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Harvard Business Review just named the weirdly uncertain feeling about your career, your degree, your next 5 years. They’re calling it AI fog. Here’s what it is, the argument behind it, and the 5 skills to start building right now to keep your options wide open.
ContextThe AI Fog, Briefly
Harvard Business Review just published a piece by Toby E. Stuart (Helzel Chair at UC Berkeley Haas) titled The Future Is Shrouded in an AI Fog. Read it: hbr.org/2026/04/the-future-is-shrouded-in-an-ai-fog.
Stuart’s argument: AI fog isn’t darkness. It’s reduced visibility. The long bets your life is built around get harder to commit to: the four-year degree, the 30-year mortgage, the decades-long career path.
“You spend a decade to become a radiologist because you believe you’ll be compensated for your hard-earned expertise for the duration of your career.” Toby E. Stuart, HBR, April 2026
His answer isn’t to predict the future. It’s to build optionality: skills, relationships, and side bets that give you doors you can walk through later.
“In the face of the AI fog, the sudden invisibility of the future means that the only compelling option is optionality itself.” Toby E. Stuart, HBR, April 2026
So the real question is: what skills compound regardless of which AI scenario plays out? Here are the 5 I’m actively building.
Action5 Skills I’m Building Right Now
01
Make Claude Your Personal AI HQ
Set up a Claude Project for the thing you do most: your job, your side hustle, your weekly admin. Drop your context, voice, and reference files in once, and stop retyping the setup into every chat.
02
Build Trust Capital
A small audience that trusts your voice is the most AI-resistant asset you can own. 200 people who open your emails is worth more than 200k followers who scroll past. Show up consistently, talk like a human, give before you ask. The compound interest on trust runs for decades.
03
Learn Fast on Purpose
Career flexibility comes down to one skill: how fast you can pick up a new domain when the old one shifts. Treat learning as a muscle you train, not a school thing you finished. Build in public while you’re learning, teach back what you just learned to lock it in.
04
Ship One Public Thing With Claude Code
A landing page. A tool. A guide. Anything with a real URL and your name on it. The compound effect of being someone who actually builds (not just talks about AI) pays out for the next decade regardless of which model wins.
05
Build One AI-Powered Income Stream
Even small. A weekend product, a freelance lane, a paid skill drop. The point isn’t the income. It’s that you make different career bets when one small parallel one is already running.
The Real Win
The people who fight the AI fog best aren’t the ones who predicted what was coming. They’re the ones who started learning AI early. If you’re reading this, you’re probably one of them. The visibility ahead might be low. The compounding underneath you isn’t.