Sat 18 July 2026
Do It By Hand First: A Method for Keeping Critical Thinking Alive in the Age of AI
There's a habit I've used for twenty years to learn hard things at work: solve it by hand, write down how, script the parts that repeat, and only automate once I truly understand it. It turns out that same order, do the work first and hand it off last, lines up with a lot of what we know about how durable understanding forms, and with the kind of thinking AI makes it dangerously easy to skip. Here's the method, the research behind it, and how to use it with your kids.