To Thine Own Self Be True — And Other Advice From Someone Who Wasn't

"To thine own self be true."
— Polonius, Hamlet, Act I, Scene III

Here is the thing about that quote. Polonius is not a wise man. He is a scheming, manipulative courtier who spends most of Shakespeare's play meddling in affairs that are not his concern — and ends up dead behind a curtain for it. That famous line is part of a long, self-important farewell speech he delivers to his son before sending him off to Paris. Polonius himself is, famously, not true to himself throughout the entire play. Shakespeare almost certainly intended the irony.

And yet — the idea survived the messenger. Four hundred years later, we are still quoting it. Because the principle is sound, even when the person saying it isn't.

I knew I could not draw in junior high. It never kept me up at night, because I had other things going for me — writing, analysis, breaking down complex information and making it make sense to people who needed it to make sense. The fact that I could not put a pencil to paper and produce something recognizable was just a fact about me. Not a crisis.

Then I became an instructional designer. And that fact developed consequences.

For a long time, my workaround was human. Throughout my career I worked with graphic designers — some freelancers, some coworkers — who could take what I was seeing in my head and put it on screen in a format that was natural for learners. I knew what I needed and I could communicate it clearly. They could execute what I could not. The work was better for it, and I was not embarrassed by that arrangement. I was deliberate about it.

That is what knowing your weakness actually enables. Not embarrassment. Not paralysis. A decision.

What I did not anticipate was how the tools themselves would start to close the gap.

I am not an AI evangelist. I want to be clear about that. I am cautious, I am still learning, and I am aware that I do not know what I do not know. What I can say is that I did not adopt AI to replace my process. I adopted it to expand what my process could reach.

I still cannot draw. But I can now produce custom graphics using tools that did not exist five years ago. I can generate the kind of visual content that used to require a specialist — not because I became a designer, but because the technology changed what I could communicate and what I could build from that communication. I can write custom code for eLearning interactions without knowing how to code. I completed a full website refresh that I could not have executed on my own. The things I was never going to be good at — illustration, visual creation, front-end development — are no longer the hard stops they used to be.

And the things I have always been good at — analysis, curriculum structure, breaking down genuinely complex technical content, writing — those did not go anywhere. AI did not replace them. It sits alongside them. I bring the thinking. The tools help with the execution my hands could never quite catch up to.

That is worksharing. It just looks different than it used to.

Knowing yourself is not a one-time inventory. It is an ongoing practice — because the tools change, the industry changes, and what felt like a permanent ceiling a decade ago may not be one today. The wall I identified in a junior high art class is not as tall as it used to be. I did not get better at drawing. The landscape around the wall shifted.

That is worth paying attention to. Not because AI is the answer to everything — it is not — but because the honest question is not what am I bad at in some fixed, permanent sense. The honest question is what am I bad at right now, and what options do I actually have?

Those answers keep changing. Which means the self-assessment has to keep happening.

Know thyself. Your strengths and your weaknesses. Both. Clearly. Honestly. And then keep asking the question — because the answer will not stay still.