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In this episode, we continue our series on the AI-Powered Professional by introducing the AI Researcher persona. Ray, Augusto, and Francis discuss how AI is reshaping research, learning, and knowledge work by moving us beyond simple retrieval toward active knowledge synthesis. Along the way, they explore the problems of information overload, low-quality information, over-trusting AI-generated answers, news and social media overwhelm, and what Ray calls “information toxicity.” The ProductivityCast team also discusses practical ways to curate inbound information, reduce cognitive friction, use AI-generated briefs and drafts responsibly, and stay in control of your attention while working with smarter tools.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/149 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)

Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening!

If you’d like to continue discussing The AI Researcher: From Information Overload to Active Knowledge Synthesis (Part 1) from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | The AI Researcher: From Information Overload to Active Knowledge Synthesis (Part 1)

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | The AI Researcher: From Information Overload to Active Knowledge Synthesis (Part 1)

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

ResearchGate

Academia.edu

ChatGPT

Google Gemini

Google Workspace

Microsoft Copilot

Feedly

Evernote

Social Fixer

The New York Times

The Onion

Raw Text Transcript

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Voiceover Artist | 00:00

Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a more fulfilling, productive life? Then you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. Here are your hosts, Ray Sidney Smith and Augusto Pinault with Francis Wade and Art Gelwick.

Ray Sidney Smith | 00:18

Welcome back, everybody, to Productivity Cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I’m Ray Sidney Smith.

Francis Wade | 00:24

And I’m Francis Wade.

Ray Sidney Smith | 00:25

Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of ProductivityCast. This week, we are going to be continuing our dive into the world of artificial intelligence, which I like to call smart software, with another episode in our series of the AI-powered professionals. 

So today we’re going to be focusing on research and what I’m coining here is the AI researcher persona and how these new tools are really transforming the process of learning and researching and knowledge work for us. We’re moving to a place where we can understand retrieval as basically active knowledge synthesis. And we’re going to be talking through some of the challenges that folks face with regard to information overload and otherwise. 

So let’s first talk through the problems with research today. What do you find are the good or the positives around research today? And what are some of the problems that we experience? One of them we’re going to talk about, which is information overload. But there are others that are out there. 

And then we can give that context. Color with regard to how we can use AI as a researcher to help us with that process or those problems. 

So what do you feel like are the primary problems today with research.

Francis Wade | 01:47

I think in the past, very much a hit or miss kind of proposition. Where if you could find someone who had done the research… Answer the research questions that you have. You were extremely lucky. And the game was, how can I increase odds of success how can I be luckier So that meant that dwelling in places like Research Gate. Maybe at academia.edu. 

Yeah. But ResearchGate was my goal, though. And For certain topics, especially the two that I specialize in, which are task management and strategic. Planning. I’ve pretty much got to the bottom of everything that I could find easily. It took a few years for each one, but I’ve sort of gotten to what I think is like the bottom. Where I read what they have to say. And I’ve noticed sort of where all the faults are why in neither field the research academics do is very useful in the real world? 

You know, it’s very esoteric and it’s meaningful. Academics tend to write for each other. And for journals. And for advancement in their field. They don’t like to go into areas that are cross bouldery that I like to mix and match different fields. They don’t go interdisciplinary. It makes a real mess of the nice, clean, lines that they like to follow. And I don’t like to go into areas that, you know, If you become an expert in an area where there’s no conferences and no journals, no chairs and no departments anywhere in the world. If you go into an area like that, you know, you’re sort of dooming yourself to obsolescence. 

So with those problems, It means that for the two areas that I’m interested in, there’s a, Not a lot of useful research. There is to find. 

So finding something useful used to be a lucky proposition. And I would have to basically find someone who has enough experience in both areas to be able to do research in both areas so that they would have the questions. And finding that was like a needle in a haystack. 

So it’s always been difficult in the two areas that I Try to find research written on. It’s always been an uphill struggle.

Augusto Pinaud | 04:02

I think it’s important to make an distinction between professional researching practices and the non-professional one. I agree in the professional researching the impact of AI has been incredible because now these people who Say. Knows better when they’re trying to search and look into information. Cinta was not available. When you go to the noun informal research. It’s interesting because I feel that we used to have Three levels of research, bad research, middle ground research, and good research. And now with the AI, we have gone and disappeared that middle because people think that they can find the answer that they believe is legit. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or it’s fake information or what it is. They can go bump into any of these agents. Get an answer. And because of that, people stopped digging. Into is this really legit? But when you think in the world of productivity, When the first book of David Allen came out, we were talking about 2001, It was hard to find the information. It was hard to find the principles behind unless you have access to them. 25 years later, you can find A ton of information. The question now is, How did you know that information is legit or not? And that’s why I think that middle ground has disappeared. You have the people who goes and do a prompt, and get an answer and assume Dad. The answer they’re getting is the truth. And because of that, that’s the stop of the research. 

