Getting Over AI Shame

Note: I used AI to help organize my thoughts and draft this post, which I then heavily edited.

Both AI skeptics and AI overhypers are wrong, and equally dangerous to productivity.

The skeptics who insist on abstaining from AI tools because they think it’s all hype without real value are just as dangerous as the people claiming AI will replace all our jobs this year. Neither extreme reflects reality. AI tools are powerful and can dramatically accelerate your work, but they are tools nonetheless.

And yet, even though most of us have started embracing these tools and know they work, there's this weird stigma that's emerged around actually talking about using them.

The Shame

There's this unspoken shame I’ve both felt and observed about sharing your AI usage openly. When an agentic coding tool handles 95% of the implementation for you, there's a nagging voice that whispers, "This is cheating." When you ask Claude to help draft a tricky message, the mind goes: if people know I do this, will they think I'm lazy? Replaceable?

This is backwards.

When you tell your manager or peers that you're using AI tools extensively, what they should hear is: "I'm finding ways to move faster than ever before." Not: "I'm cutting corners" or "my skills are declining."

The real unlock happens when we collectively embrace openness about our AI workflows. When people start sharing:

• Which prompts and skills worked for complex workflows
• How they structured agent conversations to get better results
• Where the tools fall short, and human judgment is essential

everyone benefits, and velocity compounds across the team.

My Own Journey Past the Shame

As an engineering leader, I really felt this tension. For the longest time, I was hesitant to communicate how extensively I was using AI tools, even as I desperately wanted my team to experiment with them. I could see the value these tools provided when used thoughtfully, but I worried about the optics.

The contradiction was exhausting: wanting others to get excited about the tools while being shy about my own usage. So I’ve decided to get over it.

My hypothesis is that being open creates permission for others. When engineers see their manager is "all in" on agentic workflows, they feel comfortable being all in too. They start sharing their own discoveries and get inspired by workflows they hadn't considered.

Overcome the Shame

If you're in a group where people are skeptical about AI tools, or where people use them quietly but never talk about them openly, you have an opportunity. Break that pattern and be the one who demonstrates that openness about AI usage is not just acceptable, but valuable.

Share your workflows, talk about what works and what doesn't, and discuss the tools you're using and how they are helpful.

The upside is enormous: you'll inspire others to experiment, you'll learn from their discoveries, and collectively you'll all move faster than you ever could in isolation.

Getting over AI shame isn't just about personal liberation, it's also about benefiting everyone around you.

One Second Moments

I've been recording one second moments and combining them into a montage at the end of each year for a few years now. It started with a one-second-a-day project, but after the first year, an obvious issue emerged: there are many days when I have nothing interesting to show, and others when I have multiple things worth recording. What resulted was many shots of my dog being cute on boring days and missed moments on interesting days.

The adjustment I made to solve this issue was to set the recording cadence to one second whenever something interesting happened. This made the montages so much better and was a more accurate reflection of my year. I find these shots much more valuable than still images because they capture so much, even in a short clip. You hear the sounds, see the movement of people, and generally capture a lot more of the moment's atmosphere. The montage that comes out of it is also so much fun to digest when you want to reminisce about a particular year.

The only con of doing this is that I dread every January when I have to edit the clips together. I've used various video editors, both on the computer and phone. But nothing out there is really made for quick editing and stitching of short clips. But in today's world, a problem like this can be solved with the help of AI. So this year, I decided to spend a week vibe-coding an iOS app for it. It's called Moments and is purposefully designed for exactly what I need.

I started off wanting to create a React Native app so anyone could use it, regardless of the phone they have. But I quickly ran into an issue: there isn't a working package out there that can stitch videos together. Luckily, one of the best parts about vibe-coding is that I was able to quickly and easily identify this hurdle and abandon the React Native repo in favor of a native iOS Swift approach. The Apple ecosystem exposed tools that worked very well for my video editing needs, so I was back up and running after the pivot.

One mistake I made with the app was timing. I was really hoping to release it before the New Year to catch any interest from people wanting to start this one-second-video habit, but Apple had other plans. I submitted my app on December 28 and didn't get anything published until January 5. Lesson learned: Apple takes the holidays off for App Store submissions.

Regardless of whether you use my app or find another way to edit, I'm confident that adding one second moments to your life will be a great addition. It doesn't take long day to day, and you're left with something so valuable. I can't wait to show my children and grandchildren these montages of what my life was like in my 20s and 30s.

Advent of Writing Reflection

I’ve finished my Advent of Writing challenge, which required me to write every day between December 1st and Dec 24th. This was the first challenge I did as part of my Hobby Depth project. In total, I wrote 16 blog posts covering topics such as life, personal experiences, and management.

Here’s a list of all the posts that were made:

• Hobby Depth
• Top Down vs Bottom Up Leadership
• Trust Your Past Self
• Small Perks, Big Benefits
• Thoughts on The Remains of the Day
• Organizing My First Running Event
• The Awe We Stop Noticing
• Why Not Romanticize Life
• Use Travel Guide Books
• Service Attitude
• Do Performance Reviews
• The Do-Say Ratio
• My First Marathon (Fuji Marathon)
• Everyone Should Have a Blog
• Don't Speed Up Content
• Free Will

I started the challenge by writing and posting every day. This was great at first because it created strong momentum. But I soon felt that some posts didn’t go as deep as they needed to. So at the tail end of the challenge, I focused on writing every day instead of posting, which felt better. As a result, I could see myself going back and supplementing some of the posts or writing revised versions.

I was particularly happy with how the challenge went because for most of it I was traveling, which added an extra layer of discipline. In addition, I came away with a few positive points:

• Ideas that have been stuck in my head for a while are finally written down
• I’ve strengthened the muscle to get past the mental barrier of starting blog posts
• I’m now in a rhythm of regularly writing

So this project was a success! I will continue to write regularly, but I don’t feel the need to extend this challenge, and I am eager to move on to the next thing. Speaking of which, for my next project, I will spend about a week working on an iOS app to help me quickly edit my yearly year-end video montage. This app will be called “Moments” and will be released to the app store. I will make sure to write a blog post about it once it is done.

Part of Advent of Writing

Free Will

Does free will exist? My gut immediately says yes. Surely we, as humans, choose things like being good or bad and being disciplined or lazy. To say we don’t have free will feels like an attack on everything we’ve worked hard to achieve. But an argument I’ve recently heard is that because everything we are determines everything we will do, there is no free will.

To expand, you are born with many traits, which are determined by your genes. Your genes are given to you by your parents, so the lack of choice here is apparent.

But it’s not just your genes that you don’t have control over. As soon as you are born, you are placed in an environment that shapes who you are. Things like being raised rich or poor, belonging to a loving or cold family, and having parents who push you vs. let you find your own path are all included.

So the combination of your genes, environment, and experiences determines what you'll do next. You can’t escape these. And because you are beholden to what makes you, you, there is no free will. This is the basis of what I've come to learn as determinism.

Logically, I don't think I can argue against this. But to me, it's the same as saying everything comes from nature. Even things like plastics, which are far from what you can find in the wild, are from nature because nothing can exist unless its origins are from nature. But to say something is natural in today’s world means something more practical, that it can be found in nature or be created with minimal processing.

In the same vein, I think of free will in a more practical sense. Free will is the ability to do things that you want to do, even if those things are beholden to determinism. The lack of free will is when someone or something prevents you from doing that. In a functioning society, you have free will in some things and none in others. The ratio changes based on the society you are in. As a kid, a lot of your will isn’t free because you follow your parents' rules. So by this definition, humans do have free will depending on their situation.

