Someone called my use of AI "disgusting" last week.
Real person. Creator I respect. Not a troll. They saw a post where I said AI is a tool worth learning, and they came after it hard.
I spiraled for a day. Wrote this in my journal: Am I a creator or a lazy phony who built a fancy system to fake it?
Still don't have a clean answer. But I figured instead of writing ABOUT the question, I'd just show you the system and let you decide for yourself.
Here's exactly how AI fits into my creative workflow right now. The whole thing. What I built, why I built it, where I draw the line, and where I'm still figuring out where the line is.
THE NAPKIN SKETCH
Here's the bird's-eye view. My AI system has three layers:
That's it. Three layers. Let me walk you through each one.
LAYER 1: THE MORNING LOOP
Every morning I open a skill called Start My Day.
It pulls up my calendar, checks my meetings, scans my email, and walks me through a devotion with scripture reflection. Then it saves my thoughts into an Obsidian daily note. (Obsidian is just a notes app. Nothing fancy. Think of it as a journal that connects to itself.)
The AI doesn't think for me in this layer. It reads my world so I don't have to spend 30 minutes sorting through inboxes and calendars. It pulls what's relevant and puts it in front of me. Then I sit with it.
The devotion piece matters to me. I want to start every working day in scripture, and the system helps me do that consistently instead of "I'll read my Bible when I have time" (which is code for never). The reflection goes into Obsidian, where it sits and compounds. Some of those reflections end up in sermons. Some end up in newsletters. Some just sit there and become part of how I think.
The AI is the librarian 👩🏫
LAYER 2: THE WORKBENCH
This is where it gets interesting (and where the "disgusting" comments come from).
I've built what are called Claude Skills. Think of them as recipe cards for specific creative jobs. I have one for drafting newsletter editions. One for reviewing other people's copy. One for writing email sequences. One for researching a topic. Each skill knows my voice, my audience, my brand guidelines, even my list of words I hate. (The word "delve" is banned from my entire system. If you've ever read something that uses "delve" and didn't immediately close the tab, we need to talk.)
When I sit down to write this newsletter, here's what actually happens:
I choose the topic and angle. That's the first 10%. No AI involved. The idea came from my journal entry about being called disgusting. The angle came from me sitting with it and connecting it to the Parable of the Talents. That's human work.
I feed my notes to the skill. My rough thoughts, the scripture reference, the journal entry, whatever raw material I have. The skill drafts something. That's the 80%.
I tear the draft apart. That's the last 10%, and honestly it's where all the actual writing happens. I read the draft out loud. I delete sentences that don't sound like me. I retype paragraphs phrase by phrase until they land the way I'd say them in a conversation. The AI gave me clay. I'm shaping it with my hands.
(Here's a thing I've never admitted publicly: sometimes the draft comes back and it's genuinely good, and I have this moment of panic where I think "was that me or was that the machine?" And I can't always tell.)
LAYER 3: THE WRESTLE
This is the layer nobody talks about because it's not sexy.
I built a checkpoint into this layer recently. Before I ask AI for anything, I write one sentence by hand that captures what I actually think about the topic.
It's annoying. It's also the best thing I've done for my process in months.
That sentence is my anchor. When the AI draft comes back, I compare it against what I actually believe. If the draft wandered from my original thought, I know the machine is driving. If my thought evolved because the draft showed me something I hadn't considered, that's the collaboration working.
The line between tool and crutch is right there. Did the AI extend your thinking, or did it replace it?
WHERE I'M STILL FIGURING IT OUT
I'll be honest, I cross my own line more than I'd like.
Sometimes I'm tired and I publish something I didn't wrestle with enough. Sometimes the draft is 90% AI and my 10% was "yeah, that looks fine." Those are the days I'm the third servant in Matthew 25. I buried my own thinking. I let the machine do the work that was mine to do.
The master in that parable never asked how the first two servants grew what they were given. He asked did they produce something. And producing something means more than clicking a button. It means showing up with your actual brain and making choices about what's true, what matters, and what you're willing to put your name on.
I'm not writing this as a guy who figured it out. I'm writing it as a guy who built a system, uses it every day, gets called disgusting for it, questions everything about it at 2 PM on a Tuesday, and then opens it back up the next morning because the alternative is burying my tools in the ground and calling it integrity.
⚠️ DANGER ZONE FOR CHRISTIANS
The trap isn't using AI. It's using AI to avoid the thinking God gave you the capacity for. If your 10% becomes 2%, you’re in the danger zone.
IF YOU WANT TO TRY THIS
I'm not selling anything here. But if you're a Christian who creates things and you're wrestling with the same question, here's where I'd start:
☕️ Start with the morning loop. You don't need AI skills or a fancy system. You need a place to think every morning before the inbox owns you. Open a notes app. Write today's date. Write what you're working on. Write one thing you read in scripture. That's it. Do that for two weeks and you'll have more raw material than you know what to do with.
🧑🍳 Then build one recipe card. Pick the creative task you do most often. Write down exactly how you do it, step by step. What voice do you use? What does good look like? What are your pet peeves? Now you have a skill. Whether you use it with AI or just as a checklist for yourself, you've captured your own creative process in a way most people never bother to.
🤼 Then wrestle. Use the tool. Get a draft. Read it out loud. Delete what isn't you. Retype what's close but not right. That's where the work lives. That's the part that makes it yours.
The question was never "is AI okay?"
The question is what are you making with what you've been given? And are you actually in the room when it's being made?
I'm still testing. Still getting it wrong. Still trying again tomorrow.
You're welcome to watch.
♻️ If this was useful, send it to someone who builds & creates and is likely asking the same questions. They could probably use a framework that isn't "AI is evil" or "AI is the future."
Create dangerously,
—Payton
