mister automate

Having grown up with older brothers, the tendency of childhood is to get pressured into tagging along on all various high activity activities.

The cursed beauty of adulthood is the freedom and independence we enjoy.

Unfortunately, we start listening to our own decisions, which have a remarkable tendency to favor whatever requires the least amount of effort.

And slowly, the world gets smaller.

On hindsight, it's clear that some of the best memories are outings we didn't want to attend.

We were dragged into them... sometimes practically kidnapped into them.

And we leave with stories to tell our grandchildren.

As adults, we've finally earned the right to say no to everything.

And that's exactly what we do.

Alone, we rot.

Maybe it's time to stop asking ourselves whether we feel like going.

Of course we don't.

Go anyway.

And while you're at it, drag someone else along. Preferably someone who doesn't feel like going either.

They can thank you when they're telling their grandchildren.

We've gotten to a point where it's possible to not even have awareness of what your own productivity has been.

Specifically, when you have AI look at production logs from an app, write a task list for itself, execute those tasks, and test everything in a sandbox environment from end to end...

You can get to the end of a day and have no idea what was accomplished.

Now, you may argue that's not my productivity, but my AI's. Well... if I'm going to take the blame, I'll take the credit as well.

Completely hands-off isn't good. I definitely request a full understanding briefing before pushing updates to production.

But while it's in progress, you can feel completely out of the loop.

And it's an awesome feeling.

If you've never experienced this, I'd argue you haven't felt AI at its full potential.

I do NOT endorse this as a good idea, but it would be hilarious if someone did this.

No bought toys.

One shelf.

Every toy 3D printed.

Save all the files.

Want a new toy? Pick an old one to melt back into filament to make space on the shelf.

A couple exceptions for things like ride-on toys, if one was feeling particularly generous.

Otherwise, one comes in, one gets melted.

Raise your children with a futuristic mindset.

[I promise this post is largely for entertainment purposes.]

I've sometimes thought it would be great if I could just know all the ways I could be a better person. (Isn't it annoying how polite people are? Just kidding, we appreciate it.)

But that would be overwhelming.

It's probably most effective if we just see and work on the thing that will make the most difference.

It's the same up or down in an organization.

If your seniors send out surveys, pick your battles. Anyone overwhelmed with 1,000 ideas will likely do none.

I've never been at the top of an organization, but Jeff Bezos learned the same lesson from the other direction.

Early Amazon executive Jeff Wilke once told him, “Jeff, you have enough ideas to destroy Amazon.”

Bezos learned to hold back ideas until the organization was ready for them.

Feedback has a maximum effective rate.