I spent hours on a lead magnet that Damien eventually described as 'polished diarrhea’; I didn’t even make it to solid turd level.
Enthusiastic. Productive-feeling. Completely misguided.
That's the most accurate description of the afternoon I spent building what I was absolutely convinced was going to be a knockout lead magnet. I was in a state of flow only those with AuDHD can understand. The document was growing and Gemini was cooperating beautifully.
Damien read it.
It was bad. Like, polished diarrhea bad. The kind of output that looks like something until someone who knows better reads it out loud and the whole thing deflates like a sad birthday balloon.
I still found a use for it.
And the reason I almost didn't has nothing to do with AI.
I went into that session with energy (possibly too much squirrel energy, but that’s a different story…) and no plan. I knew the general topic.
However, I didn’t follow Dalio’s 5-step process of Goals → Problems → Diagnosis → Design → Do
I did not have a defined problem, a clear end goal, or any real sense of who the thing was actually for.
AI is extraordinary at executing, but not so not great at caring whether you've thought things through first. Hand it a vague brief with good intentions and it will produce something that technically answers the question you didn't quite ask.
The output reflects the input: Garbage In, Garbage Out
And if the input starts with "I have this general idea and a free afternoon," the output is going to be exactly as focused as that sounds.
Cheryl Einhorn's DREAMS framework is one of the cleaner ways I've seen this problem named and solved.
The framework isn't complicated, but it requires something most of us skip when we're excited about an idea: actual thinking before we start.
It may feel slower than just opening a chat window and going for it But it also can be the difference between a document that Damien can hand back with a look on his face, and one that actually does what you needed it to do.
"How you perceive and respond to challenges shapes your outcomes". - Ankur Warikoo
Despite the polished turds, that afternoon wasn't entirely wasted.
The document I made was too vague to be a lead magnet. It turned out to be a decent brainstorm and gave me raw material to build with.
AI output without a plan isn't always garbage. The mistake is treating "it came out of a productive session" as the same thing as "it's ready to publish." Those are very different things, and the gap between them is exactly where the DREAMS framework lives.
Know what you're building before you build it. Then use the tool to execute the plan.
Your audience can tell the difference. So can Damien.