It's ok to Cheat (AI examples included)

Hey, welcome to Slow Builds.

I think we've been taught that if something feels easy, it doesn't count.

And then if you use help, it just means you're cheating.

I don't think that's true anymore.

I cheat all the time.

Not on standards or quality, never on my wife, and definitely never on taxes.

Only on things that cause friction.

Things that slow me down, and almost always on the boring stuff.

Because nobody wants to do that. One place I cheat quite a bit, intentionally and unintentionally in a lot of ways, would be fitness and nutrition.

It's done in a way to keep me motivated, to not burn me out, not to make it feel like a burden all the time.

So one example would be like if you go to the gym, you're going to do your three sets of press and you want to hit 10 to 12 reps per set, but you hit eight and feel like, "I'm done."

You know what? You're there. That's the big win right there. The fact you showed up. You're there and you had a goal. You might not have hit it. That's fine.

Another one is the treadmill. I run on treadmill a lot, and I run outdoors a lot.

But I find that the treadmill and the Apple Watch don't line up all the time.

So it feels like there's kind of a cheat where I can run a little faster, go a little longer when I'm indoors on the treadmill if I only go off the watch.

And I'm fine with that.

Because then when I go outdoors, what happens is it is GPS. It is true. There's no lying on that one.

And when I see that my numbers outdoors are not hitting the same as the treadmill, I feel like, "What's wrong?"

Like, I'm faster than this, so I speed up and I do my best to hit those numbers.

So it's sort of like a little motivational cheat code in that sense.

And same with calorie counting. I've always counted my calories.

Calories in, calories out. That's it.

If you don't care about having a muscular body and you just want to lose weight, it's just about counting your calories.

Don't eat those bags of chips or that double scoop of ice cream. Eat a salad without extra dressing and extra cheese.

Have healthy options. Have your chicken breast with rice and some broccoli, and you're good to go.

Sauce is what kills you.

But anyway, what I mean is you track it, and I work out quite a bit, so I know what everything kind of is.

But I also know that not everything is tracked for what I burn.

If you take the stairs instead of taking the elevator, or use the bathroom downstairs so you take extra steps, or you shovel instead of letting the plow do all of it, that's all movement.

And I find what happens in that situation is I'm allowed to have that croissant or that Polar Bear ice cream.

Sure, on paper it looks like I didn't burn as many as I'm taking in, but there's a little bit of a cheat there and I reward myself with that.

I don't fret about it because I've been through it and I know it.

Another place that cheating really comes into play and makes life easier is special moments.

For gifts and stuff like that, especially Christmas, Valentine's, anniversaries, photo books.

We all have millions of photos. Everything is photographed and everything is backed up in the cloud.

Instead of wasting time trying to figure out the perfect gift that I think is perfect, I throw together a photo book.

Pick a year. If you went on a trip that year, usually that's what I do.

I'll take all the pictures from the trip and make a specific Bahamas book or New York trip book or anything like that that brings it all back and floods the memories.

In the end, people like those gifts the most. They're simple, but more meaningful.

And when we have so many pictures, I just print them all.

Another hack I do with that is I use Instagram.

When we do go on a trip, I post everything to Instagram, and that becomes my photo album that I can go off of, plus all the other ones.

We usually have boxes and envelopes full of pictures just sitting around.

Any other day, it gives us something to do to go look at those pictures.

Another one is handmade cards.

I know that feels cheap to the person making it, like school-grade handmade Valentine's or handmade Christmas cards.

But again, people love those the most.

And this is where AI fits into the picture and where we start moving into useful places we can use AI.

One example: two years ago, it was our 25th anniversary.

As kids, we called ourselves Pooh and Roo.

I gave AI a prompt. I said, "How would Roo ask Pooh, and what would Pooh say when asked how long 25 years is?"

Boom, it came out with the perfect response, like it came right out of Pooh's mouth.

Then I needed an image for this because it was too good.

I asked, "Can you draw an image of Roo and Pooh in the Hundred Acre Wood watching the sunset?"

Awesome.

Then you use Canva or Staples, throw it together, and in less than 24 hours you've got a printed card.

You made it yourself, you tweaked it, but you did use AI.

So it's a cheat, but it's the best kind of cheat in my mind, because those are the ones that stick around a long time.

