Last week I doomscrolled myself into a weird mood.
One tab told me AI is coming for every job I have ever had. Next tab promised I could retire in 90 days if I “just leaned in” to the AI gold rush.
Meanwhile my actual reality was a cold coffee, a kid’s lunchbox to pack, and a half written email sequence I did not want to finish.
The gap between those headlines and my life felt huge. Either I was about to be replaced by a robot, or I was failing because I was not running three AI businesses on the side.
So I did what any tired parent with a tech habit does.
I closed the tabs and opened my to do list.
And that is where the boring middle lives.
Two loud stories and one quiet one
Right now the AI story you hear depends on who you follow.
On one side you get AI panic:
“Whole industries will vanish.”
“Your kids will never work.”
“Extinction level risk.”
On the other side you get AI hype:
“10x your income overnight.”
“Replace your whole team with one AI agent.”
“If you are not all in on AI, you will get left behind.”
Both sides are dramatic. Both sides get clicks. Both sides mostly ignore how normal humans actually live.
Because here is the funny part. Even with all the noise, a lot of people have never opened ChatGPT. Many small business owners are just now poking at the AI button that quietly appeared in their email app.
There is a third story that does not trend as often.
The shrug.
“I have heard of this AI thing. I am busy. Show me where it saves me an hour, then we can talk.”
That shrug is not ignorance. It is self defense. When you are juggling work, kids, and a side project, you do not have time to join a new religion, even if the religion has a sleek landing page.
Which is why I like the boring middle.
The mental reset: AI as your overeager intern
To live in that middle, you need one mindset shift.
AI is not a crystal ball. It is not a Terminator. It is an overeager intern with wifi.
It has read a ridiculous amount of text. It can write, summarize, translate, spit out ideas, crunch some numbers. It works fast and does not get tired.
It also lies confidently. Misunderstands context. Makes stuff up. Uses clichés. And absolutely needs supervision.
If you picture AI as:
Tool, not magic. Like a very fancy autocomplete that guesses the next useful word.
Intern, not CEO. It can draft, suggest, and organize, but you decide what is right.
Co pilot, not autopilot. It can help fly, but you keep your hands near the wheel.
then suddenly the extremes look silly.
You do not panic about a hammer starting a construction company. You also do not expect a hammer to build you a house in a weekend.
Same with this stuff.
What the boring middle actually looks like
Let me paint you three quick snapshots.
1. Lina, who skips GPT whatever
Lina runs a tiny Shopify store selling handmade candles between daycare drop offs. She hears chatter about the “next generation model” but does not have the brain space to care.
Her version of AI:
Lets Shopify’s built in assistant draft product descriptions
Uses ChatGPT a couple times a month to brainstorm scent names
Sometimes the copy is clunky. She tweaks it. Net result, each launch day she saves an hour and keeps her sense of humor.
A YouTube guru tells her she is “falling behind” by not upgrading to the latest premium model.
She shrugs and goes back to packing orders.
2. Janelle’s hype hangover
Janelle is a freelance copywriter. Last year she went all in on AI content tools. Auto blogs. Auto social. Auto email sequences.
For a while it felt powerful. Then clients started saying her work felt off. Bland. A little robotic.
She realized she was spending just as long fixing the output as it would have taken to write it herself.
Now her rule is simple:
Use AI for outlines and brainstorming
Never publish anything she has not actually read and edited
Keep the weird little human phrases her clients pay her for
She still uses AI daily. She just stopped pretending it could replace her.
3. Arjun, the quiet compounding win
Arjun is an engineer at a five person startup. He hates documentation, but someone has to maintain the internal wiki.
So he sets up a simple habit. When someone asks a repeat question in Slack, he:
Pastes the conversation into an internal AI chat
Asks for a draft wiki entry
Spends five minutes fixing it and hitting publish
No big launch. No “AI transformation initiative.” After a few months, the company has the best documentation it has ever had.
Arjun is not tweeting about it. He is just done answering the same question twelve times a quarter.
This is the boring middle. Tiny improvements that compound quietly.
Why the extremes are exhausting
There are real reasons people slide into panic or hype.
AI really can generate convincing nonsense. If you ship that to clients, it hurts.
Some executives openly talk about cutting jobs with AI. That lands like a threat.
On the other side, some people really did get big wins, and their success stories get amplified until it sounds like “everyone is doing it.”
Under all of that is a simpler truth.
Most of us are not trying to solve AI ethics at a global scale. We are trying to get through our Tuesday.
So a few honest acknowledgements help:
Yes, AI is often wrong. Treat the output like a draft from a rushed intern. Check anything important.
Yes, the default style is generic. Use it for structure, then pour your voice back in.
Yes, there is a learning curve. You are not dumb for feeling overwhelmed by a wall of new tools.
Yes, privacy matters. Do not paste your customer list or private docs into random apps.
You are allowed to have boundaries. You are allowed to say “this part of my craft stays human” and still use AI to chew through the boring bits.
How to live in the boring middle on purpose
If you want a simple playbook, here is what I am doing.
1. Start with one boring task
Pick something you already hate doing.
Writing product descriptions
Summarizing a long article or meeting
Drafting first pass emails
Turning messy notes into a rough outline
Try AI on exactly that job for one week. Keep score. Did it save you time or not. If yes, keep it. If not, drop it.
No life philosophy needed.
2. Set your guardrails
Before you go further, decide your personal rules.
Examples:
“AI can help with drafts, but I always approve the final version.”
“No sensitive client data in third party tools.”
“I will not use AI to write personal messages to friends or family.”
“I keep my core creative thing mostly human, and get help around the edges.”
Writing those down sounds silly. It also kills a lot of anxiety. You are not at the mercy of the tech. You are choosing where it fits.
3. Ignore most of the noise
Unfollow the scariest doom accounts and the loudest “I made 100k in a weekend” accounts. Or at least mute them for a bit.
You do not need a hot take on every model release. You need a few workflows that actually make your days smoother.
My filter now is boring on purpose:
If a tool promises to “revolutionize” my business, I am skeptical
If a tool helps me get through a recurring chore faster, I am interested
The future tends to show up like that. Not as fireworks, but as fewer annoying tasks on your calendar.
You are not late
If you have barely touched AI, you are not behind.
If you tried it and bounced off, you are not broken.
If you use it quietly in three places and ignore everything else, you might already be ahead of most people.
You do not have to pick AI panic or AI shrug. You can choose something more grounded.
Treat it like an overeager intern. Let it handle the parts of your work that do not need your full genius. Keep your judgment, taste, and values at the center.
The boring middle is not a compromise. It is a strategy.
Quietly useful is still useful.
And honestly, for those of us juggling kids, bills, and half finished projects, “quietly useful” feels like more than enough revolution for now.