What If Energy Is the Real Currency?

00:00 — Opening

Hey, and welcome to Slow Builds.

This one is going to be a real pure ramble — some wild theories that go on in my head sometimes. So bear with me. This one's going to be a little odd. I'm trying to connect some thoughts that probably aren't really there, but I like playing those games to see what connects and where things turn up in the end.

This one's definitely not advice, it's not a prediction, and it's honestly probably not going to make a lot of sense. But I like talking through these things just to see what could come of it — and if there's any possibility of some truth behind it or a link to something realistic.

00:58 — Everything Comes Back to Energy

This one is about something I've been noticing.

The deeper I've been looking into the world — economics, technology, AI — everything in my mind comes back to the exact same thing.

It all breaks down to energy.

I'm going to go off on a tangent here for a second.

You're always told the one thing you can never get back is time. So we always looked at time as the most valuable thing.

But now — yes, obviously time is important. You only live a certain amount of time. But energy seems to be the underlying theme.

02:14 — The Digital World Still Runs on Electricity

Everything I look at, if you break it down far enough, almost everything relies on energy.

Driving a car. Eating. A house. Building a factory. Growing food.

It all comes back to energy being converted to something.

And even the digital world — which is abstract, kind of weightless — it's still all about ones and zeros. Which in the end is power on, power off. Data centers, servers, cooling systems, GPUs, electricity flowing through massive buildings full of machines.

Even AI, which feels almost magic in a way, is really just energy being used.

Electricity goes in and thinking comes out. That's basically what AI is.

03:21 — Tokens Are Just the Meter

I've been watching some videos and you see it in the corner — the limits, the tokens.

When you use a model, everything's measured in tokens. You ask a question, it has to digest your question. Then it has to find and research the answer, and generate the answer. All tokens.

And tokens cost money.

And what you're paying for in the end is compute power — which is electricity, which is energy.

The hardware doesn't produce the answer. Tokens are basically just the meter. Like the meter on your house for heat and light. It's a way of measuring how much thinking is required.

How complicated? How deep do you want it to go? Do you want it to plan, research, execute? Or just give you a quick answer?

It's just electricity. The tokens are just fuel.

04:45 — Tokens as Units of Digital Work

So if tokens aren't quite money, they're something closer to real energy.

Units of digital work. I like that phrase for it.

You burn tokens to create something. You burn them to create code, to research, to run automation, to play through random ideas. Agents running tasks in the background.

Tokens are fuel for intelligence.

AI pieced a lot of this together for me. I sit down with ChatGPT, turn on the transcribe, start spilling ideas. This is one idea I had and it turns into a script. That's me burning tokens to create the script, then sitting in front of a camera to put it on YouTube — which in the end is all energy.

Those tokens are becoming more valuable because they're unlocking more. It's like opening up a new encyclopedia. Giving you access to vast amounts of intelligence and knowledge and computing power.

06:47 — What Determines the Value of Tokens?

This is where my mind goes somewhere even stranger.

If tokens are like energy, then what determines their value?

Right now we just price them in dollars. But that feels like a layer on top of something much deeper. Under all of it the real cost is just energy. Electricity, computing, hardware.

Which brings me to Bitcoin.

I'm not here to convince anyone about Bitcoin. I'm not an economist, I'm not a strategic trader. But one idea about it has always stuck with me.

Bitcoin is created through energy. Mining requires energy. Computers perform massive amounts of work. So in a weird way, Bitcoin represents energy that was spent. And unlike money that can be printed endlessly, Bitcoin has a fixed supply.

That's why a lot of people call it digital gold — or even stored energy.

08:26 — The Chain in My Head

So this is where the thought experiment starts for me.

What if the future economy looks something like this?

Energy powers everything. Energy powers computing. Computing powers AI. AI produces intelligence and work. Tokens measure that compute. And Bitcoin — or something like it — becomes the base layer that stores value created from that energy.

The chain in my head looks like this:

Energy becomes compute. Compute becomes intelligence. Intelligence becomes economic value. And somewhere underneath all of it, energy is still the thing that makes it possible.

09:24 — AI Isn't Just Software — It's Infrastructure

This also makes me think differently about AI itself.

People talk about AI like it's just software. But it's not really just software. It's a massive infrastructure. Huge data centers, thousands of CPUs, gigawatts of electricity.

The AI boom isn't just a software boom. It's an energy boom.

And whoever controls the most efficient energy and compute might end up controlling the most intelligence.

Knowledge used to be something only humans produced. If you give AI a task, it goes through the analytical process to decipher it, find the patterns, unlock things we can't even see — not because it's smarter, but because it's more powerful. Which means it uses more energy.

10:51 — Where It Gets Weird

This is the part where people laugh at me.

When you start following ideas like this far enough, things get weird pretty quick. You start wondering about simulations. Digital worlds. Entire systems running on energy and computation.

And suddenly, movies like The Matrix don't feel as ridiculous as they once did.

I'm not saying we're living in a simulation. But it's interesting how quickly technology can turn science fiction into something that feels plausible.

Ten years ago, AI writing code would have sounded crazy. Now people do it every day. We're more or less reviewing code at this point — and sometimes we're letting AI review it for us.

Some of those old movies and books feel really close to now. That's where I started thinking: did someone already know this was happening? Maybe it's not time travel. Maybe it already existed. Maybe it's just a simulation.

No, I don't believe that. But it's fun to let your mind go to those places.

12:45 — Why I Keep Thinking About This

The reason I keep exploring ideas like this isn't because I think I've figured anything out. It's the opposite.

It reminds me how big and complicated the systems really are.

Economics, technology, energy, AI — it's all sort of become one thing. Different layers of the same reality.

Most of us are just participating in these systems without really understanding what we're doing. And sometimes you have to ask these odd questions to help see things from a different angle.

When your mind is allowed to wander, it brings you back to reality.

Maybe energy really is the base layer of everything. Maybe tokens become the fuel of digital intelligence. Maybe Bitcoin ends up acting like some kind of energy-backed store of value for all the energy that's spent.

Or maybe none of this happens at all. Maybe it's just one of those late night thought experiments that goes nowhere.

I do that a lot. Which is fun. I'm glad I have a place now to just spill out what I'm thinking.

14:48 — The Sun Thought

This one kind of came about because I had a thought about the sun.

If we use just solar energy alone, the whole earth would only use one trillionth of all the sun's energy. That's free energy. Free to grab. Free to use.

Whoever harnesses that has a huge advantage.

There's only one person I know really focused on that — from a space angle. Putting data centers in space, solar panels, satellites.

Anyway, that's where my mind goes and why I started thinking about this.

Thanks for watching. Love to know your thoughts.

The Message Didn't Change. The Person Did.

00:00 — When the message stays the same but the person changes

Hey, welcome to Slow Builds.

This is going to be a bit of a ramble. It's just something I've been thinking about, and I'm still kind of on the edge of it. I'm not really sure which way I land.

What I've been thinking about is something a little uncomfortable.

What do you do when a quote, a book, or a piece of music really meant something to you — when it resonated with you and you liked it — and then the person behind it becomes someone you don't really want to be connected to anymore?

They do something that changes how you see them.

The quote still stays the same.

The lesson still makes sense.

The music still sounds the same.

But somehow it doesn't feel the same.

Every time you hear it, there's that little voice in the back of your mind.

And I think most people have run into this at some point.

01:18 — The Bill Cosby quote in my email signature

For me, one of the places this started was with a quote.

I used to always put quotes at the end of my emails. It's something we started doing years ago, and I really liked it.

One of my favorites happened to be a Bill Cosby quote.

At the time — and honestly even now — I liked it because the message felt true. It was simple:

"In order to succeed, your desire for success must be greater than your fear of failure."

It's a very good quote. I still think the idea behind it makes perfect sense. A lot of progress in life really does come down to pushing through fear.

But once everything came out about Bill Cosby, someone messaged me after I sent an invoice and said, "Yeah, payment sent — you might want to remove the quote."

And I understood why.

Because at that point, the issue wasn't whether the sentence was true.

It was the name attached to it.

I could have changed it to anonymous, but people still knew where it came from. It was a famous quote.

That's what made me start thinking about this whole thing differently.

Because it's interesting how much the name attached to a quote changes how people hear it.

03:04 — When words and the person behind them split apart

There's that old idea people say sometimes: do what I say, not what I do.

That feels related here.

Sometimes the words themselves are meaningful, but the person attached to them degrades them and completely changes the way you look at them.

Even someone as evil as Hitler has quotes that, if you removed the name, might sound like something people would repeat.

But because they came from him, the meaning changes completely.

It's not just changed — it becomes almost taboo.

And in my mind, you have to look at intent too. Even if the words sound good on their own, the intent behind them may not have been good.

It just shows how separate the words and the person can sometimes be.

A sentence can be true.

A lesson can be useful.

And the person behind it can still be horrible.

That's where it gets awkward.

A lot of the time, we don't just respond to the idea.

We respond to the association.

05:00 — Music feels even more personal

I think music might be where this gets even more personal.

Because with music, it usually isn't just an idea. It's memory.

A song brings you back to a certain time. It lets you close your eyes and remember parts of your life — where you were, what you were doing, how it hit you.

An artist makes something that genuinely moves people.

Songs that got played in cars, bedrooms, parties, first kisses, weddings.

And then later, that artist says or does something that makes you stop and question whether you should even still be listening to it anymore.

The music hasn't changed.

The tracks are the same.

The lyrics are the same.

The feeling you had when you first heard it doesn't go away.

But the person behind the content changes the way it lands now.

It's always in the back of your mind.

06:10 — Kanye West and not knowing where the line is

For me, this one hits home with Kanye West.

I've always been a massive Kanye fan, and not just the popular stuff. I listen to a lot of the deeper cuts too.

I've appreciated him as a genius creator and lyricist.

And for a long time, people were willing to give him leeway — to treat him like an eccentric, someone pushing boundaries, thinking deeply, trying different things.

To me, he pushed music, and the genre he works in, to different levels.

But after everything he's gone through, everything he's done, and how far off the rails he's gone, I've caught myself wondering what you even do with that.

Do you stop listening completely?

Do you only listen to the older stuff from before he started going a certain way?

Do you separate the art from the person?

Do you decide there's a line somewhere, and once it's crossed, you're done?

I honestly don't know.

And I don't think most people really know either.

I think they just draw the line quietly in their own way and figure it out for themselves.

Because people are still listening.

The songs are still on the radio.

They're still being streamed and downloaded.

So everyone is making their own choice.

08:05 — Books bring a different version of the same problem

Books have another strange version of this, and in some ways it's even harder.

It feels harder when you have kids too, because some books have lessons you want to pass along.

But then things happen.

And sometimes the name on the cover isn't even the full source of the lesson.

A book like Rich Dad Poor Dad changed a lot for me.

It changed how I looked at money.

It taught me about leverage, assets, cash flow, and how to think differently.

Those ideas helped me move forward in life, and for me, they worked.

You start understanding how to use money differently. You sell one house to buy two. You leverage debt and assets. You begin to see how money can be used as a tool.

Those were lessons I wanted to pass on.

But then years later, you find out more about Robert Kiyosaki. You hear about bankruptcy and all the criticism around him.

So then you pause.

Are the lessons suddenly not valuable anymore because he himself went bankrupt?

Maybe he overleveraged. Maybe he didn't follow the lessons he taught.

So you stop and think: he taught this, and I still think it's useful, but is it real?

10:01 — When the lesson still helped you

For me, I made a personal decision there.

His lessons taught me well.

I played the Rat Race game. I learned from the framework. I got value from it.

So to me, just because he later failed or went bankrupt, it didn't erase what I had already learned from the book.

That was my decision.

But from the outside, it still makes you pause.

Not every idea in a book becomes useless just because the person tied to it becomes harder to trust.

But it probably does stop some people from ever picking the book up for the first time.

So sometimes it takes someone who got the lesson before the person's image changed — someone who already saw the value in it — to decide whether they still want to pass it on.

And I chose to.

10:55 — Ghostwritten books make the question even stranger

Then there's another version of this.

Back in the day, I was a big Trump fan. I don't really like saying that out loud now, but way back when I read every book that came out.

I learned things from those books about business, negotiation, and thinking bigger.

But later, you look back and realize a lot of that writing was done by ghostwriters. It wasn't even really him writing the lessons.

And that makes this whole thing even stronger.

Because if the person on the cover didn't really write the lesson, then who does the lesson belong to?

The public figure?

The brand?

The face on the cover?

Or the actual writer?

To me, I think the lesson belongs to the writer.

Not the brand, not the image, not the fake story being sold.

So in that case, I think the ghostwriter deserves the credit.

But then you still run into the problem that people see the cover, see the name, and judge the lesson through that person anyway.

12:23 — Ideas feel clean, but people are messy

I think this is why the whole topic bothers me.

We like to think ideas are clean.

True or false.

Useful or useless.

Good or bad.

But in real life, they usually come wrapped in people.

And people are messy.

The idea is rarely just the idea.

It's the person delivering it, or the person associated with it.

Some people say wise things but live badly.

Some people build powerful brands around ideas they didn't fully create.

Some people make beautiful, life-changing art and then make a mess of themselves.

They go off the rails.

They say things, do things, and end up tainting the work they made.

And then the rest of us have to decide what to do with that work.

Do we keep the lesson?

Do we throw it out?

Do we keep the art but let go of the artist?

Do we keep the book but stop believing the image around it?

13:50 — There probably isn't one clean rule

I don't think there's one clean rule for this.

I think sometimes the lesson really is bigger than the person.

And other times the person damages the work so much that it changes how it feels forever.

Maybe that line is different for everyone.

Maybe that's why this topic is so uncomfortable.

Because it forces you to ask where the value actually lives.

Does it live in the words?

Does it live in the work?

Does it live in the person?

Or does it live in what it meant to you when you first found it?

Maybe that's the strangest part.

Sometimes the hardest thing isn't deciding whether the quote is true, or whether the song is good, or whether the book helped you.

It's deciding what to do when the messenger falls apart but the message still stays with you.

That's the part I keep coming back to.

Not because I have the answer.

Just because I think a lot of us quietly wrestle with it.

15:15 — The extra thought at the end

One thing I kept thinking about after recording is how personal people's lines really are.

Even at the gym, if I put on Kanye in my headphones, I feel a little awkward about it.

I'm almost glad it's in headphones. I don't know if I want that out there.

There are other artists I've fully stepped away from.

Kid Rock is one of them. I've removed him from my stuff completely.

There are some lines I do draw.

But there are also some things that meant so much to me that I'm almost willing to separate the value I got from the message from what the person later became.

Because when that thing was written, or said, or recorded, it had value to me.

And I don't think that value automatically disappears.

It just becomes something you work through quietly on your own.

You make your own decisions.

You can still take motivation from something without announcing it to the world.

Your life is personal.

Your preferences are your own.

And that's part of what makes it complicated, but also part of what makes it personal.

So thanks for watching.

What If The Future Is… Boring?

00:00 — Opening Thought

Hey, welcome to Slow Builds.

Sometimes when people imagine the future, it looks incredibly advanced.

