The Strategy Gym Membership Problem: Why Most People Quit AI Before They Even Start

Gyms love January.
It’s their Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas rolled into one.
Everyone shows up with resolutions and credit cards.

And then?

By the second Friday in January, most are already gone. (Strava calls it Quitter’s Day—a little harsh, but accurate).

It’s not the gym’s fault. The treadmills didn’t move themselves. The problem is the same every year: no plan, no reps, no system. Motivation spikes. Routine doesn’t.

The AI Gym Trap
AI is going through its January moment. Everyone signs up. Everyone says this is the year. Then most people quit after two weeks—when ChatGPT can’t magically build their pitch deck or summarize their 87-page report the way they imagined.

It’s not the tool’s fault.

It’s ours.

We treat AI like a miracle instead of what it actually is:
A membership. A co-pilot. A system you need to train with before it pays off.

The Routine Matters More Than the Resolution
In fitness, the people who last aren’t the ones who bought the fanciest shoes. They’re the ones who blocked 30–60 minutes a week, tested a routine, and stuck with it long enough to see the compounding effect.

AI’s the same.

You don’t need an AI-overhaul. You need an AI routine.

• Pick one task a week. Small, boring, repeatable.

• Define the input. What does the AI need from you to be useful? (hint: it’s usually more context, not less).

• Refine until it fits. Tweak, test, tighten.

• Lock it in. Once the output matches your expectations, don’t reinvent it—make it a routine.

Do that for a month and you’re already in the top 10% of people actually getting ROI from AI.

My Own “Workout” With AI
Case in point: I wanted to see if I could get an AI agent to analyze PDF reports. (Excel files were too messy. PDF was cleaner for the machine, ironically).

It worked. Surprisingly well.

Then I pushed it further: could it analyze snapshots instead of PDFs? Because if so, I’d skip the boring “convert Excel → PDF → upload” step.

And yes—it worked. (As long as the text was clear, and as long as I kept an eye out for hallucinations).

That one experiment cut my report analysis time from 40 minutes → 5 minutes.

But here’s the kicker: it only worked because I invested time upfront. I had to define the input, test the outputs, and fine-tune until the agent did exactly what I wanted.

No miracle. Just reps.

Don’t Quit on January 12th
AI is the same trap as gyms: the hardest part isn’t the signup, it’s the stick-with-it.

If you want results, treat AI like your new workout partner:

• Block 30–60 minutes a week.
  

• Run small test cases.
  

• Capture what works.
  

• Repeat.

Don’t throw in the towel by “Quitter’s Day.”

The ones who stick with it?
They’ll look back in six months at a system that saves hours, delivers insights, and scales ideas—while everyone else is still stuck paying the membership fee for nothing.

Final Rep
AI’s not here to replace your brain.
It’s here to amplify your inputs.

So the real question is:
👉 What are you going to train it on first?

Source: Karsten Winegeart