Hello and Happy New Year 2026, I hope you had a restful festive period and a smooth start to the new year.

I want to share something more personal than usual today, a reflection from last year that changed the way I use AI in my work.

At the beginning of 2025, I caught myself saying something I hadn’t fully admitted before:

“I think I’m falling behind.”

I’d taken the courses, tried the tools, followed the updates… and somehow, the more I tried to stay ahead, the more behind I felt.

A friend said something that stayed with me:

“You’re not falling behind, you’re just not being intentional.”

And she was right.

I realised I wasn’t really learning AI, I was accumulating it. I kept adding new tools and frameworks because it felt like “staying ahead”, but all it did was thin my focus and make my work heavier. 

So I stopped chasing. 

For 30 days, there were no new tools, no prompt libraries, no productivity hacks, just one question: Where does AI genuinely make my work, and my thinking, better?

Looking back, the biggest lessons weren’t about AI itself; they were about how we, as humans, try to use it.

1) Most of us don’t lack capability; we lack direction, and AI only magnifies that.
Whenever the goal was fuzzy, the output became messy. AI didn’t fix the uncertainty; it amplified it. The moments that worked best were the ones where the direction was clear before the tool got involved.

2) The best AI users aren’t the ones who do the most; they’re the ones who know what to ignore.
Last year, I noticed that progress didn’t come from stacking tools or generating more. It came from restraint. From choosing fewer inputs, fewer features, fewer distractions, and staying with what mattered.

3) If you use AI to avoid deep work, it won’t solve the problem; it will just move you toward it faster.
Any time I used AI to avoid a hard decision or uncomfortable thinking, the work looked productive on the surface… but it didn’t actually move forward. AI can support deep work, but it can’t replace it.

Those were the real lessons from 2025, and they’re the reason I’m approaching AI very differently this year.

In 2026, I’m not trying to “keep up” anymore. I’m not chasing every update, every feature, or every new tool that promises leverage. This year, my focus is different.

I want to slow down, so the work has depth instead of speed for the sake of it.

I want to think more sharply; instead of asking AI to fill the gaps I haven’t worked through myself.

I want to build deeper systems, not fragile stacks of tools I’ll replace in three months.
And I want to use AI like a scalpel, not a hype train, precise, deliberate, applied where it truly matters.

If a use‑case doesn’t make my work clearer, lighter, or more meaningful, I’m not adding it. I’d rather do fewer things with intention than try to prove I’m “up to date.”

That’s the shift I’m taking into 2026.

It’s not hackers that worry me most.
It’s good people, smart, careful people, pasting client data into an AI tool because they just needed something done faster.

AI risk isn’t about headlines. It’s about inputs, what we feed the machine, knowingly or not.
And in this new world, you’re only as safe as your rules.

That’s why I built the AI Risk & Policy Toolkit, not to make anyone paranoid, but to give every business something they’ve never had before: a seatbelt for the AI era.
It doesn’t turn you into a compliance lawyer. It helps you stay confident while your team experiments, creates, and automates.

The moment you write it down, panic turns into process.
That’s the point. You protect your business before you ever need protection.

If this sparked something in you, come say hello on LinkedIn; that’s where I share the deeper lessons, tools, and systems behind ConfigurAI.

For the human side, the messy experiments, reflections, and moments that shape the work, you’ll find that on Instagram.

And if you want to see how it all connects, the business, the story, the mission, it’s all at orgesameli.com

Because what we’re building here isn’t just about AI.
It’s about making technology feel human again

See you next Tuesday with more ways to cut the busywork and get your time back.
Orgesa Meli

P.S. It would mean a lot if you forward this to someone who’d benefit. I’m building a community of people who want to work smarter with AI, not just a list of names. Subscribe to my community here.