I was thinking about this the other day while watching some old sci-fi clips, and it hit me how similar those futures all look across movies and TV shows.

There are a lot of similarities.

But even though it looks advanced…

it also looks kind of dull.

Everyone wearing the same clothes.
Very clean cities.
Little clutter.
Everything optimized, minimal, smooth, and controlled.

And the strange part is, we've been seeing that version of the future for decades.

00:50 — We've Seen This Before

When I was a kid watching The Jetsons, everyone basically wore the same outfits.

Same type of house.
Same type of meals.
Everything felt standardized.

In Star Trek, everyone wore uniforms.

Different colors depending on rank, but overall the same streamlined look and feel.

Even newer shows, like the Star Wars series on Disney…

when you see the main planets or ships, everything is clean, modern, open, and controlled.

At the time, it felt futuristic.

But lately I've started wondering if it looked that way for a different reason.

Maybe that's just what a fully optimized world ends up looking like.

02:08 — Optimization Becomes the Goal

If AI keeps improving, and society keeps pushing toward efficiency, sustainability, and stability…

the priorities become clear.

Longevity.
Health.
Environment.
Low stress.
Less waste.

On paper, it sounds like the perfect world.

Food becomes nutritionally optimized.
Cities are designed to reduce congestion and pollution.
Transportation becomes predictable.

AI handles logistics.

It's a world where most things just… work.

03:47 — The Side Effect of Optimization

But optimization has a side effect.

Over time, systems start landing on the same answers.

What's the most efficient way to build this?
What's the best design?
What delivers the most value?

Even food shifts.

Instead of snacks or treats, you move toward dense, efficient nutrition.

Protein shakes.
Balanced meals.
Highly optimized intake.

Clothing follows the same path.

Not because anyone forces it…

but because the system naturally moves toward what scales best.

05:01 — Clothing as the Example

Clothing is probably the clearest example.

Right now, fashion is everywhere.

Cheap, disposable clothing.
Thousands of brands.
Endless variation.

But if the focus shifts toward sustainability and reducing waste…

things simplify.

Fewer materials.
Standardized production.
Longer-lasting designs.

Less variation.

Not because people are told what to wear.

But because the system makes certain choices easier.

And slowly, the future starts to resemble what we've already seen.

Simpler clothing.
Cleaner environments.

06:46 — Data Drives Everything

Optimization needs data.

If the goal is longer, healthier lives, systems rely on information.

Wearables track heart rate, sleep, stress.

Maybe it's not even devices anymore.

Maybe the clothing itself does the tracking.

Homes monitor air quality, activity, behavior.

Cities track traffic, movement, and energy.

Everything feeds into the system.

More data leads to more efficiency.

08:07 — When Systems Start Guiding Behavior

At first, it all makes sense.

Better data leads to better decisions.

But over time, systems don't just measure behavior.

They start shaping it.

Eat this.
Sleep now.
Use less energy.
Avoid certain risks.

Most of it is reasonable.

And people will follow it.

But it starts guiding everyone toward similar habits.

Similar schedules.
Similar routines.

The world becomes stable.

But also very predictable.

09:54 — What Gets Left Behind

There's another side to this that doesn't get talked about much.

If the world keeps optimizing toward stability, efficiency, and health…

what happens to everything that doesn't fit?

Optimization doesn't just improve things.

It filters things out.

The outliers.
The unpredictable.
The inefficient parts of life.

And those things don't disappear.

They get pushed somewhere else.

Out of view.
Outside the system.
Into separate layers.

A lot of future stories hint at this.

There's always a clean, controlled surface…

and something else underneath.

11:05 — The Human Side of the Tradeoff

The tension here isn't collapse.

It's quieter than that.

Because the more systems optimize for stability and performance…

the less space there is for unpredictability.

And that's where a lot of human experience lives.

Experimentation.
Risk.
Trying things you probably shouldn't do.

Making mistakes.

Those messy parts of life.

Optimization doesn't favor those.

It favors what works.

12:02 — Escaping the System

Maybe that's why so many future stories include some form of escape.

If the real world becomes too structured…

people look for somewhere else to go.

Virtual worlds.
Simulations.
Controlled environments that feel different.

Where you can explore.

Where things aren't as predictable.

Where there's room to move differently.

14:28 — The Other Side of the Future

And then there's the darker side.

In a lot of these stories, there's always a divide.

A clean, optimized world…

and a rougher layer underneath.

People who don't fit into the system.

People pushed to the edges.

The ones doing the work.

The ones not living in that clean version of the future.

15:37 — The Core Tension

So maybe the future isn't something to fear.

Maybe it's healthy.
Clean.
Stable.
Efficient.

People live longer.
There's less stress.
Less waste.
Everything is taken care of.

But maybe that's where the tension is.

Because the parts of life that feel meaningful are often not efficient.

The things outside the routine.

The things you choose to do.

The moments that don't follow the system.

16:56 — Closing Thought

If everything gets optimized long enough…

the future might function perfectly.

And still feel flat.

Like everything is right…

but something is missing.

And maybe that's the trade we don't talk about very often.

The more the world works…

the less room there is for individuality.

For unpredictability.

For the things that make people… people.

18:00 — Outro

Let me know what you think.

Thanks for watching.

00:00 — Opening

Hey, welcome to Slow Builds.

In a recent video, I talked about how habits and tracking slowly turn into pressure. How something that starts as helpful can quietly take over your life.

And that got me thinking about another version of the same thing. Not tracking, but optimization. Trying to fit everything in. Like you're over planning, you're pre-planning, those color coded calendars you see sometimes. Every hour is blocked off, every day is filled. The kind of fridge calendar that looks perfectly organized, but it's also just completely full.

I tried to live like that for a while, and what I realized is that tracking things and optimizing your entire life are two very different things.

Now, I still track things. I still write things down. I still use reminders and list every day. What I stopped doing was trying to optimize every minute of my time.

Those two things sound similar, but in my mind, they're not. They're not completely different, but they are different things.

---

01:22 — Why I Track at All

For me, tracking isn't about discipline. It's about just getting things out of my head.

If something is floating around, it's constantly in my mind, it becomes distracting. So I put it somewhere I trust. And for me, the main places I put things are Apple Reminders, Apple Notes, and I'll leave important emails unopened so they're unread. If I even read them and open them, I'll once I'm out, I'll mark them as unread again. That way I know it's there, 'cause email's a place I know I'll look.

Once something is parked somewhere that I know I check, sort of on a regular basis, my mind can remove it and not think about it. So it allows my mind to relax and not stress about that, 'cause it knows — okay, it doesn't have to remember to pay that bill — 'cause it knows that I'm going to either check my reminders and see it's time to pay the bill, or it knows that there's an unread email like the paid invoice. So I know I'm gonna look at my email, I'm gonna see that message unread and I know I'm gonna take care of it.

So I don't have to think about the invoice or the bill because my mind has one thing to remember and it does that automatically.

---

02:50 — When Optimization Went Too Far

What I find is, if you don't do that, where things start to break down was when systems turned into that pressure. The over planning, the overstructure, treating every day like it needed to be maximized.

If the day didn't go according to plan, it felt like you failed. So all those little wins that you had, they're lost because you didn't finish all your things you wanted to do. And it's not because I wasn't doing anything, it's because the system said I wasn't doing everything.

You keep seeing those unchecked items on your list or your workout app is telling you like you didn't hit those goals, those targets that you wanted to hit for that day. And it just starts nagging at you. So the next day, you try to double down. You add more effort, you push harder. And after a while, it starts to snowball. It becomes a real burden until eventually you either burn out or you start removing things from the list. Or you lower the goals just so you feel like you can achieve and you can feel like you're hitting everything.

