The Thursday Commit #2 - What Would You Actually Use?

Heavy utilization of AI is the desired outcome of big techs, and they want you hooked on it.

Something to Think About - What Would You Actually Use?

This week I’ve been doing some research on how to improve my newsletter, and one recommendation I’ve consistently come across is offering new subscribers a free resource, such as a template, checklist, PDF, or e-book.

Some of the sources I found reported that their newsletter grew by 22% after adding a free template. One example I found. I think adding a resource like this could be useful for both you and me.

So, I’ve been thinking about creating something for my subscribers. But before I spend time making something that nobody wants, I’d like to know: what kind of free resource would you actually find useful?

Feel free to explain your choice in the comments, so I can make the most useful resource possible. I’ll send it to all existing subscribers once I finish it.

Something to Read

On AI coding and its discontents. AI coding has become increasingly common in software companies, with AI companies touting it as a way to improve speed and efficiency.

However, many are starting to see the downsides of relying on it too heavily. AI models can introduce hard-to-spot bugs into production environments, junior developers can become overly reliant on AI and fail to develop the skills needed to build complex systems, and the cost of using frontier models can become prohibitively expensive.

I think this is an interesting counterpoint to the usual narrative around AI coding. If AI is supposed to make us more productive, what happens when we become so reliant on it that we lose the ability to do the work ourselves? And what about the vulnerabilities that the AI introduces?

Something to Watch

I was burned out. So I built a system to fix it. Ryder talks about his process for staying inspired and avoiding creative burnout. His process basically has three steps:

1- Take your time consuming the media you bought or saved. Hoarding information is of no use if you don’t have time to actually consume it. Time-block a specific period each day and use it to read or consume the information you’ve captured. Remember that you can’t make time for things, you must take your existing time to consume it.

2- Have a wide funnel, but strongly filter what you consume. What inspires you will burn you out a lot slower than something that doesn’t. Focus your attention on what inspires you.

3- Consume things actively. Make annotations, ask yourself questions about what you’re seeing, and make connections with other things you’ve consumed. Ryder focuses on physical books and annotating in the margins, but I think this could be very useful for digital media as well. This is kind of what I’m currently doing with YouTube videos, blog posts, and newsletters.

That’s this week’s commit.