💎 Letters to the Diamond Polishers #110 · October 5, 2026

The Hours I Got Back ⏳

AI gives you more, and your judgment as a leader matters more, too.

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Dear Diamond Polisher,

What do you think about AI, for you and for your organization? And how do you feel about it? Curious, excited, a little worried, maybe all of that at once. You're in good company.

In my two-hour coaching sessions, one theme keeps coming back, more and more often: AI. Sometimes it's a concern, sometimes a simple question about what it can do. And more and more, my clients ask me to show them how I actually use it.

So I'm going to start sharing my own journey with you, a little at a time. You'll get the real parts too: what changed in my business, what surprised me, and the question I keep asking myself now that some things that took me hours take only minutes.

🧭 Where It Started

Let me start with something very ordinary: a contract.

Preparing a coaching contract used to take me about an hour. Today it takes less than five minutes, just the time to write the prompt and check the result. Then it's sent.

Invoices were even bigger. Managing all of them took me two full days every month. Now it takes about two hours.

These are small things. But at the same time, they're a good picture of what happened everywhere else in my business.

Step by step, I built PhilBot with its full database. I connected all my business flows together. Little by little, I'm also replacing many of the software tools I used to buy or subscribe to with my own, customized to the way I do things, and more efficient. The book I carried for twenty years is finally on the page (I told that story in letter #104). And now I'm creating films and an app, in media I never imagined I would touch.

This letter you're reading is the best proof. Before, I simply couldn't write it on my own. Today it comes from a couple of hours of brainstorming and co-creating with AI.

And then something happened that I didn't plan for. Hours started coming back to me. And here is what surprised me most: I'm producing more than ever. The hours that used to go into necessary tasks with very little added value now go to my talents, to the part of me that really shines.

🧠 What the Research Shows

The researchers called this the "jagged frontier." AI is brilliant at some things and confidently wrong at others, and from the outside the two look the same.

Here is the trap I see: asking AI to think in our place, and trusting the answer 100%. That's when the brain gets lazy. It's a bit like a conversation. You can hear someone, or you can actively listen to them. The words are the same, and your brain is engaged in a completely different way. With AI, I want to stay in active listening.

Your experience matters here too. When you're a professional in what you do, AI becomes an enabler: you know what you want to create, and you see right away when something needs correcting. The amateur plays with it, without any specific goal.

So that's why I always check the result on my contracts. AI gives you more, and your judgment as a leader matters more, too.

PhilBot Asks Me a Question

I told PhilBot about all this, a bit proud of myself, I admit. PhilBot asked me one question.

🏢 In Your Organization

Now let's bring this inside your organization.

You don't need to become an engineer, and you don't need to understand every tool. AI is very good at the first draft: the report, the summary, the plan, the email. What stays with the leader is the why behind the decision, your own voice, and the relationships with the people around you.

And when the drafts come faster, your conversations matter even more.

There's one more risk I watch closely: losing ownership of the outcome. For the things that matter to me, like this letter or my book, I keep the ownership. The ideas, the stories and the final word are mine. For a contract, a quality result is all I need. So before I hand a task to AI, I ask myself one question: is this something I need to own, or something I need done well?

So here are three questions for you and your team:

• Which tasks take your team hours and give back very little?
• If your team got back one afternoon a week, where would you want that time to go?
• Who around you is waiting for a conversation you keep postponing because the week is full?

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The hours are only the beginning. Giving them to your talents is where your diamond shows.

With warmth and curiosity,

Philippe & PhilBot ⏳

Keep shining. 💎

Équilibre k.k. | Tokyo · 20 years of inspiring leaders to shine ✨