You want that little adrenaline rush of checking stuff off. And that's when I realized, it's not right.

---

04:26 — The Part I Still Love: Small Wins

But there's one part of the system that I still love.

Like I just said, you try to rewrite your systems by removing things, lowering goals, just so you can try to hit those targets. But I took it a different way. It's all about those small wins.

So what I do is sometimes on a weekend, like I'll open up the room — if I'm down doing my run or I'm out in the garage or even eating breakfast or even the night before sometimes — I'll just open up my phone and I'll say, okay, quick list. And either in notes or in reminders, I'll make a little list of stuff to do. Like, okay, tomorrow I wanna clean up the garage. That's a big one. I want to wash the cars, I want to check the tire pressure. Just small things like that.

So it's nothing fancy. It's nothing optimized. But what happens is I get to go out and I get to check those things off.

It's like this video. I know I had to do a video today. It's starting to become a little pressure, so I'm trying to find ways around not making it a pressure, but it's just a matter of — hey, today I knew I had to do a video, so I'm doing it and I'll check it off. And it's those small wins that make you feel really good. Not because you're being efficient, but because you know you showed up, you wanted to do something and you did it. And you get to check it off and that makes you feel good for the rest of the day. And actually a lot of times it makes you feel like you can do more.

---

06:10 — A Thought About Runs and Knowing When to Stop

And that reminds me of something — I don't know where I've seen it, where I read it or anything like that. But it's like, let's say you wanted to hit 5K. So you do your 5K.

You know most days you don't want to do your run and if you go too far it becomes a burden. You're hurt, you're out of breath, like whatever. But on some days you're really good and you know you can go forever and you're so used to not feeling great that you want to hit that not-good part. Because then you know you've pushed your body to the limit basically.

And some days you don't need to do that. So what it said is on the days when you don't need to push that extra hard, you're just doing it to do it. You're just showing up to do your thing and you don't need it — it's almost like a recovery day. So on your recovery day, you don't want to push yourself past the comfort zone, because you're going to hit that place where you feel uncomfortable and you realize, "I don't like this. I hated it. It sucked."

But before you get there, you have that feeling, "Oh, I could go forever. I feel great about this." That's when you stop. Because if you stop there, the next time you go to go do it, you're going to remember, "Oh, it was great last time. Today I got to go a little harder." Because it's in your program. It's in your plan. So you don't feel that dread, that bad feeling to go there.

I always think about that when I'm doing a run sometimes. It's like, I know I have to do it, and if I push myself too far, tomorrow I'm just gonna remember I didn't like it. So I don't wanna go there all the time.

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08:27 — Where Tracking Became Unhealthy for Me

But back to it — that was a little ramble on the side.

There was one place where tracking did cross a line for me. And that was, funny enough, it was with workouts. It was tracking the weight, it was tracking my calories, and it was tracking my streaks.

I talked about it in the other video — it was the running, and really everything. But running was the big one. It interfered with vacations, going out, things like that. It just took over my life. But at first it really helped because it kept me focused. But as the streaks got longer and those numbers got bigger, it's all I really cared about. I didn't stop being healthy. I wasn't training my body anymore for the healthy benefits or the gains or whatever. I was just trying to manage a scoreboard really, and that wasn't good.

And the rule I learned from that is: systems are good until the metric replaces the intention. As soon as I'm serving the system instead of the goal, it's time to loosen the grip.

I've done that with the running, with tracking workouts. I've done it with tracking even at work — like how many bugs I'm fixing, how many PRs I'm pushing out. I've taken all that away. And I just focus on quality and just staying within a reasonable — I know my limits basically.

So I keep the systems that give me clarity and momentum now. And I dropped all the ones that were just putting my attention on the wrong thing and making me go the wrong route and becoming unhealthy and interfering with just life.

---

10:16 — Big Goals, Small Steps

So I still believe in big goals. I believe in the big hairy audacious goals — I can't remember what the exact words are. And they're the kind of goals that give you direction, not daily instructions.

But I don't live inside those goals. I break them down into small, boring, checkable steps. The big goal points the compass and the small wins, those small little goals, they keep me moving, they keep me motivated to reach that end goal.

Because like they always say, it's not the destination, it's the journey.

---

11:06 — A Real Example: How I Plan Vacations

So a real example outside of running and stuff like that — for me and my family, it's vacations.

Once we decide on a location, like where we're going to go, I'll look up all the things that feel like the must-do experiences. So like right now we're planning a trip. Well, we just did one in Mexico for Christmas and now I'm planning a trip to Puerto Rico for next Christmas.

So what I do is you do a deep dive and you find those must-haves. You have X amount of days, you look up a place and you figure out — okay, if you go here and you're not from there, these are the things that you have to do. Because if you don't do them, you'd regret it. And if you never go back, you're always gonna think about it.

But everything else around that, like you do look up all these things, they become the flexibility of a plan. So I'll make a bunch of lists, a bunch of different ideas — food places, excursions, attractions and sites, or I'll even plan out small days and locations that we could pop into or see. But it's built with room to shift because obviously tropical places or even other places, there's always weather, there's traffic, there's delays, there's flights, somebody's tired, sick, anything can happen 'cause life happens.

And I've been on vacations before where they're planned and they're scheduled for every single hour. You know what you're doing every single day. Those become exhausting. You go to Disney World and you got seven days and you got to hit it all. And by the time you come home, you need a vacation from the vacation. Every activity is locked into a timeline. And the moment one of those little things goes off the rails, the whole trip just derails. And it feels like a complete failure. Like, why did we even come? This vacation is a complete waste of time and money. And the whole joy is gone.

In my mind, we used to do that. I've done it. I've been on those vacations and it just becomes like the goal is the plan, it's not the vacation itself.

So now when I plan these vacations and these trips, I leave a lot of space for flexibility. I make them loose. Like I said, you gotta have those musts. But you keep things loose where the vacation can flow and you're not locked in. You know you're going to hit those musts, but you still give your time. You give room to enjoy the vacation, to relax. Not every day is go, go, go, and if you miss something, then the whole thing changes.

---

14:53 — Closing Reflection

So I don't try to optimize every minute of my time anymore.

And that doesn't mean I stopped planning. I still loosely map things out. Just like the vacations, I do that with my life, my days, my weeks. I still have direction for the week. But the targets are more soft.

Obviously at work there's deadlines. You got to hit certain things or certain targets. But in between that end date, there's lots of room for me to maneuver, for me to take a break or to try something out a different direction. So those targets are soft. And if I miss one, it doesn't mean that my days are ruined or even my weeks are ruined. And if I hit one, when you get to check it off, that's when you get that adrenaline. You feel great.

And that small difference of not optimizing everything — loose plans, still tracking, but not to the point that if I miss a day or I didn't hit the number I feel like I failed — the plans now and the tracking just gives me direction and keeps me pointed in the right way. So it doesn't control me. It just gives me freedom to live life, to work at my own pace, and to still get those little moments of joy when you get to check something off.

---

16:23 — Closing Thoughts

Thanks for watching, and I'd love to see how do other people do this.

Because I find if you've never tracked anything, you've never used reminders, calendars — if you keep your mind full of everything you're supposed to do — you become tired and stressed, and it takes a lot out of you as a person, and it affects the people around you too.

So I find that just doing these basic things — and all this came from years of just building businesses, working with startups, going on client sites, dealing with family, planning trips, working out — you reach a point where you realize if you're not doing something to keep track of everything, your mind is just overwhelmed. So you want a way to get it out, to relax, and just have those safe places you know you're going to look and you're going to check. And it makes a big difference. It really, really does. It gives you time to be creative, think.

