and general Q&As, I've noticed that I've been problem-solving less in my head and delegating this task to these AI bots.

Programming is where I've noticed this effect scream. The moment I get stuck on a programming problem, my first instinct now is to ask an AI bot how to solve it.

I already know how to solve it, and I could arrive at a solution by exercising my mind for 2 minutes, but I've gotten lazy.

Asking an AI assistant is much easier.

But like any other muscle, our mind atrophies when left unexercised for long. And with time, it becomes harder to reason without external help.

Now that I've identified this problem, I'm actively trying to curb this bad habit by limiting my questions to manual labour and research, such as "What is the El Niño effect?" or "How do I schedule a recurring job in Rails 7?"

These questions are only for information gathering and don't require critical thinking.

I leave the more creative questions and logical reasoning to my human intelligence to ponder.

What about you? Have you been relying too much on AI bots these days?

Think about it.

Now, building good habits requires diligently following up with the activity you're pursuing for days and even months. That is where an app like Habituator comes in handy.

To explain more about this app, here are a few words from: