Don’t let AI do your thinking: a practical guide for engineers

I designed a "Thinking Guide" for engineers building with AI. And looking for your feedback.

We’re entering a new era of software engineering.

Code can now be generated instantly. Entire functions, components, even systems can be scaffolded in seconds.

This is a massive opportunity.

But there’s a subtle tradeoff I’ve been thinking a lot about lately:

When execution becomes easier, thinking can quietly decrease.

Not because we’re less capable, but because many of the moments that used to force us to think - debugging, struggling, reasoning - are now compressed or skipped.

You can ship faster than ever.


But speed alone does not build understanding.

Several studies suggest that heavy reliance on AI tools can reduce cognitive effort, weaken critical thinking, and impair long‑term learning, which are all forms of cognitive offloading.

A recent experimental learning study reported in Psychology Today (“Cognitive Offloading: Using AI Reduces New Skill Formation”) showed that learners who relied heavily on AI while acquiring a complex skill (e.g., coding assistance) formed substantially fewer new skills than those who completed the same tasks without AI. The authors conclude that when tasks are done with the goal of learning, offloading key steps to AI “considerably reduces” skill formation and recommend delaying AI support until a solid base of independent proficiency is built.

Whenever I’m working, I can pull a relevant card and quickly reflect.

You can grab it for free (just set the price to 0).

If it ends up being useful, feel free to support so I can keep investing my time in creating resources to help engineers, totally optional of course.

Mainly looking to get feedback from other engineers.

Would especially appreciate feedback on:

• which exercises feel useful vs unnecessary
  


• what feels missing
  


• how this fits into your actual workflow
  

Curious how others approach this

I’d also love to hear from other devs here:

How do you make sure your thinking keeps up with AI tools?

Do you have any habits or systems in place?

AI can generate code.

But the engineers who will stand out are the ones who continue to think deeply while using it.

That’s what I’m trying to build here. This guide is helping me, I hope it can help you too along your journey as a dev.

Curious to hear your thoughts!