So what was part of the issues 20 years ago is, okay, I want to research this topic and now I have 20 books. No, they just go, ask two questions, get what they think is a truth answer, and take that That’s a fact. Then you have the other level that is the people who are going to get that and try to figure it out. Is this a fact? They’re going to try to dig out or it’s not a fact. And what is the fact? What is interesting for me with AI is That middle ground, that guy who will have get that fact and tried to see why. I don’t look legit or not legit. That disappeared. What I have seen is people getting the output that AI is giving them I’m taking them. It’s a truth. It’s an absolute truth that is even more scarier. And I have seen this In academic settings, I have seen this in professional settings, okay, where people go What is the obsolescence of this? Okay. Can you repeat that? I didn’t get an answer. 

So when that is, they never really dig. Hold on, did you want to do the vendor? Did you, did the chat GPT was floating you know, That, I mean, how been… Wonderfully. Last week. My son is a baseball fan, so he was watching the baseball and he wanted to see the score, so he asked, Madame Eyre. And But I may say, the game has not started. It was time for the game to start. That’s true. The radio. Fuck. And you know, like, You’ve got me in the life. Damn, man. Give us whatever is for them. I’ve nothing to do. With the reality. And it was a great moment of, teach an opportunity because of that. If we will have the initial answer, what most people do, This other game has no authority. Okay, and you move on. But the reality is minimal. The game had started. We were in the middle of the game and there was a different score than what she was giving us on the third answer. And that is what Most people don’t notice when they go into this research. AI will give you an answer. The question is if that answer is actually the answer or.

Ray Sidney Smith | 08:11

Not. When it really matters, right? Learning that the game is not trivial, maybe not to your son, but to the rest of the world, you know, when it’s… I will.

Augusto Pinaud | 08:19

Make sure to tell him that right thing, that when the game is on, it’s not trivial. You are going down in that scale of people he likes. You’re going down, my friend.

Ray Sidney Smith | 08:27

The unfortunate part is if you say, hey, I just swallowed this thing mineral….

In this episode we’re discussing the concept at the core of personal management: control. Specifically, we’ll be philosophizing about what control truly means within the context of the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. We’ll start with David Allen’s definition, which ties control to the workflow stages of capturing, clarifying, organizing, reflecting, and engaging. But does that definition fully capture the complex, often psychological, reality of feeling “in control”? Then, we explore how to build tangible systems and “guardrails” that move us from simply feeling overwhelmed to being confidently in command of our work and personal lives.

(If you’re reading this in a podcast directory/app, please visit https://productivitycast.net/145 for clickable links and the full show notes and transcript of this cast.)

Enjoy! Give us feedback! And, thanks for listening!

If you’d like to continue discussing what control means in the context of GTD from this episode, please click here to leave a comment down below (this jumps you to the bottom of the post).

In this Cast | What Does Control Mean in GTD?

Ray Sidney-Smith

Augusto Pinaud

Art Gelwicks

Francis Wade

Show Notes | What Does Control Mean in GTD?

Resources we mention, including links to them, will be provided here. Please listen to the episode for context.

Getting Things Done (GTD) by David Allen

How to Get Control of Your Time in Your Life by Alan Lakein

Freedom.to (A Focus application used to block digital distractions)

Fitbit watch (Used to track sleep)

Byron Katie’s process (A methodology for managing unwanted thoughts or feelings)

Raw Text Transcript

Raw, unedited and machine-produced text transcript so there may be substantial errors, but you can search for specific points in the episode to jump to, or to reference back to at a later date and time, by keywords or key phrases. The time coding is mm:ss (e.g., 0:04 starts at 4 seconds into the cast’s audio).

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Voiceover Artist | 00:00

Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a more fulfilling, productive life? Then you’ve come to the right place. Welcome to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. Here are your hosts, Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 00:19

Welcome back, everybody, to ProductivityCast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity. I’m Ray Sidney-Smith.

Augusto Pinaud | 00:25

And I’m Augusto Pinaud.

