If you've ever worked in strategy consulting, you know "The Look."
It's 2 AM. You're in a conference room that smells like stale coffee and whiteboard markers. You're staring at a PowerPoint slide, zooming in to 400%, trying to make sure the "Opportunity" box is perfectly aligned with the "Threat" box. 😵💫
I did this for ten years.
I was a "Strategist." But if I'm being brutally honest with myself (and you), 90% of my job wasn't strategy. It was formatting.
It was copying data from Excel, pasting it into a deck, tweaking the font size, and searching for the right icon to represent "synergy." I was a highly paid box-mover.
The "Correct" Waste of Time
We trick ourselves into thinking this grunt work is part of the process. We tell ourselves, "I'm crafting the narrative." But really, we're just procrastinating.
I recently read a psychological concept that stuck with me: "The only thing we truly own in life is the process of experiencing it."
I looked at my life. Was I really "owning" the experience of aligning text boxes at 2 AM? Or was I just enduring it? If life is about valid experiences, I was declaring bankruptcy.
Strategy is about insight. It's about that quiet moment of clarity when you realize, "Wait, we're solving the wrong problem." But you can't have those moments when your brain is fragmented by the chaos of formatting.
The Realization: Chaos Needs Order
When our internal state feels shaky or chaotic, we need to do something to create order. That's why washing dishes or organizing a desk feels so therapeutic—it restores a sense of cohesion.
The epiphany hit me during a messy whiteboard session. My thoughts were scattered. I was feeling that familiar "self-shaking" (autonomic instability) that comes from information overload.
I realized: The structure (SWOT, PESTLE) is the container for the chaos. It's the "washing dishes" of strategy. It creates the order so the mind can settle.
And AI is incredible at creating that initial order.
Building My Replacement
So, I built SWOTPal.
I didn't just build it to save time. I built it to restore cohesion. I wanted a tool where I could dump my raw, fragmented thoughts—and instantly see them returned to me as a structured, orderly whole.
It allows me to skip the anxiety of the "Blank Page" and the chaos of the "Messy Middle," jumping straight to a state of clarity.
With SWOTPal, you establish immediate order.
You enter a topic, and in seconds, the chaos is organized into Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The "container" is built. Now, your mind is free to inhabit it, to experience the actual flow of strategic thinking rather than the friction of construction.
Now, instead of spending 4 hours fighting with slides (and myself), I spend 5 minutes generating the base with SWOTPal, and the rest of the time experiencing the insights.
I built an AI to handle the "order-making" so I could get back to the "meaning-making."
If you're tired of moving boxes and want to get back to thinking, give it a try. It might just save you from that 2 AM office gloom.
Check out SWOTPal and let the AI handle the grunt work. 🧠
