Why AI (and RELEVANCE) Demands Lateral Thinking Now

MAKE ANYTHING THURSDAY — Lateral Thinking + AI (Part V of V)

Let’s start with a truth most adults quietly know but rarely admit,

When we stop creating, we start shrinking.

It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens inch by inch — first in the mind, then in the voice, then in the way we show up. And in a world shaped by AI, that shrinkage isn’t just personal. It’s existential.

A quick rewind through how we got here

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been tracing the arc of lateral thinking in the AI era — beginning with the simple idea that creativity is a practical tool, not a mystical one. Drawing on ideas from Autodesk’s leadership this series examines the skills, mindsets, and creative approaches that will define the future of making. 

We revisited Edward de Bono and his lifelong insistence that adults must learn to think sideways on purpose. We explored Sarah Tucker’s Love Laterally and the way imagination narrows as adulthood expands. We looked at polymaths, children, teams, adults, leaders, and the habits that both empower and quietly trap our thinking.

Woven through all of it was a single thread:

AI doesn’t create creativity; it magnifies whatever thinking we bring.

Rigid thinking becomes more rigid. Elastic minds stretch further. Lateral thinking is no longer optional in a world that rewards those who can step out of the predictable and into the possible.

And now we arrive at the final piece — the one that sits underneath the whole series.

What happens when adults stop creating?

When Humans Stop Creating, Something Inside Shrinks

For most of modern life, adults could walk away from their creative instincts, and nothing seemed to break. You could build a career on expertise, predictability, and repetition. You could tuck curiosity into a drawer, call it maturity, and carry on. And the external world would never punish you for it.

But the internal world was paying attention.

When people stop creating — whether that’s writing, sketching, making, tinkering, exploring ideas, or playing the sport that once lit them up — something essential begins to dim. Ask anyone who stepped away from a passion because “life got too busy,” only to realize years later that what they miss is not the activity itself, but the version of themselves who came alive doing it. Creativity isn’t decorative. It’s part of how we stay awake.

Here’s the quiet cost:

• the mind narrows
• curiosity contracts
• the sense of possibility thins
• identity becomes more rigid

It happens slowly, almost politely. You don’t notice the shrinkage until one day you do.

Edward de Bono understood this before AI ever entered the picture. His point was simple, creativity isn’t an exceptional talent. It’s a discipline that keeps the mind from calcifying. Ignore it long enough, and you end up living in a smaller internal house than the one you were meant for.

And now, in the age of AI, this internal truth has become an external requirement.

AI Changed the Rules — and Creativity Is Now the Divider

AI is already absorbing the predictable parts of work. The tasks that require no imagination — the linear, the repetitive, the obvious — are disappearing first. And the parts that remain are the ones only humans can bring: insight, reframing, synthesis, unexpected connections, the courage to think in fresh directions when the straight path stops working.

AI can handle:

• answers
• patterns
• speed

But only humans can bring:

• new questions
• new frames
• new meaning

AI doesn’t steal creativity; it exposes whether you’ve been using yours. And that leads to something even more personal: the real danger of letting your creative instincts lie dormant isn’t professional irrelevance, it’s self-abandonment. The cost is not just external status but internal vitality. You lose access to the parts of yourself that make life feel expansive, textured, and alive.

This brings me to the project that has been sitting underneath everything I’ve been writing — the one that continues to echo through this series whether I invite it or not.

RELEVANCE Isn’t a Status — It’s a Practice

As many of you know, I’ve been writing a book: RELEVANCE: The Quiet Power of Lives That Keep Showing Up. The deeper I go, the clearer it becomes that lateral thinking isn’t just about creativity. It’s about staying awake to your own possibilities. It’s about refusing to harden. It’s about keeping your inner world as spacious as your outer contributions.