What a Belize dive guide taught me about tech
Most lawyers approach AI tools the way over-equipped tourists approach scuba diving. There’s a better way.
I learned to scuba dive through a program run by a dive shop. The shop loved selling gear. Wetsuits, underwater writing tablets, all kinds of accessories. My fellow students got swept up in it. They were focused on looking like divers instead of learning how to dive.
Then I went to Belize.
The minimalist guide
Our guide was a guy named Ramon. He’d been a fisherman and free diver his whole life — strong swimmer, completely at home in the sea — and only learned to scuba dive later. His gear list was short:
A tank
Fins
A mask
A regulator
No weight belt. No snorkel.
I asked him why there was no snorkel. He said, “I only need it at the surface. And if I’m struggling at the surface, I’m going to drop the tank anyway. So why carry it? It’s just one more thing that can snag.”
That was his whole philosophy. Fewer things hanging off you means less to catch on coral, less to fuss with, and less to break. Simpler dives. Better dives.
The over-equipped tourists
Then the other divers would arrive — guys from dive shops, kitted out like paratroopers. Gadgets everywhere. Mask defoggers and special tools were sold by someone who told them they needed them.
They didn’t enjoy the dive as much. They were too busy managing their stuff to pay attention to what was around them.
Ramon, meanwhile, cleared his mask with a quick spit before going under. Free, simple, worked perfectly. If his mask fogged mid-dive, he’d just rub a piece of fan coral on it — gently, without breaking it — and that did the trick. No accessories required.
Where this hits home for lawyers
I see the same pattern with lawyers and technology.
You get enthusiastic. You buy a bunch of tools. You’re influenced by what other lawyers are buying. You haven’t actually learned to use the ones you already have, but you keep adding more.
The result: a lot of equipment, not much actual diving.
Bottom line
Pick a few tools that really matter. Get really good at them. Focus.
Once you’ve mastered a handful of tools, you’ll know how to evaluate any new one that comes along. But the path there isn’t through more gear. It’s through paying attention to the tools in front of you.
That’s the lesson Ramon taught me underwater. It applies just as well above it.
;-)
Ernie
P.S. In the Inner Circle, we focus on a small set of AI tools and learn to use them well — together.
→ https://www.ernietheattorney.net/ernie-attorney-inner-circle