But this practical definition is less fun, so let’s go back to determinism and examine how it shapes our view of human behavior. With determinism, when someone does something that you disagree with, logically, you cannot get mad because there is no free will. The person acted that way not because they wanted to, but because they had to. There was no other choice.

When people hear something like this, they immediately think about how this mindset will result in a world full of unchecked criminals. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Even if we absolve bad behavior as a lack of free will, we can still take steps to stop and discourage it. What changes is how we look at people who do things we, or society, disagrees with. You start to contextualize why they acted the way they did, which is a powerful way to humanize someone.

Another consequence of determinism is that people separate those with ambition or a strong work ethic from those who are lazy or have low motivation. According to determinism, these things are part of the person and thus cannot be changed with more will. But I firmly believe that the real difference between someone motivated and someone who isn’t boils down to whether they’ve found the right things to spark said motivation. And following that logic, that means we shouldn’t consider individuals doomed by fate if they aren’t the person they want to be. Both the self and others can promote change, which, to me, is a form of free will in a free will-less world.

I’ve only really started to explore this topic, so next I’m going to read Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will by Robert M. Sapolsky to see if it gives me any new insights.

[17&18/24] Advent of Writing

Don’t Speed Up Content

When I was in high school, my least favorite assignments were reading. I remember being assigned the book “As I Lay Dying”, and all I wanted was to get through it as quickly as possible. My teacher was smart enough to read the Sparknotes for the book and design quizzes so it wouldn’t be helpful. I had no choice but to actually read it. But I needed to find a better way. One where I could take in the content, without spending the 30-40 minutes physically reading the book.

My solution was pretty hilarious. With an audio version of the book I found, I would turn off all the lights in my room, lie on my bed, cover my face with a pillow, and play it at 4x speed. Removing all stimulation except for the book’s audio was the only way I could focus on the sped-up content. I was able to “read” the required chapters within 15 minutes.

It got me by at the time, and it makes a great story, but I can’t say that I’m proud of myself for doing it. The truth is, I probably missed out on the books because of this. There’s something about letting things stew, allowing yourself to absorb and reflect while consuming, that can make books special.

But it’s so easy now to rush through content. We often put audiobooks, YouTube videos, and even short-form content at 2x speed. Believe it or not, I knew someone in college who would listen to songs sped up, too. We speed up this content because we don’t have time for it, are trying to maximize consumption, and/or it’s too boring at normal speed. But you get so much less from doing this.

When you get caught in this cycle, it’s hard to adjust back. Eventually, you get to a point where your mind can’t process incoming information anymore, and it just becomes noise. All too often, I’ve done this with educational content, deluding myself into believing I’m being productive because I’m cramming so much into my brain so quickly. It’s exhausting, and it doesn’t work.

The best thing that I’ve found to cure this is to remove the stimulation for a bit. Go on a cleanse. A walk with no phone can help. Then ease back into it without touching the speed dial. If you start to find something boring, it’s better to switch to something else instead of rushing through it.

Just slow down a bit. It’s okay. You might feel like you’re not getting enough, but you really are getting more.

[15&16/24] Advent of Writing

Everyone Should Have a Blog

Selfishly, I love stumbling upon someone’s blog because it gives me a glimpse of who the writer is and what they care most about. This discovery is what makes browsing the internet so fun.

There are also many positives for the writer. First of all, doing any writing, published or not, helps you work through and solidify ideas in your head. I can 100% feel the difference between explaining a raw thought to someone and one I’ve written about. It comes out so much better and clearer if I’ve gone through the process of writing about it. And with this clarity of thought, you also start to develop stronger opinions about what you are writing about. This is important in creating a deeper understanding of what interests you.

Publishing these thoughts online also gives an opportunity for engagement. There’s nothing cooler than someone reaching out because of a blog post you’ve written. Even my posts, which mostly don’t get many views, still regularly result in engagement from both friends and strangers. I’ve even met up in person with someone who read my blog because they reached out!

It’s also great to maintain a record of your thoughts because you get to see how they’ve evolved over the years. My first blog post was in 2020 about Edward Snowden’s book “Permanent Record”. Back then, privacy was the most important cause I was concerned about. Today, I still care about it, but not to the extent I did 6 years ago. But it’s easy to forget who you were without something concrete, like a blog post.

The last thing I’ll mention is the ideas themselves. Blog posts will fall into one of two categories: new ideas or old ideas. The benefits of releasing new ideas to the world are obvious. As a result, sometimes posting about old existing ideas can feel pointless. But there’s real value in reinforcing good ideas, even if it feels like common knowledge to you. Chances are, someone out there will read about it for the first time, and you were the entry point to the good idea. Even this post itself is an example of this. The benefits of maintaining a blog have been written about countless times, I’m sure. But this post might be someone’s trigger to make one, and that’s the whole point.

So make a blog if you don’t have one already! And if you do, write more for it. The benefits for you and the people who read it make it so worth it.

[13&14/24] Advent of Writing

My First Marathon (Fuji Marathon)

Today I completed my first marathon. It was the 50th annual Mt. Fuji marathon in Japan, and I can confidently say it was the most challenging thing I’ve done.

I arrived in Kawaguchiko, a resort town with a large lake next to Mt. Fuji, two days before the marathon. The town was bustling with marathoners and vacationers.

Mt. Fuji. First day was very clear.

We ended up staying at a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn), specifically the Wakakusa no Yado Maruei hotel. I haven’t been to a hotel like this since I was a kid, so it was a fun experience. In general, it was a great stay, but my pregnant wife had some difficulty with the provided futons for sleeping. They also provide breakfast and dinner, both in traditional style, which was a bit difficult due to my wife’s dietary restrictions and my aversion to seafood. Because the hotel doesn’t accommodate meal changes, we ate the parts we could and supplemented the rest with items from the convenience store.

Japanese breakfast. Enough of these and you'll start craving Denny's.

The day before the race, my friend and I went to bib pickup at the start. In typical race-event fashion, it was an expo featuring different sponsors showcasing their products. My friend and I ended up purchasing a supplement kit from amino VITAL for 2000 yen, which included supplements for pre-, during-, and post-race. There was another booth for RunConcierge AI, a chatbot company that the event uses to provide race information to runners. Definitely something par for the current times, but I can’t help but feel that it’s unnecessary if the information was better organized on the race website.

The night before race day, it was sleeting outside. By the time the morning came, it was raining. This resulted in a somewhat stressful start as I frantically tried to get everything ready (it’s very difficult to put on your race bib with cold, wet hands). Once the race started, the rain began to ease up, but because of the clouds, we didn’t see Fujisan until the latter half of the race.

The start of the Fuji Marathon.

The race itself was tough. Since we’d been in Japan vacationing for a week leading up to the marathon, my legs were definitely tired. By the halfway point, I was struggling. It also didn’t help that the 17k course overlapped at that point. As a result, I had hundreds of runners passing me, which made things tough mentally. It also caused all the bathroom lines to be long, so I had to wait until the 17kers left the course before I could pee.

During the race, there were various aid stations with water, energy drinks, and food. Some food they were handing out included:

• Japanese cookies
• Rice crackers
• Jagarico sticks
• Chocolate
• Muscat grapes
• Azuki pouches
• Peach jelly
• Energy gel
• Rice
• Miso soup I ended up skipping the rice and miso soup aid station because it would have been too much for my stomach.

Eating Jagarico sticks.

Many marathoners I’ve spoken to have mentioned the 20-mile mark as the most challenging part of the race. But I think 12-18 miles were the hardest. At 20 miles, I actually locked in and got a second wind up until the 25-mile mark. After that, the last mile and a half was very tough.