Those are cherished a little more than going down to the grocery store or Hallmark and picking something someone else did.

Sure, AI wrote text for me, but it was my inspiration. It was our history. I picked what went there.

I was able to create it myself.

And that's the way I like it.

I've done examples before where I use AI on a daily basis, and it's sort of like a cheat too.

Before I send texts, if I feel emotional or reactive, emails, text, or even confronting someone, I'll put it in AI.

I'll give it context about the situation and say, "This is what came back, and this is what I'm thinking about responding with."

It helps me slow down and reframe it.

Most times it's spot-on, or it'll ask me: Do you want to be confrontive? Do you want to resolve this or make it worse? What is your end goal?

It helps me revisit what I would say and keeps me out of bad situations.

So it's cheating in a way. It gives me nudges in the right direction.

Another place is recipes.

I use AI for recipes all the time.

I don't like going to the grocery store and then realizing I don't have one expensive ingredient I only need once.

So I use AI for substitutions.

I have this, I want to make this, what goes together, what kind of sauce goes on it, what's good for quick dressings.

I even started tagging recipes in an ongoing ChatGPT project called Food.

It condenses them, puts them together, knows what we like, and gives me quick ideas.

Then I can ask, "I have this in the project, what can I make from the recipes we have?"

And like I mentioned before, and I'll do a deep dive video in the next few, this channel itself is heavily supported by AI.

AI helps with script ideas, ordering, thumbnails, descriptions, comments, and my website workflow.

I say that, but I've learned pure AI scripts don't work best for me because I feel like a robot.

So I get a script and ad-lib off it to make it more me.

AI handles the structure, which takes pressure off.

I don't edit these videos much, and I'm pretty bad at editing.

When we go deeper on cheating, one thing I notice is I "cheat" on one AI with another.

I'll use ChatGPT, then Grok, then Claude, depending on the task.

For recent events, I find Grok often has better current context.

I use ChatGPT for most day-to-day thinking and drafting.

I use Claude for larger code and document tasks that need deeper processing.

Sometimes I use ChatGPT to help generate prompts I then give to Claude.

That's another way I cheat.

As a developer, another cheat is repetitive code.

If I need to check whether an object has name, and whether it's nil, blank, empty, etc., I don't always want to rewrite that pattern.

I'll use Copilot or Codex to scaffold it fast.

That's not breaking standards. That's removing repetition.

Then I ask: should this become a reusable method?

Maybe it already exists in our system.

Claude helps me find similar methods across a large codebase, evaluate whether one can be extended, and avoid breaking other things.

That happens super fast.

Then we have a robust method everybody can use.

Sure, AI helped write it, but it was still my idea and judgment.

Same thing with tests.

AI writes test drafts for me.

I still run them, verify them, and make sure everything passes.

At work, I also use AI for Jira work.

We have Claude connected to Confluence, Jira, code, and Slack.

I can brain-dump messy notes and have it produce clearer tickets and docs that architects, designers, and PMs can review.

That helps me focus on actual implementation.

Right now I'm also testing a personal setup with OpenClaude and agents.

Agents for docs, tests, git, implementation updates, and status reporting.

They run multiple times a day on cron jobs and send Telegram or email updates: what's done, what's blocked, what needs review.

Then I focus on features.

I prompt for a feature idea, we prioritize it, break it into sprints, and agents pick up queued work.

I still approve code, review tests, and decide what ships.

But repetitive orchestration is automated.

That's the ultimate cheat, and I'm excited about it.

So I guess in the end, what I'm saying is: yes, I cheat.

And cheating is okay in this context.

As long as it's not illegal, not harming relationships, and not lowering standards.

I don't want AI to replace my thinking.

I still want authenticity.

I want it to be me.

I just want to outsource the busy work, remove repetition, and reduce friction.

I don't want lower quality in the work, the product, the meal, or the gift.

I want less unnecessary effort around the things that matter.

If something saves me time and helps me stay consistent while I focus on what actually matters, I'm okay with that.

To me that's not cheating. That's being smarter.

I'm not trying to win by cutting corners.

I'm trying to stay in the game long enough to compound.

Thanks for sticking around. Hopefully you enjoy this video.