Day 100: a note to myself

Day 100, kept for myself

I don’t know when it started, but writing whole paragraphs on my own has become hard. Many days ago I tried slipping in a piece in my own words; halfway through I found it pieced together and painfully halting, and gave up.

AI keeps getting better. It can increasingly smooth over how disjointed, incomplete, illogical and stumbling my expression is, and more and more often it writes this “passable” content for me. Even though it really is still full of AI flavor, it seems able to keep up appearances.

So as this technology spreads, what it “brings” and what it “takes away” may be questions best left more to time.

And what can time answer?

A hundred days ago I started this “framework” without thinking much about how these 100 posts would get done. I thought lots of unknown changes were about to happen, and walked slowly forward with some hope. Now I’ve reached the first waystation, and the interim review is: nothing much has changed.

- The products I’ve built went from 1 to 4, but the users stayed below 1, a.k.a. me

- The AI PM roles I applied to went from 0 to 51, and the screening calls I landed were fewer than few

- (what else…) Hmm, I think I’ve gained more from learning by sharing, but it leans toward gradual insight rather than sudden enlightenment. I need to remind myself to learn the two most precious things in the world: patience and hope

The real world’s answers may not be that tidy; a question with several options doesn’t necessarily have one standard answer. I can only tell myself to keep thinking as I go, and just be honest with myself.

If I had to rank the difficulty along the road of this transition, the me at this stage might rank it:

mindset > strategy > execution

The qualities that matter in building AI products, or building products with AI:

finding a problem worth solving > proposing an elegant solution > stable / usable / high-quality output

What recording these 100 days has given me:

- a framework for the everyday

- a push, through writing things down, to think a little further

It will continue. My wishes and reminders for the me that comes next:

- go a bit slower, think more, don’t use the thrill of blind building to escape the questions really worth thinking about and solving

- many things aren’t cool, but may matter more

- while connecting better with all kinds of new technology, be sure to remind yourself that the most important connection in the world is the one with yourself

- (what else…) people matter more than AI; understand what technology can and can’t do; tell apart the “purpose” of doing something from the “means / process of doing it”

- Enjoy~