At the finish line, my wife and friends were waiting and cheering me on. It was a great feeling to complete this achievement, especially given all the training required to get to this point. My knees are shot, my back is sore, and my quads don’t want to support my body anymore. But it’s a great feeling to say I’m in the best shape of my life since high school, and I hope to continue this trend going forward!

Happy to finish.

[12/24] Advent of Writing

The Do-Say Ratio

A useful way to evaluate yourself is what I call your do-say ratio: how much of what you say you’re going to do actually gets done.

A high do-say ratio is a powerful signal. It means people can trust your word. A low one has the opposite effect. When you regularly say you’ll do things and don’t follow through, people stop believing you. Worse, you start to feel that disconnect yourself. Saying you’ll do something and not doing it chips away at your own sense of reliability.

This matters everywhere, but it’s especially important at work because you need to be known as someone who follows through.

Since becoming a manager, this has become even more top-of-mind for me. Though still important as an IC, your commitments are more contained. As a manager, it’s incredibly easy to casually say “I’ll look into that” or “I’ll follow up” and then let it slip. The nature of the role means people remember what you say, even when you forget. That gap creates disappointment fast.

I’m not perfect at this. I’ve dropped the ball plenty of times. But simply keeping the do-say ratio in mind changes behavior. You commit more carefully, you prioritize more honestly, and when you do say yes, you’re more likely to make sure it actually happens.

[11/24] Advent of Writing

Do Performance Reviews

One thing that surprises me when I talk to developers, especially those working at startups, is how often performance reviews are neglected. I hear stories from people who spent years at a company without ever having a formal review. To me, that’s a great failure on both the manager and the employee. But why are they important?

First, they provide a clear checkpoint to evaluate compensation. Pay increases should not be mysterious or reactive. A structured review creates a natural moment to assess impact, growth, and whether compensation still reflects the value someone brings to the company.

But just as important, performance reviews create dedicated space for feedback. Even on small teams, it’s surprisingly easy to misread how your manager feels about your work.

A review forces that conversation to happen. It gives managers a responsibility to articulate how they think you’re doing, what they appreciate, and what they want you to focus on next. That clarity is incredibly valuable. It turns vague assumptions into explicit expectations.

In most cases, even when someone is doing great work, there are still areas their manager wants them to lean into more. That doesn’t mean something is wrong. Often, it’s the opposite. Without a review, that insight can stay locked in someone else’s head.

At a minimum, everyone should have a formal performance check-in every six months. They help people understand where they stand, what matters most, and how best to move forward for the company and their career. Without them, so much is left to vague, easily mistaken interpretation.

[10/24] Advent of Writing

Service Attitude

I have a lot of respect for people in the service industry who take their job seriously. It is why I love The Remains of the Day, a book about a world class butler.

Service work has two sides. There is the actual task the service provides and there is the way you interact with the person you are serving. When someone treats both parts with seriousness and passion, I find it deeply respectable.

It makes me think about how we work in tech. Many people in tech do their jobs well, but I think we need to pay more attention to something I call a service attitude.

Here is my hot take. It is important to encourage discussion and disagreement at the right times, but too many people approach work with a self-serving or self-entitled mindset. Instead, they should approach it with a "service attitude".

A service attitude encourages collaboration and creates a positive environment. And the truth is, no matter how good you are, if you are unpleasant, if you shut people down, or treat others as lower than you, you make the workplace worse, and that always hurts the business.

[9/24] Advent of Writing

Use Travel Guide Books

I’m currently traveling in Kyoto, and despite speaking Japanese, I wanted to be prepared to navigate this unfamiliar city. As a result, I picked up a guide book before the trip, and it’s been incredibly useful.

My travel guide book for Kyoto

I bought it because I wanted something that recommended places other than the usual viral Instagram spots, didn’t rely on internet access, wasn’t in video form, offered detail on each recommendation, and came with zero ads.

So far, it’s completely delivered. I’m getting a rich picture of Kyoto, and I’ll definitely be looking for guide books on future trips.

[8/24] Advent of Writing

Why Not Romanticize Life

Movies have a way of making even the simplest actions feel meaningful. Someone pours a glass of whisky, and the entire scene changes. The sound shifts. The pacing slows. The character’s expression carries weight. Nothing extraordinary is happening, yet it feels like a moment worth paying attention to.

Real life is full of these small scenes, but we rarely let ourselves experience them the same way. Instead, we tend to experience things as they are, sometimes even downplaying the experience. We do this because experiences, especially ones that we've done before, become passive to us. But this can lead to a dull life. To combat this, we can let ourselves romanticize life a bit in our heads.

Romanticizing your life is not about pretending you are in a movie. It is about borrowing the mindset that small moments can carry meaning if you allow them to. A vacation can feel like an adventure instead of another item on the calendar. A walk can feel like a real moment instead of just something between tasks. Even a quiet morning at home can feel intentional rather than forgettable.

So why not romanticize life a little bit? I guarantee you it will result in a bit more intention and a lot more fun.

[6/24] Advent of Writing

The Everyday Awe We Stop Noticing

Right now I am on a plane to Japan to vacation and see family/friends, 37,000 feet in the air, connected to satellite WiFi, chatting with an AI to brainstorm blog ideas. This sentence would have shocked someone just a few years ago.

Breaking it down:

• I am flying halfway across the world at more than 500 miles per hour.
• I am connected to a satellite orbiting Earth while somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.
• I am talking to a large language model as casually as if I had a personal assistant who never gets tired of me, even though it is all just code and computation behind the scenes.

None of this is normal. It is sci-fi. And yet here I am, barely thinking about it.

Humans have an incredible ability to normalize the absurdly advanced. The moment a new achievement becomes familiar, we stop seeing it. It takes deliberate effort to look around and remember how impossible all of this would have sounded not too long ago.

Even simple things can spark the same realization. The building you live in once existed entirely in nature before countless processes shaped those materials into something you could call a home. The clothes you are wearing required years of research, engineering, manufacturing, and global logistics, all so you can buy a pair of jeans for forty dollars.

When we ignore these things, it becomes easy to slip into cynicism or indifference. But noticing them brings something much healthier and closer to reality: a sense of awe for the world we get to live in, and I love that.

[6/24] Advent of Writing

Organizing My First Running Event

In November I turned 30. To celebrate, I wanted to do something special, so I decided to host a small private running event with friends. 17 people showed up, most ran some part of the course and a few came just to support, which meant a lot.

The full distance was a 30k (about 18.64 miles) of trail running. In addition to being a birthday celebration, it was the perfect training checkpoint for the Fuji marathon in December that a few of us were preparing for.

Since this was my first time organizing anything like this, I spent a lot of time thinking through logistics. I needed an aid station in the middle of the course, but didn't want people to have to trek out to a midway point to man it. To solve this, I designed the course in a V shape with the start at the center point. This meant the aid station sat at the start, midpoint, and finish. Friends who didn't run or finished early helped run it.

I worried people might get lost or injured, but none of that happened. People naturally grouped up by pace, and enough of them studied the map and guide I shared ahead of time, so there were no issues on the course. I was a bit anxious that hosting a running event, even a small one, would cause issues with other people on the trails, especially with a make-shift aid station setup. But no one gave us any trouble.

The event felt like a real success. I got to spend time with my friends doing something hard, which made it extra special. I hope to turn it into a tradition and call it the Ash Annual.

[5/24] Advent of Writing

Thoughts on The Remains of the Day

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro is a book that hits you from two angles. On the surface, it’s a story of a butler devoted to his work, someone who finds real meaning in doing his job well. I loved that part of the book. There’s something inspiring about watching a person pour so much purpose into their career that it becomes the core of who they are.

