Cognitive Grit in the Age of AI’s Easy Answers
Cognition holds because difficulty demands patience. What happens when AI no longer requires us to sustain engagement and delay resolution?
Psychology TodayJohn Nosta

I’m ending this small cluster of posts with this article because it names something that’s easy to feel and hard to articulate: cognitive grit.

The piece looks at what happens when answers become cheap, instant, and plentiful, and what that does to our willingness to stay with difficult questions. Not just intellectually, but emotionally.

For creative work, this matters more than we might like to admit.

Many of the skills that shape good creative outcomes: judgment, taste, narrative sense, ethical awareness, don’t emerge from speed. They come from staying engaged when things feel unresolved, ambiguous, or frustrating.

AI tools are very good at smoothing those moments away. Sometimes that’s helpful. Sometimes it quietly removes the terrain where learning and insight actually happen.

This article doesn’t argue against AI. It argues for effort as a feature, not a bug.

As a counterweight to faster, easier, more automated workflows, that feels like a useful thing to keep in view.