Think With Me

Think With Me begins with a difficult year in Steve Bolton’s life. Caring for seriously ill parents, dealing with a divorce and carrying responsibility for businesses and investors, he found that producing more work was only part of the problem. He needed to think clearly enough to decide what deserved his attention.

AI had already become useful for drafts, summaries and routine tasks. The more significant change came when Steve began using it to examine the problems behind those tasks: giving context, asking questions, inviting challenge and returning to the conversation as his thinking developed.

The book follows that experience into a practical question: where does AI belong in the work in front of you?

A personal story with a wider purpose

The opening chapter, The Perfect Storm, describes a voice conversation at three in the morning in April 2025. Steve’s circumstances remained difficult afterwards. What changed, in his account, was his ability to stay with a problem long enough to understand what might come next.

That distinction runs through the book. AI can contribute information, possibilities and challenge. People still bring the purpose, relationships, values and responsibility that give a decision meaning.

Steve later shared the practice with his son Jude. Jude’s contribution describes using AI to prepare for an interview and to work through subjects he did not understand. Other contributors bring different starting points, including scepticism, family responsibilities and business decisions. Their accounts give the ideas context. They are personal experiences rather than a promise that every reader will obtain the same results.

Choosing the role of AI

Bolt Method™ offers five Ways of Working With AI: Human, Tools, Agents, Partners and Networks.

Some work benefits from being kept entirely with people. Some needs a single, clearly defined AI task. Other work may justify delegating a sequence, sustaining a conversation over time or coordinating contributions across people and AI.

The book treats these as choices about the work. A person can use several Ways in the same day. A sensitive client conversation might stay human; a comparison of offers might use a tool or an agent. The useful choice depends on the purpose, the information involved and the consequences of getting it wrong.

The human practice around the technology

Choosing a Way establishes a role for AI. Four parts of the Method then shape the quality of the work: Values, Judgement, Thinking and Habits.

Values establish what must remain true. Judgement examines what to trust, question, verify, reject or act upon. Thinking opens up questions and possibilities. Habits carry useful practice into the next piece of work.

The book also considers the tensions involved. An answer can sound convincing without being reliable. A conversation can feel personal without establishing anything about the machine’s inner experience. Moving work to AI can free attention, but it can also remove an opportunity to exercise judgement.

An invitation to try it on real work

Think With Me ends by asking the reader to choose one ordinary piece of work, decide where AI belongs and apply the four parts of the Method. The point is to observe what changes: the question, the evidence, the decision or the understanding retained afterwards.

For Steve, the greatest opportunity created by AI is better human thinking. The book gives that proposition a personal history and a practical form that readers can examine for themselves.