But the story is also a cautionary one. The main character, Stevens, takes his work so seriously that it blinds him to parts of his own life. By the end, you’re left with the weight of his regrets. The moments he missed, relationships he never allowed himself to have, a life narrowed by duty that eventually left him with very little outside of it.

I walked away feeling conflicted in the best possible way. I admire his dedication and I want that level of purpose in my own work. At the same time, I don’t want to wake up one day realizing that the things I cared about most were neglected because I was too focused on my work.

If you want a story about someone who is incredibly passionate about their craft, and a thoughtful look at what that passion can give and what it can cost, I highly recommend this book.

[4/24] Advent of Writing

Small Perks, Big Benefits

When thinking about important company benefits for employee happiness, the first things that come to mind are good health insurance, dental and vision, and maybe a 401(k). Those matter a lot, of course. But I’ve found that some of the most efficient dollars a company can spend come from creative benefits that directly improve day-to-day employee well-being.

Two examples stand out for me.

At a previous employer, we were given an annual health stipend that we could use on almost anything health-related. Fitness equipment, workout classes, massages, and even house cleanings. At the end of the year, when the stipend was set to expire, you could hear excitement across the company about what people spent it on and how grateful they were for the benefit.

At my current workplace, Ditto, we get a $50 monthly book stipend. With my reading speed, that basically means unlimited books. What I love most is that Ditto doesn’t prescribe what kind of book you should get. Sometimes people pick up something directly relevant to the job and level up their skills. Other times, they grab a totally random book just because it interests them. Both are great. The first helps people grow in ways that benefit the company, and the second sparks conversations and recommendations that contribute to the culture. And the truth is, this benefit brings far more happiness than a $50/mo raise ever would.

Every business leader should look for creative benefits like these. They’re inexpensive, memorable, and incredibly effective at making people happier and more energized at work. Few things add as much value for as little cost.

[3/24] (Advent of Writing)[https://ajkprojects.com/hobby-depth.html]

Trusting Your Past Self

Or more cynically, don’t trust your future self.

This is a mindset I use to avoid screwing myself over later. Any time I’m in a situation where I should prepare for the future but feel the pull of laziness or procrastination, I picture my future self going about his day, assuming past-me handled things. That image pushes me to do the work now.

Take meetings at work. Someone assigns me an action item, and my first instinct is always, “I’ll remember that.” But I won’t. I know this. So I bring the framework to mind and force myself to write it down immediately.

Later, when I'm going about my day, there's a real sense of comfort in opening my to-do list and knowing everything important is right there. I've already done the responsible part. Past me took care of it.

A reminder I set for myself a year ago...

Another place this shows up is in code. It’s so easy to ship something slightly messy because “future me will understand it.” But he won’t. He’ll be annoyed. Taking a few extra minutes now to simplify a function, name something clearly, or refactor a confusing edge case makes a huge difference later. When I come back to that same file weeks later and everything clicks immediately, it’s the same feeling of trust. Past me put in the work.

This mindset has helped me cut down on irresponsible laziness. My future self shouldn’t have to clean up after me. If I want him to move through life with confidence, the work needs to happen now.

[2/24] Advent of Writing

Top Down vs Bottom Up Leadership

I became an engineering manager earlier this year. One fun part of becoming a manager is defining the kind of leader you are. I’m still new at this so there’s plenty left to learn, but there’s one area where I’m starting to form a strong opinion: top-down vs bottom-up leadership.

Before getting into what I’ve learned, it’s worth calling out the factors that shape the style you choose. Your personality plays a role. The makeup of your team plays a role. The kind of manager you report to plays a role. And of course, the type of work you’re leading plays a role.

What’s the difference?

Top-down:

The leader is prescriptive. The vision comes from the top and the team carries it out. Input is welcome, but the leader makes most of the important decisions.

Bottom-up:

The leader encourages others to participate in decision-making. This usually requires a high-trust environment and a team that’s capable and motivated to own decisions. The leader delegates more, but also spends more time building the conditions where delegation actually works.

What do I do?

I err strongly on the side of bottom-up.

Especially with technical decisions, I believe the group mind is smarter than the individual. At Ditto, where I work, we hire engineers who have experience leading, who want to be self-sufficient, and who enjoy shaping the work rather than just doing the work. My team is also really smart, so I want them in an environment where they can make decisions together instead of just carrying out my perspective. (Often this means listening to others rather than owning the floor)[https://ajkprojects.com/talklessinmeetings.html]. But this type of dynamic is only possible with a low-ego team, so it's important to foster and protect that.

That said, top-down isn’t inherently wrong. The right approach depends on the situation. There are specific areas where I lean more toward a top-down approach, usually when I’m more opinionated or when team members have less experience. In those moments, providing clear direction is often more helpful than deferring on decisions.

What matters most is being deliberate rather than defaulting to whatever feels easiest in the moment. I've learned that always going into a conversation with a clear sense of which approach you want to take makes a big difference in the success of the decision.

Hobby Depth

The deeper you go into a topic, the more you’ll discover. On the other hand, if you stay shallow, you discover less. Staying shallow lets you try more things, but the payoff is small because you learn a little, enjoy it briefly, and then move on. The gratification is nothing like what comes from going deep and building real mastery.

Cooking is a simple example. If you are a beginner and you make a recipe one weekend, you will probably have fun. You eat something good and you feel proud of it. But if you stop there, you never learn why it worked or how the flavors came together. If you keep cooking, learn techniques, understand ingredients, and explore flavor combinations, you start to own the craft. You can eventually cook something great without a recipe and you appreciate a meal at a deeper level. The first approach is fine, but the second offers much more.

Recently, I have been frustrated by how shallow most of my hobbies have been. In the last few years, I have tried learning Hebrew, blogging, chess, birding, leather crafting, woodworking, game development, programming side projects, playing with hardware, pickleball, guitar, candle-making, and gardening. I have touched all of them, but I have not gone deep on any. The only exception is running, which I have committed to for 5 years now. I've gained depth that has transformed into a lifestyle I love, and so I want more of that (I can only run so much). But committing to another hobby feels like losing the rest, which creates a strange kind of FOMO. I feel like I am missing out by not sampling everything, but I am also missing out by never committing to something fully.

While thinking of a solution, I came up with the idea of setting a New Year’s resolution to pick one thing and stick with it for a year. Two problems came up right away: 1. Waiting for the new year makes no sense. If I want to commit, I should start now. 2. A full year feels too big. I cannot bring myself to commit for that long without feeling that sense of FOMO.

Instead, I am going to commit to shorter periods of focus. Two weeks to a month for each hobby. During that time, I will go deep and devote all my free time to it. If I want to continue after the window ends, that is allowed and encouraged because that means I am getting something valuable from the depth.

This also fits life. I have a few trips coming up, which means woodworking and gardening are out. So instead, I'm going to focus on writing by participating in Advent of Writing, where I will write for 24 days in a row beginning today (Dec 1, 2025).

I hope these short, intense commitments give me the benefits of depth while letting me keep variety in my life. Not all in forever, but all in long enough to matter.

Earn Simplicity

We've recently revamped our values at work, and there's one in particular that has taken over my mind: "Earn Simplicity".

Starting with the second word, simplicity is a no-brainer. The simpler things are in life, the less stress you'll need to deal with, which is almost always good.

But the first word, "earn", makes this special. It communicates that simplicity isn't given for free. You can only achieve it through time, effort, and/or money.

Simple is commonly mistaken for easy. Easy is what is there. It's what is familiar. It doesn't mean simple. Simple makes life better, easy can make life worse. But to achieve simplicity, it often requires going down the hard path. That's why you have to earn it.

I can quickly think of two examples.

