Ozempic, ChatGPT, and the Effort Paradox

A GLP designed by a GPT

“You can’t tell anymore whether someone actually put in the work, or if they just got on Ozempic.”

That’s what Robin Quivers said recently on The Howard Stern Show during a conversation about weight loss drugs. The comment stuck with me. Not because it was shocking, but because it captured something I had been sensing.

These days, when someone loses a lot of weight, the assumption isn’t that they’ve changed their habits. It’s that they must be on one of those new drugs.

Robin Ophelia Quivers

At the same time, I was reading an article on Medium about AI and plagiarism — another entry in the growing genre of trying to spot “ChatGPT tells.” This one, written by a well-known storyteller, introduced new tools that claim to measure the “authenticity” of writing, as if there’s a reliable way to detect creative struggle.

That’s when it hit me: Ozempic and ChatGPT are the same story. Not medically or technologically, but philosophically. Both provoke unease because they make hard things easier and deliver impressive results.

We live in an outcome-obsessed world — celebrity body transformations, spotless student essays, AI-generated art, and startup founders posting polished metrics. And what follows? The commentary. Sometimes it’s a sneer. Other times it’s a sanitized version of the same question: Did you really earn it? Did you suffer enough for it?

We humans seem to value the appearance of effort more than the outcome itself. If you didn’t grind through the workouts or labor over every paragraph, does it even count?

Here’s my take: Ozempic isn’t cheating. Neither is ChatGPT.

Some argue that using a tool to speed up progress makes you lazy. I’d argue it might make you smarter. The question isn’t how you got there, but what you’re doing with the result. Are you using the tool to deceive — or to grow?

I used to dread writing. Now, thanks to ChatGPT, I write close to 2,000 words a day. I’m drafting a 75,000-word book on nonprofit turnarounds — something I couldn’t have imagined a year ago. ChatGPT helps me capture ideas as they come, instead of stopping to polish every sentence. I just write.

Sometimes I wish life had a CTRL-Z button.

Charlotte Cramer at Authorship recommends drafting in white font or tiny text so you’re not tempted to edit as you go. Same principle here: tools like ChatGPT help us get the messy first draft out so we can focus on refinement later.

And yet, I still believe in mastery.

I spent eight years at the Curtis Institute of Music, where I saw what world-class talent looks like. These weren’t just technically brilliant musicians. They had individuality. Soul. A voice. That’s what separates you, not just from the crowd, but from the best of the best. The school’s director, Roberto Diaz, once told me that when he practices, he only spends his time on the hardest parts of the score.

What I learned is simple: Exceptional is rare. Mastery is rarer still.

Can shortcuts lead you deeper? I think so. There’s no nobility in refusing to use a flashlight just to prove you can walk through the dark.

The violin studio at Curtis.

Gino Wickman, in his book Entrepreneurial Leap, tries to talk you out of starting a business. Why? Because if you make it through all the challenges and still want to leap, you just might be ready. But he never says to go it alone. He gives you frameworks, templates, and roadmaps. Tools. Not unlike cheat codes in Super Mario Bros. 3. If you found the warp flute, you could skip straight to Level 8. That didn’t mean you were ready for the boss battle — it just meant you got to the hardest part faster.

And that’s where real growth begins.

Speedrunners can now finish the whole game in under eight minutes. It looks effortless, but we all know it took them thousands of hours to get that good.

So yes, this blog post has jumped from Howard Stern to Ozempic to ChatGPT to Curtis to Nintendo and now to the Green Bay Packers. That’s how my brain works. It’s also how I help clients — by pulling threads from across disciplines and making sense of the whole.

Packers legend Vince Lombardi, namesake of the super bowl trophy.

If you ever stop at the last rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike before the George Washington Bridge, look above the Shake Shack. There’s a quote from the legendary coach Vince Lombardi:

“Perfect is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence.”

I don’t care if someone learns strategy from Harvard, a mentor, or a blog I wrote at 2 a.m. I care that they want to learn it. That hunger — that chase — is what matters. It’s the thing that makes excellence possible.

And if a shortcut helps you chase it longer, faster, or more joyfully?

Use it.