This Made Me Feel Like a Genius… Until I Realized What Was Missing

I was playing Sudoku recently and noticed a new feature.
When I selected a number, the game highlighted where the number already appeared and shaded 
rows and columns where it couldn’t go.
At first, I loved it.
I moved faster. I made NO mistakes.
I don’t mean to brag, but I was performing like a Sudoku prodigy.
I rocketed through that puzzle. It was a breeze.
Oh, wait. That was… too easy.
Kind of like if you challenged me to a second-grade math contest.
I felt unsatisfied and vaguely disappointed, and I realized something:
The helpful game feature had quietly removed part of the task.
Sudoku is supposed to be effortful: scanning, checking, narrowing possibilities.
That is not extra work. That is the work. 
And it is what makes the puzzle satisfying.
When the game did that part for me, it changed the nature of the task.
Psychologists call this cognitive offloading, when we shift part of the mental work onto a tool.
Sometimes that is helpful.
But sometimes it means we are no longer doing the very thing that helps us improve.
It is harder to notice cognitive offloading when you are learning something new.
If you have never written a research paper, solved a statistics problem, or built an argument from 
scratch, you may not know:
• what the thinking is supposed to feel like
• which parts matter most
• when a tool is supporting you… or replacing you
That is part of what makes AI tricky.
It can feel like help. And sometimes it is.
But sometimes, it quietly takes over the thinking before you realize what you needed to learn.
Ask yourself:
Is this tool helping me think…
or doing the thinking for me?
The difference is subtle, but it matters.
Sometimes the most important learning happens in the parts we are most tempted to skip.
Originally published on Dr. Vernon’s Substack, ThriveU (@thriveu).