I'd love to see what other people use. What systems do you find work? Do you keep it loose? Do you follow something strict? Because even though you might follow a strict system for where to put things — like Getting Things Done — it doesn't mean it's overrunning your life. It just means that you're strict on putting things there because as soon as something pops in you put it there, because you know you're gonna look there.

So just being strict on the system doesn't take the joy out of it. And that's why I would love to see what other people do. I've spent a lot of time trying different ones, being forced to use different ones, and I find the least stress I have and the least formality I have allows me to feel like it's not taking over my life and it's my choice to do it — which makes a big difference I find.

Thanks for watching, leave comments. I still have too many people watching these, which is fine by me I think.

Alright, bye.

00:00 — Opening

Hey, welcome to Slow Builds.

Something I see a lot when people talk about AI is advice about writing the perfect prompt.

And for a while I thought that there must be a key to using it well. Like that perfect prompt, before you even type anything in there, there's this fear that you have to get it correct. You had to structure the response the way you wanted.

And honestly, that is the best advice ever.

But I actually do, and I do that myself, but the interesting thing is that it's not really how most of my AI work begins.

Most of the time, the prompt box isn't where I carefully craft instructions. It's where I start the conversation.

Because I was finding that what I was doing was I was afraid to start typing until I thought I was telling it or asking exactly what I needed, what I wanted, and how to respond to me.

---

01:21 — The Idea of the Perfect Prompt

But if you watch videos about AI, there's a lot of focus on that.

People show these very carefully scripted prompts that match that entire thing. They make it feel like it's like a little program and you got to script it the right way.

They define the roles, the format, the tone, the constraints. And the idea is that if you write the prompt well enough, the AI will give you the exact answer you want.

And that's the scary part. You're trying to coach it into giving you what you expect.

But in my experience, that's not where the real value shows up.

---

02:05 — When Structured Prompts Actually Help

There are definitely situations where structure helps.

If I'm not working on code, if I'm working on code that I already know, and I always go back to a developer mindset, 'cause that's what I do mostly, and I find the most event — well, I don't find the most event with AI, but it helps, it's a great place for me to use it.

And so when I am working on code and I already know what I'm trying to build, I might say, act like a senior developer, review this. Or in other cases, like if I'm going through my taxes — I just did that this morning for myself and my kids — and my accountant wants things in a certain way. So I would say, here are the documents. Here's an Apple note that has all the information for this person. Please review. This is what my accountant wants. These are my documents. Prepare it for them. So act as a CPA, act as a CFO.

And that works. When the task is very clear, those instructions help. They've reduced token usage. They speed up the process, and they help like infinite loops of retrying and doing things wrong.

So definitely structured prompts, you have to do it in certain cases, but most of the time when I open a conversation, I have no idea what the answer is that I want. I'm not trying to coax it or coach it into telling me what I want. I'm trying to get to an answer.

---

03:54 — Starting With a Thought

So usually what I have is just a thought. I have a rough idea, questions that they're not formed yet.

So I'll open the chat, pipe something like, I've been thinking about this idea, or does this approach make sense? Or I'm trying to think of what I did today. Like my kid goes to university in the States. It's a degree, but they offer it online. So they're here. So I'm like, when we're doing taxes, so it's a question. Okay, they go to this university in the US, it's a real degree, it's not an online course, it's just they can do it online. Do they offer the T1, I think it is. And then it gave me like, it wasn't sure — in the US they'll get this, here's a structured email and a link to a document you can provide to find out.

So I had no idea what I was doing.

---

04:53 — Natural Language

But it's like I said, like I was just typing it. I wanted to know one answer and other times like I mentioned in another one where I'm on a walk with my wife and she was talking about chlorine levels in the pool. So I just opened up the app, turned on the microphone part of it and we just start talking. And I'm not trying to format those in a certain way, I'm just basically talking to it like another person. And I know that that person is going to understand what I'm saying and that person is going to be pretty much the expert in any field of anything I ask or bring up. But either way, it's just natural language. It's not structured, it's not engineered, it's just me talking through something.

---

05:55 — Natural Language Works Surprisingly Well

And one thing I've noticed is that the system is very good at understanding that normal conversation.

You don't have to speak like you're programming it. You can just explain what's in your head, half sentences, messy thoughts, changing direction halfway through. And it usually understands the context extremely well.

So instead of spending time trying to write the perfect prompt, I just start talking, explaining, going through a situation, interrupting it, letting it interrupt me. I'm steering it as we go.

---

06:32 — The Back and Forth

And from there, it becomes a dialogue with the AI that starts messy and sometimes it's helpful, sometimes it misses my point completely, sometimes it suggests something I haven't even thought about so it makes me move to a different direction. It helps me reframe my thought process and I push back on it sometimes and but together we were adjusting, we're figuring out, and slowly as we do it — I hate saying we because it is just a computer — but it's to me it's a vast bucket of knowledge of every field you can imagine basically.

And you can guide it and together you can slowly make your ideas become clear.

---

07:46 — The Role Changes Naturally

And then another thing I noticed is that the role naturally shifts between depending on the topic.

And that's what I'm trying to get at there is if we're talking about code response, I didn't tell it to act like a senior developer, but it starts responding as if it's a product manager, product owner, a senior level developer, engineer. And then I'll quickly just jump over to a finance question. I'll ask about a stock or review this or I got an assessment today. And then all of a sudden it automatically switches. Now it's my CFO. If I'm thinking all about life decisions, it becomes more of a neutral sounding board. It acts like a therapist really, whether it's family, relation, or just personal.

And I don't always have to define these roles ahead of time. It picks it up through the context of the conversation and it figures out what I'm trying to get at.

---

08:51 — A Place to Think Out Loud

The best way I found to describe this is that AI has become a place to think out loud.

Sometimes it feels like a coworker helping through technical problems. Sometimes it feels like an advisor. And sometimes it's just somewhere to talk through an idea until the messy parts start making sense.

The value isn't in that first answer in my mind. I think the value in that is the entire conversation.

---

09:20 — Where the Gold Nugget Appears

And most of the time, the interesting part shows up later in the thread.

So as you start that conversation, you're going deep, you start with the rough idea, you're going back and forth, you explore different angles, and eventually there's a small moment where something clicks — a clear way to frame the problem, a better way to structure the idea, that little gold nugget — and that almost never comes from that first prompt. It comes from everything that happened after you started.

You sat down, you got the fear out, and you just started typing and having that back and forth.

I always say there's no dumb questions, there's no stupid questions or stupid answers. That's how you got it in my mind. That's how I treat the AI and the prompt interface. It's a place where I can safely just... It's my safe place to ask anything I want, let my mind go crazy.

---

10:21 — When the Perfect Prompt Actually Matters

But there are places where that perfect prompt has to be right.

And that's when I'm building something automated. For example, when I'm creating AI agents, and they're going to run automatically, agents are different from chats. A chat can be messy, you can correct it, you can steer it, but an agent has to run on its own — that work the same way every single time. You need efficiency, you need accuracy, you're depending on something.

---

11:00 — Using Conversation to Build the Prompt

So when I'm building an agent, I'll actually use my chat conversation to figure it out.

I'll open ChatGPT if it's personal, I'll open Claude if it's work, and I'll just start talking through the process. Especially at work, with Claude, it has access to the code. Even now with ChatGPT, you have Codex and it has access to my personal code.

So we go through it, we're looking at lines of code, we're figuring out what needs to happen. We start exploring different ideas, we reframe the instructions, guardrails are set up, context is set up, very precise, inputs, outputs, and eventually we arrive through testing and everything else. We'll find this perfect prompt and it'll expect the same input every time and I should get the same structured output each time. There may be deviations here and there, but it's always structured the same way.

