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The Honest Case For Waiting To See What Sticks
By Nigel Guy · 3 min read
Every new tool arrives with an implied deadline: adopt now or fall behind.
So you sign up, spend an evening learning it, rebuild a workflow around it
— and a few months later it's been renamed, repriced, absorbed into
something else, or simply abandoned. The adoption felt proactive. What it
actually bought you was a migration you didn't need to do.
The rule: for most new AI tools, waiting a short, defined period before
committing costs you very little and saves you from a lot of churn —
provided the waiting is deliberate, not avoidance.
Why waiting is usually cheap
The fear of falling behind assumes the early advantage compounds. For most
individual users it doesn't. Early versions tend to have rough edges, the
documentation lags, the pricing hasn't settled, and the best ways to use
the tool haven't been worked out yet. Arriving later often means arriving
to a better product, clearer guidance, and a more honest picture of what
it's actually good for.
The Wait-And-See Card
Before adopting anything new, fill in these four lines. Keep the card
somewhere you'll see it again.
- What problem would this solve for me, specifically? One sentence.
If you can't write it, you don't need the tool yet — you need a problem
first.
- What's my current workaround, and what does it cost me? If the
workaround is fine, waiting costs almost nothing.
- What would convince me it's sticking? Pick concrete signs in
advance: stable pricing for a few months, integration with a tool you
already use, colleagues whose judgement you trust using it for real
work, a clear owner or company behind it.
- When will I check again? A date, not "soon." Six weeks to a quarter
suits most things — see "The Habit Of Checking Back In Six Months
Before Declaring Anything A Winner" for the longer-horizon version.
When the check-in date arrives, look at line 3. If the signs are there,
try it properly. If not, either set one more date or drop it.
When not to wait
Waiting is the wrong call when:
- The tool solves a problem that's actively costing you now, and your
workaround is genuinely painful.
- Learning the tool is the job — you advise others, write about tools,
or build on top of them.
- It's a low-cost experiment you can drop without having reorganised
anything around it. Trying something for an afternoon isn't the same
as adopting it.
What to skip
Skip rebuilding a working workflow around anything in its first few weeks
of existence. Skip paying for annual plans on tools that haven't been
around long enough to show they'll last a year. And skip the guilt:
not having tried the newest thing isn't a skills gap.
Guardrails
- Waiting is a method, not a personality. If every tool gets "not yet"
forever, you're avoiding change, not evaluating it — the dated check-in
on the card is what keeps this honest.
- "What sticks" industry-wide and "what sticks for you" are different
questions. A widely adopted tool can still be wrong for your work.
- The signs you choose in line 3 are your own judgement calls. Don't
borrow someone else's thresholds without checking they fit.
- If an organisation you work for has already adopted something, the
decision's been made at a different level. This card is for your own
choices.
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