First, with code. Bolting on a new feature is typically easy. Don't think too much about what's underneath; write a new feature on top in whatever way possible. Quick and dirty. But down the road, if you encounter a bug or need to modify the system, it's so much harder to navigate.

But if you take the time to understand the system and integrate the feature properly, you can keep the system simple. This will pay dividends down the road.

Second, think about keeping your home clean and organized. It takes effort to do this. The easy thing to do is to neglect it day to day. But when it's time to clean, it's much harder to get it into an acceptable state. That's not simple. Simple is being able to welcome a surprise guest at any time. Simple is being able to operate in your home without tripping over things. Simple is knowing where things are because they are exactly where they are supposed to be. But again, this takes a lot of work.

But even with more work, the great thing about “earn simplicity” as a value is that it makes the hard path feel easier. The more you think and practice it, the more natural it becomes. And when earning simplicity becomes your default, life quickly starts to improve in all sorts of ways.

I'm starting a blogging series where I write about a few random topics that are topical to my life at the time. I'm hoping it will serve as a mechanism for sending periodic life updates to those who are interested and to spark conversations with people online. In this post, I will discuss my recent experiences with Tesla's Full Self-Driving, a Mac app switcher I created called Pluck, and the latest season of the reality show Below Deck.

FSD

I've recently enabled the $100/mo Full Self-Driving feature on my Tesla Model 3. $100/mo is relatively steep (in addition to the regular car payments), but with a few upcoming long road trips, it made sense to bite the bullet.

This isn't the first time I've used FSD in my car, as it came with a free trial month when I started my lease a year ago. Comparing the FSD experience from then versus now, I will say it has improved. Most notably, it does less aggressive overtaking than it used to, which is great, as I used to have to intervene on the freeway to prevent cutting people off.

It definitely isn't perfect yet, though. So far, I've had instances where I needed to intervene in:

• Complicated intersections with various different turn lanes
• Ignoring an exit on an expressway
• Some sketchy right turns on reds
• Confusion with faded street markings, especially if the car in front messes up

I've also had a situation where the system falsely believed I had a device installed to skirt the attention detection system.

Despite its imperfections, because it handles 95% of situations, my recent drive from San Diego to San Jose (~8 hours with charging) was far less fatiguing than if I had driven manually.

As a side note, there are many parallels between this type of driving and what coding can look like today. Primarily performed by a machine, but closely monitored and adjusted by a human.

After 30 days, I will cancel the subscription purely based on cost, but I will definitely enable it again for my next big road trip.

Pluck

One thing that's always bothered me about macOS (and Windows) is how alt-tabbing works. Because the order of applications is constantly changing based on recency, it feels almost indeterministic on how many tab presses you need to make to get to the application you want. The system works effectively only when switching back and forth between two applications. As a result, I wanted something better.

I've seen some Linux setups where users switch to applications via hotkeys. Inspired by that, I made a macOS utility called Pluck. You can create hotkeys for applications (for example, cmd+option+s for Safari), but it also comes with an alternative trigger method that I prefer. Inspired by IntelliJ editors, double-tapping Shift triggers a launch menu to appear, listing your applications and their associated keys. So, if I need Safari, I can always reliably and quickly switch to it by pressing Shift->Shift->S.

When I first started using it, I found it challenging to break the alt-tabbing habit. I struggled with it enough that I added a feature to Pluck to disable alt-tabbing. After enabling that, I haven't looked back, and it is now an integral part of how I use my computer.

Also, this was my first time fully releasing an app to the Mac App Store. I even put a price tag on it ($2), and to my surprise, I've had a couple of strangers buy it! It's been a cool experience, despite the numerous hurdles you have to go through with Apple to release something on the Mac App Store. It does make me grateful that I primarily create websites.

Below Deck Season 12

I just finished watching the latest season of Below Deck. As a quick summary, Below Deck is a reality show that follows a mega yacht crew during a yachting season. There is a captain, a chef, a deck team, and an interior crew. My wife and I are big fans of the show (we've seen all the seasons from both the main Below Deck series and its offshoots).

One thing that stands out about this season is the amount of romance/intimacy. It's not a surprise, though, as one of the cast members, Solène, is a previous member of Love Island France and is the center of all of the love drama in the season.

Unfortunately, this detracted significantly from the season. For me, the best parts about the show are watching the dynamics between the crewmates, seeing the captain lead a team, and all the drunk guests embarrassing themselves. The love encounters of the show are the least interesting to me, which is why I don't watch shows like Love Island. I can't help but feel that this is the direction the show's producers are trying to take, both due to the immense popularity of shows like Love Island and the intentional casting of Solène.

Despite this, there were some good moments in the season. In particular, Captain Kerry continues to be a strong leader, Fraizer proves himself to be a very competent chief stew, and Chef Anthony has a great comeback season following his firing in the previous season.

I'll look forward to the next season, but I really hope the show returns to its regular focus and style. Otherwise, I may no longer remain a consistent watcher.

Thanks for reading! If you have any thoughts, please email me at ashleynewman@protonmail.com. I also have a newsletter that will email whenever I have a new post. Please sign up below if you are interested.

Nine months ago, we made the decision at work to rebuild Ditto (a source of truth copy management tool). The overall goal of the product has stayed the same, but the way we model data inside the product has changed. Text has become even more of a first-class citizen, and that shift in foundation meant we needed to rethink and rebuild the system that runs Ditto.

The idea of a rewrite is always a mix of excitement and fear. Starting fresh sounds amazing. But the reality is you cannot throw everything away. It has taken years to get Ditto to where it is today. The real challenge is deciding what to rebuild, what to evolve, and what to leave as is.

Some things we knew we had to rebuild. Syncing between Figma and Ditto is one of the most complex parts of our system, especially at scale. Because the new model fundamentally changed how sync worked, it was the perfect chance to redesign that system from everything we had learned.

Other areas made more sense to evolve. For example, how we represent variables and variants did not change much. The underlying model still worked well, so small updates, like aligning the UI with our new design language, were enough.

And sometimes the right decision was to leave things alone. Our text editor is a good example. Over time, it has become complex through years of iteration. Part of me wanted to scrap it and start fresh. But it works, and rebuilding it would have exploded the project's scope. Resisting that emotional instinct to rewrite because it feels "cleaner" has been one of the most important principles to follow during this process.

Balancing Legacy vs New

This rebuild has also opened a lot of doors. Some areas still need feature parity with legacy Ditto. Others give us brand new possibilities that were never possible before. But none of this happens in a vacuum. We are still supporting our legacy product as users transition to the new system. V2 is the future of Ditto, but we cannot simply walk away from what already exists. That means being deliberate about how much engineering time and effort we allocate to legacy maintenance, like not taking on major refactors in legacy anymore, and instead, focusing on targeted bug fixes and assigning engineering capacity accordingly.

This approach also affects how we onboard new teammates. For engineers who joined recently, the legacy system was already marked "legacy" when they started. Their day-to-day focus is on V2, and so learning the legacy system isn't part of their onboarding plan. But when legacy issues do come up, longer-tenured teammates provide the historical context and review fixes to make sure the changes still make sense as a part of the legacy system.

Over time though, inevitably, a smaller and smaller percentage of us will have worked on the original Ditto. That makes it even more important for users to switch over. Our primary motivator for that shift is not just that legacy support will eventually wind down, but that V2 unlocks so many exciting new features to make copy management easier. This feels like the right win-win approach to making the best product possible while also making our lives in engineering easier.

This journey has been a practice in striking a balance between excitement and practicality. Despite the challenges, it is one of the most energizing projects I have ever been part of. If this kind of work excites you, check out Ditto's careers page. We are hiring!

