Day 69: Foundations

Observations

This post arrives the day after. I’m off on my writing schedule again, but so be it. I was up late last night working on multiple technical proposals and prod specs for work. I find late nights and early mornings to be my most productive periods of time, but it’s hard to manage when most people have set working hours between 8:00AM - 6:00PM.

A running observation that I’ve seen now time and again is that when fundamentals are missing, anything that builds on top or extends or requires as a prerequisite will struggle to grow and scale. There’s a reason that frameworks and best practices exist, and I’m starting to appreciate that more and more, not just at work, but in my personal life too. The challenging part is not the implementation, but it’s convincing others that it’s worth investing time and effort to establish and grow those fundamentals (however they may be defined).

That leads me to my next observation, which is that the most valuable skill anyone can ever develop is learning how to work others and how to operate in a team. I catch myself thinking all the time, “I can probably just do it faster on my own.” The truth is: I have no idea if I can do it faster on my own, and I challenge myself to think more deeply about the problem at hand that needs to be solved, because more often than not, I’m missing context or the underlying complexity at face value. People can be force multipliers. I fundamentally challenge the assumption that throwing more people on a problem leads to a faster solution. It’s key to understand not only individual personas, strengths, and expertise, but also to understand the broader dynamics of how individual capabilities complement one another. I also believe that when the problem is interesting and compelling enough, people will rise up to the challenge, no matter the complexity. I observe more and more how important it is to build and develop a team’s identity and ethos.

Generally Generative

Closing my work laptop and opening my work laptop, I was so happy when I finally got access to Khanmigo from Khan Academy. I’ve barely played around with it, but so far, it’s been a lot of fun, and I’m really impressed. I had a great conversation with Odysseus last night.

I also started combing through an article published by Marc Andreessen at a16z. At this point, whenever he publishes something, I don’t ask questions and I just read. I think he offers a very sobering and non-alarmist/pragmatic view on the future of AI and its ramifications for economic, societal, and cultural development. I’m not done yet, but I can already recommend it.

Frieden und Liebe ❤️ (translation: peace and love)