The Hidden Productivity Boost of Thinking With AI
Speaking to one of my senior engineers, it hit me: a huge part of what an engineer does is thinking, planning, and researching. Of course that’s important work—but it also consumes a lot of time.
Today, in a non–AI-equipped team, that thinking is mostly manual: internet searches, talking to people for support, scrolling through Stack Overflow. A lot of that “thinking process” is really just externalizing your thoughts and bouncing them off other people or tools.
Now, more and more of that is shifting to AI.
Engineers are starting to think with AI agents—whether it’s using ChatGPT for research, or working inside tools like Cursor or Claude Code. That creates two big advantages:
- Leverage – You’re no longer thinking alone; you’re thinking alongside a very fast, always-available partner.
- Productivity – Research and exploration tasks get dramatically faster.
For example, one of my data scientists was exploring how to redefine one of our AI metrics. That research task was vastly accelerated by thinking along with Claude Code. This isn’t just a coding speed-up; it’s a thinking speed-up. It’s part of overall productivity—but most teams aren’t measuring it.
At Exceeds, we believe this “thinking with AI” is a critical, yet mostly uncaptured, dimension of productivity.
Come talk to us at Exceeds if you want to see how we’re capturing it today.