Just because something is hard doesn’t mean it is important.

In school we learned to take notes we could depend on for studying for exams. In best of worlds they were comprehensive, capturing key facts and concepts that would be tested later. In worst of worlds they was just a indication on which page number in the books that you should read.

In meetings we learned to take notes for what was being said and what was being decided upon. The focus is on action items, ownership and deadlines.

AI note taking and transcripts are changing meeting notes into something more like school notes. “You actually said this, there is a record of it.” This brings accountability but loses something important.

What’s missing in these perfect transcripts is the context and human feeling around the meetings. The energy in the room when an idea was proposed. The hesitation before someone agreed. The enthusiasm that can’t be captured in words alone.

Different contexts require different note-taking strategies. The key is recognizing what each approach captures and what it leaves out.

When listening to books, podcasts or seminars, the most valuable notes aren’t comprehensive transcripts. They’re the parts that hit you with a “gut punch” or trigger a “that reminds me of” moment.

Capturing everything misses the point entirely. What matters is recording your unique reaction to ideas. How they connect to your experiences or challenge your thinking.

The real value in personal notes is selective attention. This human filter is what turns random information into gold nuggets.

Your notes should reflect your thinking, not just what you heard. They’re a conversation between you and the content, capturing the sparks that light up your mind.

The magic is connecting the dots, those sparks when two oddly shaped pieces of information somehow connected in your brain and created something truly unique that only you could come up with. But that magic cannot happen when you store everything and try to remember everything to be able to connect everything.

The most valuable skills might be those AI can’t copy because they seem “useless” today.

Take time to learn something with no clear payoff, it could become your advantage later.

What looks pointless now might matter tomorrow. Just like alchemy experiments led to chemistry.

The skills hardest to justify on a resume are often what separate human brilliance from machine efficiency.

Think complex systems thinking, strategic procrastination, narrative weaving or deep listening without an agenda.

Socrates worried writing would destroy memory.

Instead, externalizing memory created space for more complex thinking.

How can AI free mental bandwidth for high-order thinking and curiosity, if we decide not to doom scroll?

Why is goals bound to calendars that someone invented centuries ago?

Friday in April can be just as powerful as January 1st. The calendar doesn’t create commitment - your personal readiness does.

Your todo list isn’t for storing everything you imagine. You’ll never complete that endless list.

Great ideas will never leave you, similar to how bugs never do.

Our backlogs fill with old ideas and urgencies that never resurface, clogging our physical and digital spaces. We already have enough to do. Store ideas separate from todos.

Store personal ideas in a dedicated space, like memories in a box. Keep your workspace tidy.

When ideating, open that idea box and explore freely.

Remove backlog tickets you haven’t touched in 3 months. Bring them back only when planning or seeking inspiration, but don’t let them dictate your path.

The path you walked shapes the rules you’re willing to follow.

Traditional paths teach us to follow common and sometimes good steps. Non-traditional paths teach us to view those steps differently.

When I was seventeen, I broke my first computer. Twice.

The first time, I sheepishly sent it for repair. The second time, shame drove me to figure it out myself. Creating a boot floppy disk that could access the CD-ROM to reinstall Windows. I think that moment changed everything for me.

I learned three truths that possibly shaped my career:

• Breaking things isn’t fatal
• The path forward often runs through mistakes
• Self-reliance builds deeper understanding than following instructions

In 1999, I entered the tech arena without formal education. There were no YouTube tutorials or Stack Overflow. Learning meant tinkering with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS until something worked.

This ‘constructive breaking’ mindset has carried me through multiple roles spanning development, management, and leadership. Without the identity anchor of formal credentials, I’ve never felt trapped in one specialty.

As generative AI increasingly writes code through simple natural language prompts, with tools like Lovable, Bolt, and Replit that can build entire websites and SaaS products, the most valuable skill won’t be expertise in syntax or current frameworks. It will be the courage to break things, the resilience to fix them, and the adaptability to understand what actually solves the problem at hand.

What we fear in the AI era isn’t just disappearing entry-level coding jobs, but the learning path they represent. If AI handles the ‘easy’ parts, how will developers grow?

The answer might be counterintuitive: we need more people willing to break AI’s output, question its solutions, and develop through deliberate experimentation. The junior role evolves from writing basic code to breaking sophisticated systems, creating a new and equally valuable learning path.

The future belongs to constructive breakers.

It’s very easy connecting dots looking backwards. What made you successful and in which order.

Connecting the dots going forward is what we call strategy.

What often is lacking in strategy is the serendipity and leeway to pivot.

Make room for tactics to alter the destination. The best strategies evolve with new information.