Welcome to Issue 210 of Total Annarchy, a fortnightly newsletter by me, Ann Handley, with a focus on writing, marketing, living your best life. If this email was forwarded to you, you can subscribe here.

Hi, glorious human.

My left eyelid has been twitching for the past month or so.

It's a quick, intermittent fluttering, like my eyelid is trying to send me distress signals in Morse code.

"We haven't been getting enough sleep," my eyelid taps out.

"ABORT. We are sTreSS*d," it taps.

"You are currently 97% coffee," it warns. "R U ok?"

Which is my way of explaining my absence here these past few weeks: I have been heads down and frantically grasping every moment I have to finish up the final draft of this infuriating my delightful new book.

A few weeks ago I found out that its deadline was not—"I repeat NOT," Eye Twitch shouts—the end of June, as sweet, clueless me had been thinking back in April when I was happy and young and innocent.

Instead, the deadline was cold-splash-of-water-May 15. A full 40 days and 40 nights earlier than I expected.

You can do a lot in 40 days and 40 nights.

You can survive a flood in Noah's Ark. Wait for Moses to come down from Mount Sinai. Endure a quarantine. Procrastinate doing actual work by researching how the word quarantine comes from the Italian quaranta giorni—literally 40 days—the isolation period for ships during plague-era Venice. Should I rabbit-hole research a Venice trip...?

For me, the 40 days/40 nights was a hyper-frantic, self-quarantined final push to the deadline. At the end, I died fully dead. I did not rise again three days later. It took a few weeks.

But I buried the lead—the deadline! I hit it! Please clap!

The draft is done. Eyelid Twitch lingers. It's called eyelid myokymia, by the way: a mild, involuntary spasm of the upper eyelid muscle. It typically resolves on its own, unlike the brain aneurysm I had naturally presumed it was.

* * *

My new book is called ASAP (As SLOW As Possible): When to Take the Long Road in a Shortcut World.

What's it about?

It's about you and me, living in a hyper-optimized time that keeps mistaking faster for better.

It's about knowing when speed serves us—and when slowing down is the smarter, stronger move.

It rebels against the false urgency baked into modern work and life. It asks: When is speed useful? And when does the shortcut undermine us... and cost us our judgment, creativity, relationships, work, or lives?

Because when everyone has access to the same shortcuts, the real edge is knowing when not to take them.

It's got brain science. Storytelling. Real people who've chosen the long road when it matters—with astounding results. Six Slowments. One framework. A way to know when a moment deserves more of you.

And (because it's from me) humor and wit and the occasional em dash. (Because JUSTICE FOR EM DASHES!)

It's not boring. It's not moralistic: I don't want us to do less, opt out, or become the kind of people who ferment things in sheds.

Instead, I'm inviting us to get better at knowing when speed helps—and when it hollows out the very things that make us feel alive.

The new book is from Penguin Random House, a new publisher for me. It's out February 2027, because that's how Big Five publishing works. (More on this later, maybe, if you're interested.)

So that's what I've been up to. And that's why I've been absent from writing to you.

Many of you reached out—in unknowing solidarity with Eye Twitch—asking some version of: R U OK?

Where you been? you asked. Some of you actually resubscribed with a different email address—thinking the problem was them... not me. 🫣

I appreciate you. I've missed writing to you. I've missed you.

I'm glad to be back.

* * *

The marketer in me wonders whether I should introduce the book by name at all.

Maybe I should keep it vague, I think. Say I've been "busy." Blame "Maycember." Make some hand-wavy references to "a big project." Yadda yadda.

Maybe I shouldn't say anything until I have an actual call to action: a book landing page, a cover, a preorder link, a backstage pass to the writing process, intel on what it's like to publish with Penguin Random House after doing things so differently in the past.

Maybe I should wait until I could offer you fun book-launch treats or preorder bonuses or a form to invite me to speak at a special discount book-promotion rate. Or, or, or.

Marketing, you know. That's how it works.

Eye Twitch talked sense into me.

"Listen up," Eye Twitch said. "You owe your newsletter readers—the people who show up for this letter, week after week—a real and honest explanation."

"You are being silly," Eye Twitch continued. "You do not have to Jazz Hands this book with your own people.

"This book is your best work. It's fun. It's funny. It's YOU. It's a fresh take on a modern problem: We already know how to go fast. What nobody taught us is when not to."

That Eye Twitch may be only a month old, but dayum... it's wise for its age.