---

12:00 — Why That Pattern Matters

So that pattern matters, it really matters.

It makes a big difference and that's a place where you have to do it 'cause it's repeatable and you're not expecting the same answer every time but you're expecting the answer to be formatted the same way every time, with the same fields. I'm thinking like a coder again. That's why it's good to have those forms, those checklists, those constraints. They make a difference when the agent's running on its own without human input. It's all code based, so it has to know what to do.

---

12:42 — The Pattern

But outside of that, my normal pattern with AI usage really is conversation first, clarity second, structured prompt last.

The prompt isn't where the thinking starts. It's where the thinking ends.

---

13:00 — Closing Thoughts

So when people talk about writing the perfect prompt, I sometimes think they might be focusing on the wrong step because the most useful thing AI gives me — and this is my personal opinion — isn't the first answer. It's the conversation that helps me arrive at that answer. It's the ability to think through an idea in conversation.

Those conversations, and any conversation, is rarely perfect. It's always messy. I love the back and forth. I tell my AI to don't just reinforce my idea, like push back on me. And been noticing it's been doing a lot more of that lately, which is really perfect for me. And that's where those interesting ideas show up.

Anyway, these are some of the thoughts I've been having around how I actually use this stuff and how I want to put it out there and just see — I know I'm doing it wrong, I burnt through tokens, I'm trying different models. I got messy agents set up. I'm spending a lot of time and a lot of effort. At this point, a lot of money. Just trying to — it's like a playground for me at the moment. And I'd rather be playing in it than ignoring it. And that's where I'm kind of at at this point.

And I'd love to see what other people feel about prompts. I really want to know how other people are using AI and talking to it, interacting with it, projects, code, free chats, anything — whatever people are doing, I'm very interested to know what's going on. So thanks for watching and see you next time.

00:00 – Opening: Tracking Everything

Hey, welcome to Slow Builds.

For a long time, I tracked everything.

Workouts, running, swimming — you name it, I tracked it. I had spreadsheets that laid out the entire year for me. Weekly goals, yearly totals, everything broken down right to the day, the type, and the total.

At the time, it felt very organized. It felt very disciplined, and honestly it gave me a lot of pride to look back on it.

But after so many years of doing it, I can see now that it might have been a little more intense than it needed to be.

I probably should have picked up on the cues earlier. A lot of friends would start out excited and interested, but eventually it became more like, "What number is he at now?"

And tracking usually starts from a good place.

You want to improve something.

Health. Discipline. Consistency.

---

01:00 – Why Tracking Works at First

So you create a system.

You track workouts.
You track distance.
You track calories.

For me, it turned into spreadsheets that covered the entire year.

Each week had targets, and those weekly targets added up to yearly goals. And honestly, for a while, that worked really, really well.

It kept me honest. It kept me on point.

It helped me on those days when I was too tired or didn't want to do it, because it created structure for me and kept things moving even when I didn't want to.

---

01:33 – The Running Streak

With running, that eventually turned into something more obsessive.

It became a streak.

The idea was simple: see how many days in a row I could run 5K.

I picked 5K because it felt manageable. I thought about doing 10K, but that's a lot more time and effort, so 5K felt like the right number.

It wasn't anything extreme. The idea was just to see how consistent I could be.

And once it started, I noticed something very interesting.

I stopped thinking about the run itself… and started thinking about the number.

Thirty days became a month.
Then six months.
Then a year.

And once you hit a year, you start thinking, well, maybe I can make it to two years.

At some point I stopped really checking the exact number, but I know it went past 800 days. I'm not even sure if it was 814 or 820, but it was over 800 days in a row.

Which sounds impressive.

But streaks and habits and tracking like that can very quickly start controlling your day, your time, and everything around you.

---

03:14 – When the Habit Became Pressure

The run itself wasn't the problem.

The pressure around the streak became the problem.

Vacations became tricky.

Evenings revolved around making sure the run got done.

If I missed it in the morning, then I had to think through the rest of the day.

Do I still have time to get it in?
Can I do it before bed and still cool down?
I can't do it right after I eat.
If we go for a walk, will I still have time afterward?

Sometimes I'd be thinking about it all day.

I should've done it this morning.
I can't break this streak.

And something that started as a healthy habit — something that was meant to help me get in better shape, burn calories, keep my legs moving, help my breathing and lung capacity — slowly turned into an obligation.

---

04:25 – Tracking Shows Up in Other Parts of Life Too

And when you start thinking about streaks and tracking like that, I realized the same thing happens in other parts of life too.

I noticed it at work.

In software development, there are a lot of things you can track.

Support tickets.
How long tickets stay open.
How many days it takes to respond to an email.
How many bugs you fixed.
How many bugs were in your latest feature.
How many features you pushed out.

On the surface, all of that sounds reasonable.

But if you're not careful, those numbers become the goal.

You start optimizing your workload for the metrics instead of the work itself.

You want to close more tickets.
You want to do more small tasks.
You want to get bigger numbers.

So you start taking on the little things you know you can do quickly. You find ways to break one thing into many so you can say you got three done instead of one.

One place that kind of tracking can help is when you're releasing a new feature. You really don't want a lot of bugs associated with it, so you spend more time making sure the code is solid and the bug count stays low.

But still, you can see how easy it is for the metric to become the focus.

---

06:04 – Where Tracking Can Actually Help

There are definitely places where tracking makes a lot of sense though.

Investing is a good example.

This channel talks about money and investing a lot, and it's something I'm really passionate about.

Maybe your goal is to put away $200 a month.

Just a simple Wealthy Barber style rule — pay yourself first.

Or maybe you split it up differently.
$100 here.
$50 there.
$50 somewhere else.

Maybe you want to max out your TFSA for the year.
Maybe you want to use all your RRSP contribution room.

Those kinds of targets can be healthy because they help future you. They help with refunds. They help take pressure off later in life.

They're really about consistency over time.

---

07:10 – When Even Healthy Targets Go Too Far

But even there, those numbers can take over if you're not careful.

Say your salary goes up, so now your RRSP contribution room is bigger than it used to be.

In theory, you might think: I make more money now, I should keep living the same way and put the rest toward that goal.

And sometimes that makes sense.

But life isn't that simple.

Maybe your family is growing and you need a bigger car.
Maybe your kids are getting older and going off to school and you want to help them.
Maybe other things come up.

That's life.

And even with investing, the numbers can become unhealthy if they start controlling your decisions.

For example, if you take out an RRSP catch-up loan just to hit your contribution room, but then don't pay that loan off properly, was it really worth it?

If you start ignoring responsibilities just so you can check a box and say you hit the number this year, then the metric is controlling the decision.

Life doesn't move in a perfect spreadsheet.

For us, I put a lot of value on taking trips.

So if it comes down to maxing out the RRSP for both my wife and me, or taking a Christmas trip with the family, I'll take the trip.

I know that's not the most optimized thing on paper, but I'll take the trip.

The same goes for kids needing something.
Or home repairs.
Or car repairs.

Sometimes you can't check the box on the spreadsheet, but you still need to feel good about yourself because you put your priorities in the right place.

And that matters too.

---

10:08 – The Streak Broke

That brings me back to the running streak.

It broke this Christmas.

We took a Christmas trip.

When you've got a 5 a.m. flight to Mexico from the east side of Canada, and you land and start the day, there's just no realistic way to get the run in.

And obviously my family would've been pretty upset if I tried to force it.

I did manage to get runs in on the trip, but they happened naturally in the day.

Still, I have to be honest — that very first day when I didn't do the run, I was itching to go do it.

But I knew if I did, there would be different consequences.

So I decided I was better off just dealing with the feeling myself and skipping it.