Francis Wade | 00:26

I’m Francis Wade.

Art Gelwicks | 00:28

And I’m Art Gelwicks.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 00:29

Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode. Today, we are going to do some philosophizing, I suppose, and hopefully bringing ourselves from that level down to the practical. We’re going to be talking about control. And what I wanted to do was to preface this with The concept of control and perspective in the Getting Things Done or GTD methodology perspective, which is that that’s where came up to me in the first place. And over the years, it has changed. And so I want to talk about what does control mean to each of us and how do we actually make the concept of control practical even tangible in our own worlds. I’m going to define what David Allen says of control in Getting Things Done in the March 2015 edition, in the appendix, in the glossary of Getting Things Done terms, he actually gives a definition for control And then we’re going to talk a little bit about what, the concept of GTD control is so that we can then define what We think of it as in contrasting terms. 

So he says of control, one of the two key elements of self and organizational management along with perspective. And so that’s what he calls control in the most basic terms. And if we think about it from the concept of control and perspective, control are the steps of the or stages of the workflow going from capturing to clarifying to organizing, reflecting and engaging on the action level of the horizons of focus. That is what he considers control. 

And then as we go up the horizons on the y-axis, we then have projects and so on and so forth going up the horizons. And that’s what he considers perspective. 

So control are the actions that we take on the lowest level of the horizons of focus and everything above that becomes perspective. So kind of thinking of it as looking down at the actionability of the thing above itself. 

So when you’re at the highest level, Horizon 5 purpose and principle You are looking down at the other’s vision, goals, areas of focus and accountability, projects, and actions. So that is the GTD definition. And… We have all probably thought of it as being insufficient in some way, shape or form in our own worlds. And now what I’d like to do is to ask you all, gentlemen. How do you define control? And what is… If I think Art gave a really great example before we started recording, if someone came to you and said, I’m feeling out of control, how do you help them get in control or under control in their life?

Francis Wade | 03:10

So I think David Allen’s definition is basically a process definition. So he’s saying, here are the steps. Or managing tasks. And the ones that really start with capturing and so forth are basically the steps for managing tasks. And I suppose that I’m guessing that what he means by control is that the… Process of managing tasks is in control. Now, that has a very specific meaning in my world. I was trained in part as an industrial engineer. And we love For those of you who know the Leningrad-Stewart charts and control charts, we love the idea of measuring processes so that they stay in control. That’s not practical for most people to be able to use these kind of diagnostic tools. But the way I would advise to answer your question, Reem, someone who tells me that they’re out of control… Is to ask them What do you mean? Because the word control is a psychological object The definition has changed and it varies and there’s no uniform. Understanding of what it means. 

So you have to go to the next step and say, When you say control, the question I would ask is when you say control, What specifically? Symptoms are the ones that you notice and I would imply in real life. Not just in your emotional life, but in The Hard Tensible Life where are those symptoms occurring? Such that you’re led to conclude that you’re feeling out of control. 

So I would immediately go to and I would focus and start to break down their response. Between I’ve mentioned psychological objects like I’m feeling stressed, I’m feeling unhappy, I’m feeling unworthy, I’m feeling lazy. As opposed to I arrive at half of my appointments at least ten minutes late. Okay, there we go. That’s one. That’s a tangible object. We can work with that. What else do you have? Well… I wake up in the middle of the night three times out of the week. With something that I forgot to do. That’s two. All right, that’s another tangible activity. 

So I would look for the tangible symptoms. The things that you can put your finger on, you can touch, you can see. 

And then accumulate those so that we move the conversation from and feeling out of control. Towards And again, in the lingo of industrial engineers is defects. We’re looking for defects. And we’re looking to put them together so that we can say, okay, with these five defects, the root cause of them are Because the truth is, control is a lag indicator. Peely Walter Control is a lag indicator. Comes a lot after. The things that you Did or didn’t do. 

So we’re trying to go all the way back so that When we start to… Figure out what they should do, We’re actually looking at things that they did do or need to do or didn’t do. In tangible reality. 

So that’s how I would tackle it. Said that to me.