Entering a new field of study is often overwhelming due to the amount of new information and concepts to grasp. Often, it’s helpful to lean on established best practices that have been tried and tested by experts in the field. However, as you gain more experience, questioning these practices is important to fully understand when to use them and, more importantly, when to avoid them.

An example from my experience as a programmer involves managing file sizes in codebases. In college, one of my classes strictly enforced a rule on the maximum size a single code file could be. The general best practice in programming is to avoid large files that attempt to do too much. As a result, programmers often develop an ingrained belief that large files are inherently bad. However, with experience and a bit of reevaluation, it becomes clear that such a rule may not always apply. Depending on the language and the organizational needs of the code, there are valid scenarios where larger files make sense.

Some other programming best practices I’ve recently questioned include avoiding global states, strictly adhering to functional programming (FP) or object-oriented programming (OOP), and always choosing declarative programming over imperative programming. In certain scenarios, following these best practices can be more detrimental than beneficial, and I could have only truly comprehended this by questioning best practices and intentionally disregarding them during experimentation.

Beyond programming, questioning best practices in any field is crucial for growth and becoming a true expert. Without it, one cannot truly understand the why and when of best practices. As a result, be cautious of critics who dismiss your deviations from best practices without providing a valid explanation for the specific context. Such contributions come from parrots, not experts.

I’d love to hear from those who have had this realization in their field of interest or work. Please email me at ashleynewman@protonmail.com.

My first manager noticed something I did unintentionally in meetings early in my career. He told me I was quiet in meetings, but everyone listened carefully on the rare occasions I spoke. He explained this was a great trait: striving to be the most impactful person in the room, not the loudest.

The truth is, I was probably either overwhelmed trying to absorb information (I was a super junior engineer at the time) or nervous/shy to speak whatever was on my mind. Nonetheless, my manager’s words have stuck with me throughout my career.

The advice to focus on fewer, more impactful words is hard for some people to hear, especially for those who equate more words to more intelligence and influence. But there are two strong reasons why I think that mindset is not optimal:

1. The longer you go without speaking, the more time you have to gain context and think through your thoughts.

Raw thoughts are great during brainstorming sessions. However, in other settings, they can derail the conversation and even cause the speaker to confuse themselves. The longer you let thoughts in your mind sit, the more well-formed and valuable they will be when they come out of your mouth.

2. The more time you spend listening, the more you can learn from your peers.

For this one, the adage “If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room” comes to mind. But I don’t think it’s ever possible to be in “the wrong room.” It may be true that you can be the most knowledgeable about a specific topic. Still, regardless of experience or background, every person has the potential to contribute novel ideas. In fact, sometimes the lack of experience is precisely what you need for a fresh perspective to be discovered.

Along the same lines, I love the idea of treating everyone as your “master” because that mindset will inevitably result in learning something from anyone who shares ideas and asks questions. The problem is, if you talk too much, you don’t allow those ideas and questions to be shared.

The goal is not to remain silent but to strike a balance between speaking and listening. If you have a great idea, don’t hesitate to share it. But if you walk away from a meeting feeling like you dominated the conversation, there’s a good chance the entire group missed out on something great.

How I manage my caffeine intake.

I was late to the game when it comes to caffeine exposure. Since high school, I’ve struggled with migraines, and because caffeine is a well-known trigger, I stayed away from it as much as possible.

In college, I remember feeling jealous of people using and abusing caffeine. To be able to legally ingest a substance that helped you stay awake and focused before exams almost felt like an unfair advantage to me.

A year and a half ago, noticing a decrease in my migraine frequency, I became curious about the real-world benefits of caffeine. Based on what I saw in college and finding out that Bill Gates and John Carmack are both Diet Coke addicts, I had high expectations.

So I went and got a can of Coke and drank it during work. As this was essentially my first caffeine experience, I was highly sensitive and became instantly wired. The hype in my head was real. I got so much work done that day and I couldn’t help but feel that all this time I’d been operating in a slower-paced, less-focused universe compared to my peers.

I was so excited that I raved about my experience with a few people I knew. Most people laughed and many were envious about how effective one can of coke was to me. I soon came to find that a lot of my peers require far more caffeine just to be at a baseline level of operation.

I decided to do some research on YouTube where I found people like Wheezy Waiter, Beau Miles, and Christian Schaffer all suffering from caffeine withdrawals during experiments where they stopped drinking coffee.

I realized that caffeine addiction is real, and once you are hooked, the powerful benefits that I experienced are far less potent. So I came up with a plan to manage my caffeine intake that I’ve stuck to for over a year now.

My general rules are the following:

• I don’t exceed 60 mg of caffeine in one day. To give perspective, a can of Diet Coke is 46mg. A grande latte from Starbucks is 150mg. Therefore, I cannot drink a fully caffeinated latte drink.
• I only drink caffeine on days that I need the extra boost to be productive. I am very intentional about not wasting it on days that require less productivity.
• I limit myself to a maximum of four caffeine days per week, ideally fewer.
• I avoid caffeinated drinks that are customized. Starbucks gives the option to get 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, caffeinated beverages. This is great because it opens up many caffeine options, but I don’t like to do it too often as I’ve had a few too many times where the barista makes the drink incorrectly. Because of my high caffeine sensitivity, I realize quickly when a drink has more caffeine than I’m used to. For this reason, when I do go to Starbucks, I tend to get a Tall Matcha Latte (55mg of caffeine).
• I do my best to keep caffeine sources out of immediate reach. I have some green tea at home, but generally, I make it so I have to leave the house to source my caffeine. This makes me intentional about marking a day for more-than-normal productivity needs.

Following these rules, I can effectively micro-dose caffeine, enjoying its potent effects from just a can of Coke without any dependency side effects. It’s great to have something that can reliably increase my mental performance when I need it.

I know caffeine affects people differently, so I’d love to hear how other people manage their caffeine intake (even if it is complete dependence). Please email me at ashleynewman@protonmail.com to start a conversation.

Advice for myself around leisure activities.

You aren’t famous. Anything you do or create will probably receive little to no attention, so stop optimizing for a non-existent audience and instead focus on what makes you enjoy the activity.

Want to try a craft or artistic hobby? Focus on mastering the skill and enjoy the variety it can provide. You don’t need to build a personal style. No one will care. Want to do photography and think black and white photos are cool? Great! You don’t need to create an Instagram branded all around your moody black and white photos. Most likely you’ll get bored of it and want to try a different type of photography, and that’s great. You aren’t Ansel Adams, no one will care if your “style” is all over the place.

Do you want to build an app or website but don’t enjoy the process of designing? Then make it ugly. Who cares! Design is for an audience and you don’t have one. Functionality is more important right now. Maybe a designer will notice and want to improve it for you, but until then take pride in your crappy UI.

Blogging is fun and therapeutic. Grammar and editing aren’t. As long as your thoughts are coherent, don’t worry too much about writing mistakes or filtering yourself. Just use Grammarly to fix elementary-level errors and move on. It’s more about the writing process than the final product.

The most egregious thing you can do with any activity is daydream about how you can make money off of it. That’s the quickest way to optimize for the wrong things and suck the fun right out of it. Most likely you will stop doing the activity almost immediately, so save the money-making schemes for work.

In the end, find something you enjoy doing and just do it because you enjoy it. If you have to, make some goals for yourself, but never for your “audience”.

I’ve completely eliminated the alarm clock from my morning routine for about six months. The biggest impacts it's had on my life are:

1. I’ve become a morning person.
2. I wake up feeling great and feel less sleepy during the day.

Becoming a morning person is a necessary side effect of not using an alarm clock because it requires the body to naturally wake up early enough for work, school, or other regular obligations. Although I’ve historically enjoyed staying up late, the brutal truth is that all humans require a certain amount of sleep, and this can't be consistently fought without an alarm clock.