And when you've done something for hundreds of days in a row, breaking it feels big.

It feels like something in your life just stopped.

---

11:18 – The Pressure Went Away, But the Habit Stayed

But then something interesting happened.

As the pressure started to go away, I noticed the habit stayed.

Even on the second day, I found myself going for a run naturally.

Everyone was getting ready. I was already ready. Or maybe I wanted to go check something out outside.

And I'd think, I know how to do a quick 5K. It's not a big deal. I can fit it in. Quick shower and I'm good to go.

So I started realizing there was no pressure to do it anymore.

But I kept finding these little opportunities where it fit.

And my body wanted to do it.

The habit stayed with me.

---

12:06 – It's Not Tracked Anymore, It's Just Part of Life

These days I don't really track it anymore.

I stopped tracking my runs.
I stopped tracking my workouts.

I still do them.

I have schedules in my head. My body kind of knows when it's time.

I've actually started running every day again, but not because I'm tracking it.

It's just a custom now.

And I really prefer running in the evenings.

There are no spreadsheets.
No streaks.
No idea what number I'm at.

It just happens as the day goes on.

And I've learned that running helps me sleep better.

I know that sounds weird, but I think it's the whole process.

Getting the blood going.
Having the shower afterward.
Then that cool-down period where I'm relaxing and watching TV.

Sometimes if there's something nagging at me, or something I want to think through, the run helps with that too.

It helps calm the day down.

On weekends I'll run in the mornings because I like doing longer runs then. But in the evenings they're usually smaller.

Now my body is just so used to it that it wants to do it.

So it stopped being a habit that I'm tracking…

and it just became something I do.

---

13:31 – The Rhythm of the Day

I'm not chasing numbers anymore.

I'm just following the rhythm of the day and how I feel.

With work, I know what I need to get done and when I need to get it done.

I take a lot more time now. I'm less worried about how much stuff I'm pushing out, and more worried about the quality of the work I'm doing and improving the system for users.

With meals, I still track sometimes — not every day, but if I've had a big breakfast or we went out for lunch or something like that, I like having a rough idea because those are the days I'm less sure what the numbers are.

And I love ice cream, cake, and chips, so I do want to make sure I'm not overdoing it. Because if you do that every day, it adds up.

But in the evenings is where it really comes back into place for me.

That's when the day is winding down.

That's when my body naturally kind of says, okay, you should go for a run now. It'll feel good. Get a little sweat on, clear your head, get a shower, then watch TV and go to sleep.

It's the perfect rhythm.

---

15:00 – Closing Reflection

So after spending so much time doing something and tracking it, I've realized that eventually it's not really a habit anymore.

By not tracking it, it takes away the unhealthy obsession.

And now it just becomes part of the rhythm of your life and part of who you are.

That's really the shift I've noticed — when tracking and systems move from being helpful tools into something deeper.

I still bite my nails though. I haven't solved that one.

But I'd love to know if other people deal with this too.

Do you ever become a little obsessed and go a little too far?

Or are you trying to add something to your life — journaling, devotions, meal tracking, workouts, meditation, breathing, anything like that — and it's not sticking?

Maybe it's not sticking because you're not tracking it.
Or maybe you've done it for so long now that it's just part of your life.

I'd love to know how other people deal with trying to add habits to their life.

How do you try to change your lifestyle?

Or are you forced to change it?

Leave some comments.

Thanks for watching.

00:00 - Opening

Hey, welcome to Slow Builds.

Earlier I talked about how productivity systems often fall apart after a few months.

And it got me thinking about systems in general.

I think I finally understand why.

It has less to do with the system itself and more to do with human behavior.

And weirdly, the thing that made that click for me was our grocery list.

00:35 - The Analog System

For years we had a grocery list stuck to the fridge.

Just a piece of paper anyone could write on.

It was visible.
It was always in the same place.
It was simple.

And honestly, it did work.

Mostly it worked because I was the one getting most of the groceries.

At that point it was just me and my wife.

But now there are four of us.
Any one of us could go get groceries.
Any one of us could add something to the list.

And once that changed, the system did not work the same way anymore.

Like most systems, it worked... for a while.

01:20 - When The Friction Starts

Then the cracks started showing up.

Someone would already be at the store and someone else would go to add something to the list.
Now the list is not with the person at the store.

So you call or text.

Or someone realizes we are out of something right after you leave.

Same thing, another call or text.

Sometimes the paper just disappears.

Maybe it fell off the fridge.
Maybe it got moved.

None of this is a big deal.

But it is friction, and it starts to build.

02:05 - When The System Stops Working

The worst one is when you get to the store and realize the list is not with you.

Or someone calls because something was missed.

But the real worst one is when you come home and realize someone forgot to add something, or you missed something on the list.

And then you have to go back to the store.

After a while there is so much calling, checking, and missing things that people stop trusting the system.

At that point the system is not helping anyone.

You just go to the store and call home and ask what we need.

02:55 - The Usual Fix: Tools

When systems start failing, most people reach for better tools.

Better apps.
Smarter devices.
Automation.

You see this all the time at work, especially in tech.

There is always another tool you can buy or subscribe to.
Another platform that promises to fix everything.

I have been at too many companies where this happens.

Everyone convinces themselves this new tool will fix all the problems.

Sometimes the system quietly gets abandoned.

One or two people keep using it, but everyone else stops.

Updates stop happening.
Check-ins stop happening.

And the one person still using it starts sending emails asking people to update the system.

When the truth is everyone could have just said the same thing in the meeting.

04:00 - When Systems Become Forced

Sometimes it is worse than abandonment.

Sometimes people keep paying for the tool even though no one is using it.

And sometimes leadership forces everyone to keep using it.

Not because it works, but because they paid for it.

They invested time setting it up.

So now everyone has to follow the process whether it makes sense or not.

But tools only help if you actually understand the real problem first.

You have to understand the friction and the pain points before choosing the solution.

04:45 - What Was Actually Broken

Eventually I realized something about our grocery list.

The problem was not the list.

The list itself is actually the perfect solution.

Write items down.
Check them off.

You cannot really improve on that.

The problem was the process around it.

There were too many little rules.

Add things before someone leaves the house.
Make sure the list stays in the same place.
Remember to check it when you are at the store.

And the more people involved, the harder that becomes.

These systems only work if everyone follows the process.

The moment someone decides to go get groceries suddenly, the whole system breaks.

So the real problem was not paper.

It was access at the moment you needed it.

05:50 - Trying Digital

Once that clicked, the solution seemed obvious.

Make the list digital.
Share it.
Access it from anywhere.

But even that did not fully solve it.

And honestly, I was not about to start paying a subscription to solve a problem people have had since grocery stores existed.

So I started with the simplest options.

First I tried a shared Google document or spreadsheet.

Then we tried Apple Notes with a shared checklist.

But those still had friction.

People had to have their phones.
They had to open the note.
Type something in.
Clear items out afterward.

Sometimes people were not logged in.

Sometimes the list got messy.

It worked... but it still felt like work.

06:55 - The Unexpected Solution

Then one day the obvious solution appeared.

I was in the kitchen and used Alexa to announce dinner.

And it clicked.

We already had Alexa everywhere.

In the kitchen.
Living room.
Cars.
Phones.

We use it for announcements, lights, reminders, music, everything.

So I tried something simple.

"Alexa, add bananas to the shopping list."

And it worked.

Now anyone in the house can add items just by saying it out loud.

Kids downstairs can add something.
Someone cooking can add something.
Someone remembering something in the car can add something.

No phones.
No typing.

Just say it.

The system stayed the same.

But the friction disappeared.

08:05 - Reflection

I notice this pattern everywhere now.

