I left my airpods in the office, and now I must workout at the gym like this is the 19th century
08.01.2026 15:36
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I left my airpods in the office, and now I must workout at the gym like this is the 19th century
Turns out I was wrong in my assumptions about the water impact of AI usage.
Still, there are significant environmental considerations, but I’d rather operate on accurate data than viral statistics shared through word-of-mouth.
andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-wat...
I've spent weeks writing about recovery systems. Then I got the flu and couldn't work for two days.
I learned the difference between active recovery (great at it) and passive recovery (struggle).
New newsletter: what happens when you can't control the timeline.
“Peak performers aren’t those who successfully juggle the most: they are the ones who refuse to juggle at all”.
We build false certainty from repeated failure. It feels logical, but it's just a limitation of perspective.
Just because you'd exhausted your current knowledge doesn't mean you'd exhausted all possibilities.
The bug you couldn't fix at 6pm that solved in 10 minutes the next morning. The problem that seemed impossible until someone with fresh eyes looked at it.
Think about the last time you gave up on something.
You probably tried everything you could think of. Different approaches, tools, timing. Nothing worked.
So you concluded it was impossible.
But here's the thing: you were confusing your history with reality.
Me, preparing to respond to "any updates?" in Slack.
AI:
→ Analyzing thread context and tone
→ Drafting 7 variations of "no updates"
→ Optimizing punctuation placement
→ Running review for typos
10 minutes later: "No updates on my end, thanks!"
We are living in the future.
The shift from personal limitation to universal truth happens so smoothly that we don't notice.
Next time you hit a wall, try asking: "What would someone else try?" instead of "Why is this impossible?"
Different question, different possibilities.
Spoiler alert: the thing you gave up on probably wasn't actually impossible.
You just ran out of things to try within your current knowledge.
But here's what our brains do: they take "I can't solve this" and quietly transform it into "This can't be solved."
By Friday, you've lost hours to things you can't even remember doing.
Making this invisible work visible changes how you structure team workflows.
Teams measure sprints and story points, but there's a whole category of work that never gets tracked.
The constant small interruptions. The context switching. The mental overhead of keeping track of random loose ends.
If you do the first it's not that you lack ambition, is that the starting point already sets you up for friction.
When you begin with constraints, you optimize within them. When you begin with the ideal outcome, you discover which of those constraints are real and which were assumptions.
When thinking about strategy, some people think: "what can I build with these resources?".
Instead, they should be thinking: "What would this look like if it were perfect?".
After connecting my thousands of notes, book highlights, and outputs to AI, it can read years of knowledge in seconds and help me access patterns in ways I'd never be able to do immediately.
Stop thinking of AI as a creator. Start thinking of it as the engine behind your next brainstorming
So many leaders are using AI wrong. They ask it to write emails and generate reports.
AI's superpower for leaders is not creation, it's consumption.
"It's just 5 minutes" is the most expensive phrase in your workday.
Here's the real math:
→ 5 minutes to understand context
→ 5 minutes to do the thing
→ 5 minutes to communicate back
→ 15 minutes to regain focus
That "5-minute" task just cost you 30 minutes.
Modern tooling compresses the loop: weeks turn into hours. But faster cycles shift the pressure left.
Leadership now means building decision compression systems:
→ Clear priorities
→ Fewer handoffs
→ Fast feedback
→ Room to reflect
It’s not the tools. It’s the scaffolding.
What I'd tell my younger self today
→ Use AI, but stay in control. Don't let it flatten your curiosity or standards.
→ Invest in systems thinking.
→ Cultivate your unique perspective. Let your experience shape your work.
→ Practice good taste.
AI has changed our tools. Craft still sets us apart.
Judgment, taste, and perspective aren’t going out of style. They’re becoming the only advantage.
We are drowning already in SaaS tools built by AI in a haste. Thoughtless code, thoughtless features, thoughtless apps. As they are fast to build, they are fast to decay.
Care, clarity, and craft will stand out more than ever.
Anyone can generate code. Anyone can design. Still, most don’t know what to build, why to build it, or how to make it endure.
The tool is not the result.
I always think about how people laughing at AI shortcomings sound like Letterman in the 90s laughing at the Internet. History has a rhythm.
With AI, good enough is just getting faster. But great software needs care, clarity, and a strong perspective.
Good enough was never good enough, and now it will be even less than that.
thanks, hamish! 🙏
AI has changed how we build software.
But craft, judgment, and perspective still set engineers apart.
I wrote about the shifts I’m seeing — and why the future of engineering is about more than just speed.
Would love to hear how you’re thinking about it.
today it's a 7 espresso shots kind of day
(and I'm not mad about it)
we're here to stay ✨🦋
Just setting up our Bsky 🦋