The best part about eliminating alarm clocks from my life is how it has affected my day. It’s not a hidden secret that good sleep habits translate to:

1. Better mood
2. Increased energy levels
3. Clearer mind
4. Improved overall health

I can confidently say I really do feel all these benefits. It's to no suprise. The alarm clock interupts one of the most important cycles of your body, and so it only makes sense to leave sleep alone so it can do what it needs to do.

How I Transitioned to Natural Sleep

Once I decided to try this experiment, I created a simple plan to implement it. Before this life change, my sleep schedule was from around 1 am to 8 am. So, the first thing I did was set an alarm for the target time I wanted to naturally wake up, in my case, 7 am.

The first night resulted in 6 hours of sleep (1 am to 7 am). My body needs more than that, so by the time 11 pm rolled around, I was ready to fall asleep. It was initially tough to sleep earlier than normal, as I felt there was still time to do things, but I let my body dictate my actions and went to bed without an alarm.

That night, I slept for about 9 hours due to sleep debt. I missed my 7 am target, but it wasn’t a big deal. After that, with my body reset, I simply aimed to continue to sleep around 11 pm, meaning I was in bed by 10:30 pm. The pressure of needing to naturally wake up before work was enough motivation to forgo the later hours of the night and continue heading to bed early.

Now, I’ve settled into a great rhythm of going to bed around 10-10:30 pm and waking up around 6:30 am. What’s great is discovering how much sleep my body naturally needs (8-8.5 hours). No more trying to "hack" my body with things like miserable polyphasic sleep experiments. I know what my body needs, I succumb to it, and I’m rewarded the next day.

Some Caveats

What worked for me won’t necessarily work for everyone. Each person and their situation is unique, so results will obviously vary. Some unique factors for me are:

• I’ve always been able to fall asleep quickly, which might be due to consistent sleep deprivation, regular exercise, or both.
• My only dependent is a dog, and she doesn’t mind sleeping in a bit in the morning.
• I always sleep with white noise, which helps block out sounds that would normally wake me up during the night.
• My work schedule is consistently 9 am to 5 pm.

One final note: I still use alarm clocks for special occasions, such as early morning flights. Although I could probably wake up naturally for them, I would probably wake up in the middle of the night stressed about the possibility of missing my flight without an alarm set.

Try It Out

This change has been significant enough in my life that I frequently recommend it to friends. I now honestly believe that the alarm clock is the single worst thing the wider population willingly inflicts on themselves. If you’re willing to eliminate the morning alarm clock from your life, I would love to hear how it goes. Feel free to email me at ashleynewman@protonmail.com. Good luck!

Recently, I went on a week-long vacation to Japan. Besides being a ton of fun, something that stood out was how long the trip felt. One week in Japan felt like three weeks of my regular life. I've thought about why this is and found that the amount of time felt is greatly related to the number of memories created. This checks out because I've been feeling recently that my work week blows by, leaving me with a feeling of time blur. What has happened is that I've gotten into such a standard routine day to day that nothing really different happens. The feeling of being lost in time is probably worsened by working from home and not getting a lot of in-person interaction during the work week.

After making this revelation, I decided I wanted to feel my week more, similar to how it was in Japan. To do this, I've been purposefully breaking my routine and trying my best to have at least one memorable event each day. Working from different locations and taking different morning running routes has been a good start.

Interestingly, I found that the memory doesn't necessarily need to be good. For example, I was working at a Starbucks when an incident occurred between the manager and a customer, resulting in a yelling match. Although it was uncomfortable to witness, I was thankful that it made my day memorable.

Although I'll probably never recreate the feeling of being in Japan during my work week (it was a vacation, after all), this has been a worthwhile change in my life. It does make the weekend feel further away, but luckily I enjoy my job, and it makes me feel that I am living each day.

I am happy to report that I've completed 30 days straight of my 30 minutes daily challenge. It took me 55 days to complete due to a couple broken streaks. Looking back at my 7 day report, I wanted to increase the amount of time I spent in each session (e.g. more than 30 minutes). I can confidently say that the average time has increased, though I don't have any concrete numbers since I didn't record any of it. I also have to admit on some days I didn't complete a full 30 minutes, but I'm happy I at least did some work.

Some of the things I worked on include:

• Rewriting (part of) simplestat.us in Python
• Blog post When to Stop
• Work on my "fun" editor
• Blog post Self-help
• Nomodoom bug fix
• Just Read project
• Just Read firefox extension project
• Work on a game project
• Brief Bits TikTok channel with 4 video uploads
• Blog post Positive Monster

You can find the exhaustive list on my Twitter page.

I'm ecstatic that I could accomplish all the things above while having a full-time job and maintaining a balanced life.

One thing that stands out to me is how dispersed my efforts were. I don't think that is a bad thing, but I wonder how much I can get done if I focus on one thing for a set amount of time. As a result, my next experiment will be to work on my game for 7 days straight.

I'm still planning to continue the 30 minutes a day activity, but I will report less about it on my Twitter page. Instead of daily posts, I will only report significant progress updates about my projects to reduce spam. However, if I become inconsistent with the 30 minutes because of this, I will revert back to my original posting schedule.

I’m watching a Japanese show on Netflix called “The Full-Time Wife Escapist”. At one point in the show, a man calls a woman a “Positive Monster”, which she then nicknames “Posimon”.

The idea of a creature gobbling up and spewing positivity is really amusing to me. Though becoming a monster of positivity probably isn’t what we should strive for, I’ve used it as a useful tool in my life. For example, when I’m feeling down, becoming a temporary Posimon is an effective way out of a rut. Though it was used as an insult in the show, funny enough, it’s something positive that I’ve added to my life.

I was on the plane the other day writing my blog post “When to Quit” when I started to think about self-help.
Why is it so popular?
Why do we find it so useful?

The truth is, I find most self-help advice to be obvious.
Rarely do I read a self-help book or post and find it revolutionary.
I think this about my self-help posts too.

While writing, I often wonder if anyone will find my advice useful.
I imagine myself as a reader thinking “Duh, obviously I shouldn’t overwork myself or watch too much TV”.

But the true power of self-help is learning new tactics to achieve these obvious goals in life.
Gamification, mindset shifts, and experimentation are all the real fruits of self-help.
And it’s awesome if you’re like me and love trying new self-help tactics because of all the content out there.

But there’s also a dangerous side to the abundance.

Self-Help Addiction

Caleb Schoep has a piece called “Productivity Porn”.
I recommend reading it, but the TLDR is this:
Consuming content about productive people or how to be productive can replace the need to actually be productive.
The same applies to self-help.

I’ve seen myself fall into a trap that goes something like this:

1. Finish reading a self-help book that has tons of great advice.
2. Feel that my life has already improved because it was so insightful.
3. Get the urge to experiment and implement the newly gained knowledge, but that requires work, so I’ll watch a YouTube video about someone doing it instead.
4. YouTuber validates how great everything is now, and I get so excited that I made the right choice to have read the book.
5. I wonder what other wonderful self-help advice there is, so I find recommendations and buy another book off Amazon to start the cycle over again.

The problem is that life hasn’t changed since reading the book.
I only temporarily feel better because of the exciting new knowledge, but after the high is gone, I still have the same life problems.

There’s some clear personal responsibility failure here, but I know I’m not the only one who does this, and there’s a reason for it.

It’s a Business

A big problem with self-help content is how they describe themselves and how much it hypes the reader.
Look at the cover or back of any self-help book.
You’ll quickly see exaggerated promises and highlighted reviews about how life-changing the content is.