Systems rarely fail in dramatic ways.

They fail in small, ordinary moments.

And most of the time it is not the idea that fails.

It is human behavior.

Nobody wants to add more work to their day.

When a system adds extra steps or forces people to change how they already do things, it slowly stops getting used.

New systems usually only succeed in two situations.

Either people need them badly enough that they are willing to completely change their behavior.

Or the system fits so naturally into what people already do that it barely feels like a change.

The Alexa solution worked because it did not change behavior.

It fit into behavior that already existed.

09:10 - Think Digital, Act Analog

Years ago I read a line in a book by Guy Kawasaki that stuck with me.

Think digital. Act analog.

The more systems I see fail, the more that line makes sense.

It is also why when I build something new, I start extremely simple.

Sometimes with paper.
Sometimes with spreadsheets.
Sometimes just a rough process.

Not because those tools are better.

But because they help reveal patterns.

You start seeing the real needs.
The real friction points.
Where systems actually break.

And once those things become clear, then it makes sense to build something better.

10:00 - Closing

So I am curious.

What systems do you use that actually remove friction and make life easier?

Let me know.

I am also planning to do a few videos about some small tools I am building for myself.

Most of them are simple things that help remove pain points in my own workflow and daily life.

And I am starting to think some of them might help other people too.

Thanks for watching.

Opening (00:00)

Hey, welcome to Slow Builds.

So I've been coding for a long time and most of my career has been spent deep in code, building, debugging, refactoring.

The flow state where you deep dive and disappear into a problem and when you finally resurface a few hours later, sometimes a few days later, you got something working and you're proud of.

And lately I've been more tired than usual.

Not burnt out.
Not overwhelmed.

I'm just very... I feel fatigued. I feel tired.

And if I'm being honest, AI is part of it.
And maybe even the cause of it actually.

I'm pretty sure.

Now I do feel that it's the major part and piece to why I'm feeling so fatigued all the time now.

---

When AI Feels Like Leverage (01:10)

At my job I work on a code base and I know it very well.

The parts that I interact with and build on I'm very familiar with.

And in that environment AI is very amazing.

If I let it build something inside a system I've lived in for years, I can review it quickly.

I know the patterns.
I know the edge cases.
I know what normal looks like in that code base.

And I can quickly see if something doesn't fit.

So at work and in that code base I can let it help me with things like:

• building documentation
• logging issues
• updating comments
• generating test cases
• creating new methods
• helpers
• small things

Sometimes big.

I can give it a full page and say refactor this or I need to add a new method that does this.

And I feel comfortable because I can quickly look at what it did, compare the differences, and I can point out if it went off the rails a little bit.

And to me that's full leverage.

That's taking a new tool and making my life better and more efficient.

---

When AI Changes the Role (02:40)

But when I'm building something new...

When I need to put a new integration into work code...

When I need to build a brand new tool inside of our system...

Or integrate something completely new...

Or the biggest part - personal projects.

When I'm starting from scratch it's a whole different ballgame.

AI is not just writing the code.

It's making decisions.

Sure, I give it an idea.
I give it some guidelines.
I open the door.

But I don't always know the mental map yet.

I don't always exactly know what the end result is going to be or what it should look like.

But by letting AI start working on it, it kind of assumes what the end is without me actually telling it.

So instead of just building, I'm reviewing a lot of assumptions.

I'm double checking a lot of edge cases.

Retesting everything over and over.

Comparing different approaches.

Comparing different branches of code just to see what differences there are.

Making sure nothing slips in.

No side effects.
No legacy code affected.
Everything backwards compatible.

So I'm less in a flow.

I'm more in supervision mode.

I've become a manager.

I'm not a coder.

---

The Verification Loop (04:15)

When I write something myself, I trust the reasoning behind it because I've walked through it in my head.

But with AI, even if it looks right, there's always this little nagging voice:

Did it miss something?

Did it break something?

So I review.

Then I test.

Then I'm rereading.

Then I'm comparing it to another approach.

So it becomes:

Generate -> doubt -> verify -> adjust -> verify again.

Rinse and repeat.

And that loop is tiring.

AI speeds up output.

Code comes quickly.

But pushing the code - deploying the code - comes slower because there's a lot of review in the middle.

And that review process is tiring.

Now I will say it makes the code better.

And it makes me better at spotting things.

But it's still a change in mindset.

And that change is where the fatigue is coming from.

---

The Constant Shifting (05:50)

There's another layer to this fatigue.

Every time I feel like I'm using AI right...

I feel like I finally have a workflow...

I read something online.

Or I talk to a colleague.

Or I watch a YouTube video.

And suddenly someone is using a completely different workflow.

A new tool drops.

A new model replaces something.

A better prompt strategy exists.

People are shipping systems faster.

Making money faster.

Getting traction faster.

And suddenly it makes you feel like everything you've been doing is wrong.

In my case I start considering scrapping everything.

Relearning everything.

Re-architecting everything.

Going deep into research mode.

Trying to figure out how to switch my process.

And this literally just happened to me this week.

I lost two days.

A lot of late nights.

And I scrapped a bunch of work.

All because another approach looked better.

And with AI right now it feels like the ground is constantly shifting.

It creates this constant low-level feeling of being left behind.

Even when I'm objectively getting more done.

---

Doing Something Is Better Than Nothing (08:10)

One motto I've always had in life is:

Doing something is better than doing nothing.

If you're not moving, you're dying.

Whether that's health.
Learning.
Or building.

And with AI sometimes the movement itself keeps changing direction.

But even if you're not doing it the best way...

You're still doing it.

You're still learning.

You're still building.

You're still part of this new shift.

And that matters.

---

The Energy Shift (09:20)

What's strange is...

More is getting done.

But I feel more drained doing it.

I used to get tired from building.

That was like a physical tired.

Like working out.

Now I'm tired from managing.

Reviewing.

Double checking.

Supervising.

It's a mental drain.

Sometimes it even feels like nothing got done.

Because I'm not the one writing the code.

It feels like there's this black box.

And I'm just poking holes into it to inspect things.

I'm less immersed in the code.

And much more in review mode.

And reviewing is exhausting.

---

The Pressure of Infinite Work (10:50)

I used to open my editor excited to knock out a bug or build a feature.

Now sometimes I hit a wall of tired before I even start.

And there's this background pressure:

"I should get back to it."

Even when I'm watching a basketball game.

Or going for a walk.

It feels like I should be working.

Because the work feels infinite.

There's always another refinement.

Another improvement.

Another optimization.

Another better way.

And it never ends.

---

Where I'm Landing (12:10)

I'm definitely not anti-AI.

If anything I'm a massive cheerleader for it.

I want to use it in every part of my life.

I use it every day.

Research.

Prototyping.

Organizing thoughts.

Summaries.

Analysis.

It genuinely helps me.

But I think I'm still rebuilding my energy system around it.

My role is changing.

From developer...

to something closer to a project manager.

And that's not what I trained to be.

---

Finding a Stable Path (13:20)

I don't need the most optimized workflow.

I need a stable one.

I don't need every new tool.

I don't need the flashy new way of doing everything.

I just need to pick a lane...

Stay with it...

And build confidence.

Because AI fatigue isn't about the tool.

It's about the role changing.

The environment changing.

The speed of everything changing.

---

Closing Thought (14:30)

So I'm still here.

Still adjusting.

Trying to take it one tool at a time.

Trying to stay involved in the code.

Trying to work with AI instead of just managing it.

And honestly...

I'm still figuring it out.

So if you're feeling AI fatigue too...

That might actually be a good sign.

It probably means you're in it.

You're learning it.

You're experimenting with it.

And that's better than running away from it.

Thanks for watching.