Art Gelwicks | 06:21

Control to me is a very… Unlike the industrial… Definition of it. I look at it from the almost the psychological side of it. Control is a perceived state of comfort It’s a lack of stress. It’s a… Point of awareness. Of activity And I think when someone says they are out of control, my first reaction is to ask the question, When do you feel things went out of control. Because I need to know contextually Is this something that is a recurring feeling, which means that it is probably systemic. To a process failure Or is it something that has recently happened, which may be triggered by an environmental response or some external factor that has pushed things off the rails? But control itself like a, can be an extremely negative impact. On work and process and quality of work. Having a sense of control. I don’t know is necessarily an extremely positive thing. It’s basically neutral. You feel like, okay, if I’m in control, I can do… What I need to do. If I’m out of control, I can’t do what I need to do. But at no point are we saying that if I’m in control, I can do better things. I’m just saying that I can do things. 

So to me, I always look at it from the mental aspect of it more than the process one, because The process one I can chase. I mean, I can look at the measures. I can look at the metrics involved and say, OK, this is working. This isn’t this. But that doesn’t necessarily, again, translate to a lack of control. And we’ve all seen it. We’ve had people who have processes that work somewhat. But they feel like they are in control, but we know looking at it, it’s like, no, you’re not. As much as you think you are, you’re careening wildly down the highway. 

So… The subjectivity of that term and the amorphousness of that term makes it difficult to have that initial conversation.

Raymond Sidney-Smith | 08:49

Let’s imagine for a moment that you are a citizen or resident of the USA. You love the country and especially the vision of the founding fathers.

However, you are distressed by the degree of the political divide. It has hijacked popular attention. People seem to hate each other.

Is there a way to find inspiration beyond the current uncertainty? Can leaders possibly come together if only they took a long-term view of the country, and the world?

Tune into this episode to join me in tackling this wicked problem.

Summary

In this episode of the Jump Leap Long-Term Strategy Podcast, Francis Wade explores the deep political divide in the United States and its implications for the future. He introduces a fictional character, Amanda, who seeks to bridge this divide through a bipartisan approach. Wade discusses the importance of long-term thinking in politics, drawing parallels with Jamaica’s Vision 2030 initiative as a model for creating a unified national vision. He emphasizes the need for consensus and a future-back planning approach to address the challenges facing the U.S. and the world.

takeaways

The political divide in the U.S. is a significant issue.

Long-term thinking is essential for political stability.

Bipartisanship can lead to shared goals and outcomes.

Vision 2030 Jamaica serves as a model for national planning.

Consensus building is crucial for effective governance.

Political instability affects global perceptions of the U.S.

Future-back planning can help overcome present challenges.

A unified vision is necessary for the U.S. to thrive.

The process of creating a national vision requires broad consultation.

This is a pivotal moment for the future of democracy.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Political Divide

08:42 The Impact of Political Instability

14:29 Exploring Solutions: Vision 2030 Jamaica

20:35 The Process of National Development Planning

26:41 Lessons from Jamaica’s Vision 2030

32:27 The Importance of a Unified Vision

38:38 Future-Back Planning for the U.S.

44:39 Conclusion: A Call to Action

The Long-Term Strategy Conference 2025 – https://strategyconf.fwconsulting.com

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit longtermstrategy.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit longtermstrategy.substack.com

You are leading the development of a strategic plan in an organization. The company has a very transactional culture in which staff members are doing the minimum required to get by.

However, the company needs to develop a game-changing strategic plan to stay relevant in its industry. You are concerned that staff members don’t care about the future of the organization, but their buy-in is essential.

How can you get them interested in a shared future vision for the organization, beyond a mere paycheck or bonus?

Tune into this episode to hear from me and my special guest, Debilyn Molineaux, as we tackle this wicked problem together.

I’m Francis Wade and welcome to the JumpLeap Long-Term Strategy Podcast

Debilyn Molineaux serves as the catalyst for the American Future project to help everyday Americans discover and believe in a future that will be “worth it” to work together for the sake of our nation. Debilyn is a serial entrepreneur, co-founding many organizations and transpartisan projects over her 20+ year career in establishing the democracy ecosystem.

Here’s a 20-minute video excerpt.

To watch the full video, see below, under the paywall for subscribers.

In the month of January, CaribHRForum will be undertaking a Beta PlayTest of its new platform.

During that time, we’ll be asking future members to sign in as Beta Testers, to provide valuable feedback on the setup of the system.

Interested in participating? Visit this link at CaribHRForum.com for further details.

I just received some good news – I will be presenting at the ASTD Conference in Washington DC. Hope to see a great representation from the Caribbean and global productivity communities.

On November 28-30, the Caribbean Tourism Organization will be holding a conference in Cayman. I’ll be one of the speakers.

For more advanced information, see this link.