At some point, I will ask for your help: to join a prelaunch team, to preorder, to share, to tell a friend, to invite me to speak to your group, to send a cold eye mask to soothe Eye Twitch.

At some point, I'll need your support.

For now, I just wanted to say: I'm back. Thank you for still being here.

WHAT AI LITERACY ACTUALLY MEANS

(spoiler: not what you think)

AI literacy is not prompt literacy. It is judgment literacy.

This week on LinkedIn, I made the case that education around AI can't just mean teaching people how to use it.

It has to mean teaching people when not to use it.

We have an entire industry built around AI skills training: prompt engineering bootcamps, certification programs, tool tutorials, one million LinkedIn posts about the perfect prompts you need to do this or that or else you are falling behind. <CUE EDVARD MUNCH SCREAM>

What we don't have nearly enough of is anything that asks:

When should you put the tool down?

When does using it cost you something you didn't mean to give up?

After I wrote about that gap, I had further thoughts.

Wait. Do we need another course?

Judgment isn't a curriculum. It's a practice. It develops through experience, reflection, failure, mentorship, consequences, and the occasional face-plant into your own wrong move.

You can't certify your way to it. You have to build it. Like a muscle: through reps, resistance, and the useful discomfort of doing the work yourself.

Maybe what we need instead is better modeling.

Less "Here's the prompt." More "Here's the choice."

Leaders who visibly choose the long road in a shortcut world. Managers who say, out loud: "I'm not using AI for this, and here's why." Teachers who help students understand not just how to get the answer faster, but what gets lost when they never wrestle with the question. Shout-out to my new friend Jane Rosenzweig, who is doing that at Harvard.

People like you and me showing our work, naming our choices, choosing the slower path when it matters most.

Culture, not just coursework.

Ethan Mollick made a related point in his newsletter: The defaults are being set right now for what kinds of work we hand to AI—by the companies designing the tools, by employers defining "good AI use," and by training companies selling "AI literacy."

That matters because defaults become habits. And habits become very hard to reverse once a generation of workers, students, creators, and leaders has learned to treat "use AI first" as the responsible, modern, efficient thing to do.

Which is why judgment matters so much now.

Not judgment as in AI bad/humans good.

Judgment as in discernment: knowing what to hand over, what to keep, what to struggle through, what to make by hand, what to approach slowly because the process is the point.

Because the most important AI question may not be:

What can this tool do for me?

It's:

What should I not let it do for me?

And I don't think we should expect the platforms, the bosses, the bootcamps—or the AI itself—to answer that for us.

THIS IS MY FACE TODAY

...because today (Sunday, May 31) is the last, last, last call to save 30% of your hard-earned clams on your MarketingProfs B2B Forum ticket.

WHY COME:

• 60 incredible speakers + sessions (update: Program NOW OUT)
• A whole program around Shenanigans
• Rory Sutherland
• My ridiculous face
• A fabulous suit, probably
• Really good food because we love food, too

and

• MOST IMPORTANT: The rare and necessary feeling that you are not doing this work alone.

No matter what happens in the world, in work, or in life, or if/when The Robots take over... we have each other.

That counts for A LOT in marketing in 2026. Actually, it might be the whole deal.

JOIN ME. JOIN US.

>>> CLICK ON MY FACE OR HERE TO REG <<<

P.S. Code SEEMESPEAK will get you another $150 off. Seriously, your ticket is practically paying for itself.

ICYMI

>> Email is dead, long live email. How AI is changing the inbox. Includes an update on Dot. If you missed it, it's here.

>> What AI Would Delete from Great Writing. Why our judgment matters, literally.

>> Something Messy Is Happening: On AI, Panic, and Asking Better Questions. Should we panic about the loss of jobs?

DEPARTMENT OF SHENANIGANS

Sent from my LG smart fridge.

EVENTS

📆 June 4-5 EVENTASTIC [free; online] The world's largest event about events! It's ridiculously awesome.) >> I might be there dancing with Taylor Swift; you have to join to find out!

📆 June 15-16 ATOMICON, Newcastle, UK (I was there in 2021. I'm BAAACK!)

📆 Sept 8-10 Drive 2026, Stowe, VT

📆 Sept 23-24 Digital Summit Philly, Philadelphia, PA

📆 Oct 12-13 Ahrefs Evolve, San Diego

Ann Handley is the author of Everybody Writes and other books. 

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