Double down on yourself to escape competition in the age of AI
Why positioning yourself authentically became your most valuable asset when AI made being generic expensive.
This image from the Danish artist Storm P has been hanging on my wall since my late teens. I look at it often, asking myself: What path am I on? Is it my path or someone else’s path? If I continue on this path where does it take me?
These questions matters more than ever now. Not because of some self-help reason, but because not being authentic to yourself just got a lot more expensive with AI.
We can’t predict, so we must position
Predicting the future is almost impossible. Although we are good at observing and analysing patterns, history shows that we are always too optimistic about when things will happen.
So instead of trying to predict what AI will do to our work and when, we should focus on positioning ourselves for whatever comes. How do we position ourselves for a future we can’t fully see?
Skills that matter will change
There is this general fearful sentiment on social media and recent peer discussions that AI will take jobs and replace people fully. You see the clickbait everywhere: “The software developer role is done” or “No one needs product managers anymore” or “Everyone can make design now so we don’t need designers.”
These are mostly just stupid attention-grabbing posts. We are highly attracted to negative news, so they spread fast.
Instead, I believe there will be a shift in what skills matter. For software engineers, it will be more about technical architecture. For product designers, more about systems thinking. For product managers, more about product strategy, taste, and solving the right problems.
The costs of not adapting to the new skills is that the current ones become less valuable and that they are easier to replace with AI. The new high-value skills are actually super fun if you like what you are doing but if you don’t then they are extremely difficult to master.
These valuable skills are not easy to obtain. You cant just study them, you learn them through practice. And to really learn them, you need to find something that’s easier for you to learn than for others.
That means you need to focus on who you are and double down on yourself.
What doubling down actually means
“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” - Brené brown.
What could doubling down on yourself look like? Its not just “follow your passion”.
Take product management as an example. The job is not about just writing PRDs and running sprints. The real high-value work is developing taste for what makes a great product. Understanding your market deeply enough to see opportunities others miss. Having conviction about which problems actually matter. Develop intuition of what’s worth building by making hard tradeoffs between what users want and what the business needs. Stakeholder management and storytelling. Agency and product builder mindset. This takes time, effort and experience to master.
These skills have always separated good Product managers from great ones. AI just makes that gap impossible to hide.
You need to actually want to go deep on these things. Not because someone told you “product management is hot” but because you are genuinely interested enough to push through the boring parts.
That interest is your authenticity. Its what pulls you through the hard work of becoming exceptional. Without it, you end up in silent quitting. With it, you become irreplaceable.
The Ikigai of work
Most know the Japanese Ikigai framework that shows the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.
This is where authentic positioning happens. its not just “be yourself” but its a good start to find where your genuine interest can pull you toward exceptional skill in something valuable.
When you are at this intersection:
You have genuine interest so that you engage deeply
You are building exceptional skills so you are learning a lot
The work creates value and you get positive feedback from the market/job
You feel that you naturally enter flow state more often
And flow is where you feel most yourself. Most authentic.
My own repositioning
Last year I took some time to reflect on my skills and interests and what path I was going on and where it would lead me.
Some areas of my work took way too much energy. Despite whatever I tried to improve, they just never got better. My reflection was not that all tasks in a job can be fun, but that I should reduce the tasks that drain energy and focus on those that give me energy and put me in my zone of genius.
The risk felt too high to stay stuck in a position where I couldn’t have enough time and focus to release my skills and talent. There were risks involved as some of the draining tasks were still valued in the market from a common sense perspective. I decided on three things that were important to positioning myself:
Do more of the work I am good at and feel better than others at, then improve even more to be exceptional.
Reduce the energy-draining tasks as much as possible despite the market risks
When some draining tasks remain, accept them but make sure I am working on projects, challenges, or industries I find interesting enough to push through.
This was not about following pure passion. It was about positioning my skills and interests to learn and grow more. I will still do plenty of tasks I don’t love, but the ratio has shifted so I can have more time in my zone of genius and less time drained by work that others could do better.
The only real choice
“Escape competition through authenticity.” - Naval Ravikant
AI is raising the baseline everywhere. The cost of not being authentic just went up. Generic work is easier to automate and surface-level skills are easier to replicate. It’s easier and faster for everyone to get started and to create really great first versions.
AI is making the difference between genuine and generic more obvious.
I believe the only way to not fear AI from a job market perspective is to double down on yourself. Walking your own path, whatever that means, is the only logical thing to do.
Maybe 2026 is the year more people realize this. The principle is not new but this is more relevant and urgent now.
This has always been true. Being you is a competitive advantage. Not just being you in some vague way but being exceptionally good at what naturally energizes you.
Taking the route that is yours is the only choice. Following the grey mass in an AI future makes you vulnerable. You will be less fulfilled at work, spend your life doing things you are not that interested in, and you will be easy to replace or automate away.
TLDR: Position yourself for an AI future by doubling down on yourself!