Thinking at Half Speed

15 April 2026

When AI is going round in circles trying to fix something, say stop. Then say: simpler.

AI will often try increasingly complex solutions when the simple one was available all along. Left to its own devices it can burn through your energy trying clever approaches when the straightforward answer was sitting there from the start.

What happened tonight was a good example. Setting up blog section navigation on WordPress, Claude tried multiple approaches — Query Loop blocks, page conflicts, reading settings changes — when the answer was a basic Latest Posts block with a category filter. Simple, reliable, done in one go. It took far too long to get there and cost cognitive energy at the end of a very long day.

The other failure was not following my own advice. There is a whole tip on this blog about not taking AI’s first answer as gospel and pushing back when something is not working. I did not do that tonight when it mattered. Challenge AI sooner. Do not let it fiddle.

Two failed attempts is the limit. After that, stop, reset, and ask for the simplest possible solution.

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If it is not working after two tries, say: simpler.