The Value of Struggle: AI, Ozempic, and Our Discomfort with Effortless Achievement

Recently, a colleague confided in me about using AI to assist with research. In itself this isn't much of a confession — I use AI a lot and talking about it isn't a secret. But underneath this conversation are often notes of guilt or shame.

"Can I really claim this work as my own?"

"Does this make me less credible?"

The real confession is "shouldn't this have been harder? Taken more work?"

The Hidden Revolution

In recent years, two seemingly unrelated technological interventions have provoked strikingly similar cultural anxieties: AI-assisted work and GLP-1 medications like Ozempic for weight loss. At first glance, these technologies appear to occupy entirely different domains—one cognitive, one physical. Yet both have sparked uncomfortable questions about the value we place on struggle, effort, and the journey of creation or transformation.

The writer who quietly employs AI to draft a complex report in minutes rather than hours experiences a peculiar mixture of relief and guilt. Similarly, the individual who loses significant weight through medication rather than through the traditionally prescribed regimen of diet and exercise may feel compelled to keep their method a secret. Both innovations bypass conventional processes, offering shortcuts to outcomes that historically required sustained effort.

This secrecy is telling. Why do users of these technologies often feel the need to hide their methods? Perhaps because both scenarios clash with deeply ingrained cultural narratives about merit, effort, and personal growth—narratives we've inherited but rarely questioned.

Throughout history, humans have repeatedly confronted the unsettling question: What happens when we eliminate the labor previously thought essential to achievement? From the Luddites smashing mechanical looms to Socrates lamenting how writing would "create forgetfulness in the learners' souls," our relationship with labor-saving technology has always been ambivalent. Each new shortcut forces us to reconsider what we truly value about work itself.

What We Fear Is Lost

The anxieties surrounding both AI writing and medical weight loss stem from a common concern: that something essential is sacrificed when we eliminate struggle from the equation. But what exactly is this essential element, and how much does it matter?

This question resonates personally with me as a writer and an eclectic hobbyist in knitting, painting, gardening, woodworking, and reading. The end-of-summer salad made from tomatoes I've grown and watered does taste better. The long Franzen novel I stuck with longer than I wanted to remains one of my most memorable reading experiences.

But looking deeper, what truly matters in these experiences isn't the struggle itself. Those homegrown tomatoes taste better not merely because I labored over them, but because my intentional care allowed them to develop flavors no mass-produced alternative could match. My connection wasn't to the backaches from weeding, but to the daily creative decisions: when to water, how to support vines, which varieties to plant next year. Similarly, what stays with me from that challenging Franzen novel isn't the hours spent, but the moments of intellectual and emotional engagement that transformed my thinking.

A New Framework: From Struggle-Value to Creativity-Utility

We stand at a critical inflection point in how we evaluate human accomplishment. The traditional equation that valued work primarily by the visible struggle it required served its purpose in industrial economies where effort often correlated with output. But this mental model now actively hinders our ability to thrive in a world where technology can eliminate unnecessary friction.

I propose a fundamental shift in how we measure value: Value = Creativity + Utility.

Creativity represents our uniquely human contribution: originality, personal voice, intentional decision-making, and the capacity to imagine what doesn't yet exist. It answers the question: "Does this work bear the distinctive imprint of its creator, reflecting choices that only this particular human would make?"

Utility measures meaningful impact: how effectively the work addresses genuine needs, solves meaningful problems, or enhances lives. It answers the question: "Does this matter beyond the creator's satisfaction in making it?"

Within this framework, the presence or absence of struggle becomes merely incidental—neither a virtue nor a vice. A surgeon using robotic assistance to perform a previously impossible operation brings immense creativity and utility to their work, even as technology reduces physical strain. A writer collaborating with AI still infuses work with their unique perspective and judgment, even as mechanical difficulties diminish. The value lies not in how much they struggled, but in what they contributed that no technology could.

The Existential Question of Automation

These questions of what constitutes valuable work are mounting in an age where machines threaten to replace not just physical labor but cognitive tasks once considered uniquely human. The anxiety isn't merely about job security—it's about purpose. If machines can do what we do with less effort, what remains that is distinctly human?

Yet this framing misses a crucial point: automation doesn't diminish the importance of human creativity—it elevates it. When routine tasks are handled efficiently by technology, what differentiates meaningful work becomes precisely those elements machines cannot replicate: our intentions, our values, our unique perspectives, and our ability to connect ideas in unexpected ways.

If technology could eliminate the backaches of gardening while allowing me to make the creative decisions that shape my garden, the tomatoes would taste no less sweet. If AI could help me process and organize complex information while I focus on developing original insights, my writing would lose none of its authenticity. The human element persists not in the friction of the process, but in the intentionality that guides it.

This doesn't mean abandoning all struggle. Some challenges genuinely enhance our experience and development. Learning to play an instrument involves necessary difficulty that develops neural pathways and deepens our relationship with music. Writing a first draft often requires wrestling with inchoate ideas to discover what we truly think. The key is distinguishing between productive struggle that generates growth and unnecessary friction that merely slows progress without adding value.

The Protestant Work Ethic and Modern Guilt

Our discomfort with "effortless" achievement runs deep in Western culture, particularly through the Protestant work ethic—the belief that hard work is not just practical but morally virtuous. This mental model associates labor with character development and views shortcuts with suspicion. The person who becomes fit without sweating or creates without struggling isn't just taking a different path—they're bypassing a morally significant process.