For example, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”’s website has some great snippets like the following:
Note: I chose this book because it was my, and many others, first book in the self-help genre.

“This breakout, mega bestseller is the self-help book for people who hate self-help. It’s as much a pat on the back as a slap in the face. It’s the first truly no BS guide to flourishing in a crazy, crazy world—a truly counterintuitive approach to living a good life.”

Wow. This sounds awesome! It’s not like the other self-help books. This is real and the others are just full of BS! (I’m not trying to be sarcastic, this is legitimately what I thought many years ago when I picked up the book).

Scroll down a bit, and you’ll find amazing reviews from notable people (funny enough most from other self-help authors).

And the truth is, none of this is evil.
The book is good - I’ve learned things from it.
But as readers, we need to give ourselves a reality check.

Reading this book at best improved my life by 1-2%, which is great, but I wouldn’t say it matches the hype I got when I read about it.
This letdown becomes really apparent after reading the 10th self-help book in a row described as life-changing.
How can all these books promise life-changing results, but after reading them all I’m not a levitating life guru creating Nirvana on earth?

The reality is that the self-help industry is not a charity.
Lots of people make lots of money off of this stuff, and that’s not a terrible thing (I wouldn’t mind making money off of my writing one day).
But there is a bit of a conflict of interest.

If everyone wants you to buy their life-changing book or watch their eye-opening YouTube video, they need to make it as enticing as possible.
The result is, as consumers, we don’t take the time to fully absorb what we learned since it’s so easy to get distracted by what’s next.

A Confession

To be honest, I feel slightly weird when I write self-help blog posts.
Who am I to give advice?
I’m just someone trying to live a fulfilling life, exactly like everyone else.
And a lot of the “advice” I write about is myself exploring and sharing what is working at the time.
Because of this, it isn’t unusual for me to look back on posts and think, “Oh right, I used to do/think that.”

But writing and sharing this stuff has been critical in improving my life.
So in a sense, my “cosplaying” as a source of self-help for other people is really just myself practicing self-help.
And if people get inspired to try something out by it, that makes it worth continuing despite my criticisms about self-help.
In the end, there is value that can be had from consuming and producing self-help content, but we all need to be mindful of the realities of what it can and can’t do for us.

I saw a drawing the other day about working that I really appreciated. I don’t remember the source, but it looked something like this:

The message being to stop working before reaching exhaustion. The problem with 100% energy expenditure for work is that you won’t have any energy to do productive, non-work related activities afterward. These activities include cleaning, cooking, exercising, and doing hobbies. All these activities are essential to living a balanced life. Without them, burnout and mental deterioration will creep up and show no mercy.

I’m fully aware that being able to freely decide whether to continue working or calling it for the day is not always possible. Luckily, there is another part of the day that one can be mindful of when it comes to stopping at the appropriate time. Indulging in pure pleasure, like watching shows, playing video games, or scrolling for memes on Instagram is an essential part of restoring one’s energy reserve. That being said, spending too much time indulging takes away from other non-work related activities, while also making the act of indulging no longer pleasurable. Take a look at the following graphic:

There is a good portion representing the need for the mind to relax and rejuvenate. But too much can result in what I call “zombie mode”. I often feel this after an hours-long binge of a reality show or playing video games. The activity is no longer fun, and I’m just mindlessly consuming it. In the end, I start to feel more exhausted and restless than before I started “relaxing”.

All this is to say, living each day by expending all my energy at work, then transitioning to overindulgence has always left me feeling disconnected and dissatisfied with life. Every person is different, but I do think everyone has their limits in both realms. Navigating when to stop has helped me feel better about each day and I encourage everyone else to be mindful of it too.

As I am writing this, I am completing the last day of my 30 minutes a day for 7 days challenge. It was a great success. Here are some statistics:

• I live streamed 6 out of the 7 days, most of the time with 1-2 concurrent viewers
• Sessions lasted for an average of 42 minutes, with the longest being 1:08 and the shortest being 30 minutes
• One session started at 2:00am
• 3 blogging sessions, 3 programming sessions, and 1 administrative session
• All the sessions totaled 4 hours and 56 minutes!

Thoughts

I've never been this consistent on productive, non-work related projects over the course of a week. Seeing that I committed almost 5 hours towards things I am proud of made me happy and able to relax during dedicated leisure time.

There were two things that I attribute to the experiment being a success. First, the sessions only being 30 minutes really helped me commit to finishing each day. Because it's such a short time, on low-motivation days, it was easy to convince myself that a session won't be that too painful. Second, posting my session summary on Twitter helped build accountability. That last thing I wanted to do was expose a failure to my many followers 😂.

What's next

My goal is to continue these session on a daily basis. If I miss a day, I will create a new goal for X amount of consecutive days. I also hope that my average session time increases, but that is something I will not be actively improving. I'm guessing that once this becomes a habit, I will naturally dedicate more time to each session.

If/when I hit 30 consecutive days, I will do another reflection like this. I'm excited to see what I accomplish during that time!

The other day I was visiting my parents in Hawaii when I complained to my mother about not wanting to do a planned run that afternoon. I told her that I was tired and was dreading physical exercise. Despite that, I explained to her that I was going to do it, even if it meant I ran a lot slower than my regular pace.

Eventually, I did go on my run, and sure enough, it was slow. I apologized to my mom for taking so long because I had planned to watch a show with her afterward. My mom, who is Japanese, told me it was all right and taught me a new term in Japanese called 初志貫徹 (shoshikantetsu).

"Shoshi" translates to "original intent", and kantetsu translates to "to carry out". Combined, it means to complete what was originally intended. In this case, I practiced "shoshikantetsu" by completing the planned run, despite my low motivation.

My mom printed the phrase out for me after she saw my interest in it.

I've thought a lot about shoshikantetsu since then. Having a high say-do ratio has always been important to me, but I wanted to strategize a way to make sure my commitments were seen through to the end. What I ended up landing on was focusing on making the "original intent" small enough that I had no excuses to not complete them.

For example, I'm currently experimenting with doing 30 minutes of enjoyable, productive activities once a day for 7 days. Originally, I wanted to make this an hour per day life long habit. The truth is, such a grandiose original intend only sets you up for failure. By adjusting the experiment to something a lot less intense, it made it less intimidating. As a result, so far, performing my 30 minute duty feels easy, especially because I know after a week I can quit if I want. Of course I would like to continue the habit for as long as it works for me, and reducing the pressure to achieve it is probably the best way to promote consistency.

Apparently, there are many 4 letter Japanese idioms out there. Some other interesting ones include:

• 一期一会 (ichigoichie) - "Treasure every encounter, for it will never recur."
• 一日一歩 (iichinichiippo) - "One step each day."
• 十人十色 (jūnintoiro) - "To each their own; So many people, so many minds"

It's great to learn new phrases/idioms, especially when you allow it to change how you think about life. I'm sure shoshikantetsu will stick with me as I continue to create goals for myself in the future.

For the next 7 days, I will dedicate at least 30 minutes to activities that I know will both produce joy and content. Such activities will include the following:

• Programming small side projects
• Playing/creating music
• Writing blog posts
• Staring off into space

These are activities that I wish to do more of because I know at the end of doing them, I feel better. Ideally, I would like to have these sessions be longer (~1 hour), but 30 minutes felt like a number that isn't too intimidating to start with. I hope to have it become a habit that lasts longer than 7 days, but that is the bare minimum I promise to complete for this experiment.

For each session, I will try to live stream what I am doing, but there probably will be days when live streaming doesn't make sense. In any case, I will post on my twitter what I did during the 30 minutes. I'll be doing this not for views, but more for a public record that I can look back on.

I'm excited to start this experiment! In fact, this post was created during the first session.