Find Your Margin

Audit a knowledge worker's skill stack against AI capabilities to find the narrow lanes where their human judgment + AI throughput creates surplus nobody else can touch. Based on the marginalist insight that intelligence, like capital, flows to the area of highest return — and the counterpoint that individuals win not by competing on allocation efficiency, but by finding fat margins at human scale.

When to Use

• "Where should I actually focus my AI efforts?"
• "I'm using AI for everything but nothing feels defensible"
• "How do I avoid being replaceable by someone with the same tools?"
• "What's my moat in the AI age?"

The Core Framework

The Marginal Intelligence Trap: In a competitive allocation economy, surplus converges toward zero. Everyone uses the same models, the same prompts, the same workflows. The marginal return on one more hour of AI allocation approaches $0.

The Escape: Your margin lives where YOUR specific knowledge, taste, and context make AI dramatically more valuable than it would be for anyone else running the same model. Naval: "Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true." Adams: "A combination of mediocre skills can make you surprisingly valuable."