Consider how we revere the mythology of creation through suffering: Michelangelo on his back painting the Sistine Chapel, Einstein working as a patent clerk while revolutionizing physics, or the entrepreneur sleeping under their desk. We've built cultural narratives that bind achievement to struggle, making technological shortcuts feel almost transgressive.

But this is a largely Western perspective. Many Eastern philosophies embrace the concept of wu-wei—effortless action—seeing the highest form of work as that which flows naturally without unnecessary strain. Indigenous cultures worldwide have developed technologies and practices that work with natural systems rather than conquering them through sheer effort. Our glorification of struggle isn't universal—it's cultural, and therefore changeable.

Redefining Work Rather Than Rejecting Progress

The history of technology offers numerous parallels to our current anxieties. When pocket calculators became widespread in the 1970s, educators feared students would lose the ability to perform mental arithmetic—a legitimate concern. Yet mathematics education evolved to emphasize conceptual understanding over rote computation. The work shifted rather than disappeared.

An even more profound parallel lies in reproductive technology. Birth control pills separated sex from procreation, creating moral panic about "consequence-free" pleasure. Yet contraception didn't eliminate the work of relationships—it transformed it, allowing people to focus on emotional connection rather than biological inevitability.

Perhaps the solution lies not in rejecting these technologies but in reframing our understanding of meaningful work. The writer using AI still engages in crucial intellectual labor—developing original concepts, evaluating and refining AI outputs, and ultimately taking responsibility for the final product. This represents a shift in the nature of creative work rather than its elimination.

Likewise, individuals using weight loss medications still face the significant challenge of maintaining their health long-term and adapting to a changed relationship with their bodies. The work doesn't disappear; it transforms.

Beyond Guilt: Toward a New Ethics of Assistance

A paradox emerges when we examine historical technological transitions: as processes become more automated, control over outcomes often becomes more precise. Think of how digital photography allows for more creative control than film ever did, despite requiring less technical knowledge. Or how word processing freed writers from the mechanical labor of retyping manuscripts, allowing for more extensive revision and refinement.

Behavioral economics offers a valuable insight through the "Ikea Effect," where people place higher value on products they partially created themselves. Research shows that people value their IKEA furniture more because they invested effort in its assembly. This suggests that even token involvement in a process increases our sense of ownership and satisfaction with the outcome.

This principle should guide our approach to AI and other assistance technologies. The goal isn't to preserve traditional effort in its entirety but to ensure meaningful human involvement at critical junctures where value is actually created. For writers using AI, this might mean establishing intentional practices that maintain deep engagement with ideas: setting aside time for reflection before turning to AI assistance, critically evaluating generated content against their original intentions, or using AI as a collaborative partner rather than a replacement for thought. I TRIED to get an AI to write this essay for me in one go, but it can't. It can generate unlimited versions of an essay on this topic, and some of them are definitely posts I'd like and read online. But none of them are in my voice. None of them are this exact essay.

For those using medications for weight loss, it might involve pairing medical intervention with meaningful lifestyle changes, focusing on holistic well-being rather than just physical transformation, and honestly acknowledging both the benefits and limitations of technological shortcuts.

Perhaps these technologies don't diminish human involvement but focus it where it matters most—on intention, judgment, and meaning-making rather than mechanical execution. What emerges is not the elimination of human participation, but its elevation to higher levels of creativity and intentionality.

The Ship of Theseus Question

The ancient thought experiment of the Ship of Theseus asks: if you replace each plank of a ship one by one, at what point is it no longer the same ship? Similarly, as we integrate technological assistance into our creative and physical transformations, at what point does the work cease to be "ours"?

This question has no easy answer, but history offers precedent. We don't question whether an architect's work is "authentic" because they used CAD software instead of hand drafting, or whether a composer's music is "genuine" because they used digital tools rather than pen and paper.

The writer who uses AI but remains deeply engaged with ideas, or the person who uses Ozempic but still develops a healthier relationship with food and exercise, hasn't abandoned the journey—they've reimagined it.

In this light, our discomfort with these technologies reflects not just resistance to change but an opportunity to clarify which aspects of traditional processes we truly value and which were merely unnecessary friction. The question becomes not whether to use these tools, but how to use them in ways that preserve what matters most about the human experience of creation and transformation.

As we increasingly collaborate with intelligent systems, perhaps our most distinctly human contribution will be determining which struggles to preserve and which to relinquish—making intentional choices about where human attention creates the most meaningful value. This requires moving beyond the guilt and secrecy currently surrounding technological assistance to a more nuanced conversation about how we integrate powerful tools into our creative lives.

These questions will not be resolved definitively, nor should they be. They represent an ongoing negotiation between human intention and technological capability—a conversation as old as civilization itself, yet newly urgent in an age of increasingly autonomous tools.

What matters isn't the technology we use or avoid—it's whether we're brave enough to question our inherited assumptions about the value of struggle itself.

What if, instead of asking "Did you struggle enough to claim this achievement?" we asked "Did you bring intentional creativity to this process, and does the result serve genuine utility?"

This framework honors human contribution without fetishizing unnecessary difficulty, allowing us to embrace technological assistance while still creating work that matters deeply and bears our unique imprint.