I’ve spent years thinking weight loss was complicated. Needed the right program. The right workout plan.

We overcomplicate because simple feels wrong. Like we’re missing something. Like the real solution must be more sophisticated.

I tried to be clever last month. Built a tool that used cheaper LLMs for tool use. Tool use is when you let the chat bots know what kind of features they have access to like data that live on your server.

Reasoning was solid. Cause when tool use first came out it was slow. Really slow. One way to solve that is to use a cheaper model to make understand which tools to use.

But that constraint doesn’t exist anymore. Tool use is fast now. Has been for a while.

I built an entire cost and speed optimization for a problem that was already solved.

AI gives you 10x only if you already know how to do 1x.

I can build something in six hours that would have taken months. Not because AI is magic. But because I already know most of the stack.

If I don’t know how things work, AI can’t teach me fast enough to understand what it wrote. I’ll spend my time confused. Debugging things I don’t understand. Building things that don’t fit together.

But when you already know the domain, suddenly you’re flying.

You can’t skip the fundamentals and expect acceleration.

Many creatives use only a small part of what they’re capable of.

Not because they lack skill. Because they’re waiting.

Waiting for someone else to join. Waiting for the right collaborator. Waiting for permission. Waiting for the moment to feel right.

But you have to be the one who does it.

Nobody else will carry your vision the way you will. And while you wait, that fraction stays a fraction.

Someone asked me how to get started with AI. Like ChatGPT.

I’ve been doing this for three years. Almost every day. And I realized I’ve completely forgotten what it’s like to be new.

My answer was clumsy. Just try. Don’t be scared. Use it often. You’ll figure out what works.

True. But not helpful.

When you do something long enough you forget the first steps. You forget what was confusing. You forget the fear of looking stupid.

The curse of experience is forgetting that others don’t have it yet.

Hackday yesterday. Everyone went all in on AI-assisted building. No code reviews. No production concerns. No worrying about edge cases.

Someone built a backup tool using GitHub Actions. Someone rebuilt our dev start engine in React for the terminal. Someone turned an article into a text adventure. I made an agent that helps you build agents.

We went bananas.

And I started wondering. What if this was every day?

The first constraint is trust. Our readers trust that the website works. That the news is there when they need it. If we break things, we break trust. Inside the company too.

So maybe the question isn’t how to remove the burden. Maybe it’s where can we carry less of it. Where can we invent without the weight of keeping everything running.

Production needs responsibility. But invention needs room.

Heard something on the podcast “The Unscheduled CEO” that stuck.

Delusion comes from thinking. Not from doing.

As long as you’re just imagining the game you’ll build. The service you’ll launch. The thing you’ll create someday. You’re delusional.

But the moment you start, you become reasonable.

Not because the idea is better. Because you’re now in contact with reality. You’re getting feedback. You’re adjusting.

A pattern I keep seeing.

People assume things will progress without them. Even when they’re the customer. Even when they’re the biggest stakeholder.

Waiting for the vendor to reach out. Waiting for the project to move. Waiting for someone to ask what they need.

But you’re the one who needs this. You’re the one with skin in the game.

Nobody will push harder than you. If you don’t push at all, nothing happens.

Showed an old friend something yesterday. Pulled out my phone. Changed a feature on a live website while he watched.

Claude Code wrote the code. Made a pull request. I tested it. We shipped it.

All from my pocket. Maybe two minutes.

He went quiet for a second. Then he said: “I just hope my job is around until retirement.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

Three years into leading AI transformation. I know the shortcuts. I see the faster path.

The temptation is real. Just do it yourself. Skip the fumbling. Ship it.

But that’s not transformation. That’s you doing stuff while others watch.

They need to do. They need to struggle a bit. They need to build the muscle.

You can show. You can lead. You can clear obstacles.

You cannot do their reps for them.