Redux 0
I believe that it is important to normalize the discussion of workers using AI to improve their working conditions and boundaries. Companies want to capitalize on gains and efficiencies from their workers, who should also gain and capitalize on the differentiated value they can provide by being more than merely proficient in applying AI to their work.
AI is a means of production like no other, and one that can help us claw back our time through thoughtful application of human-computer interaction and personal productivity principles.
How are you using AI to ease your personal working constraints while still providing differentiated benefit to whoever writes you a check for your value?
Reply and let me know!
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Do I actually feel caught up on my work for the first time in years? Maybe; fleeting at best, no doubt.
Consulting these days feels like playing a European board game of documents, email, Slack, and meeting transcripts churned through AI-created spells, alchemy, and clockworks, the output all sent back into the fray of business domains and contexts.
It’s a complex game, where the rules are ever-shifting and new players and abilities appear out of seemingly nowhere. Expansion packs are constantly being published, and you might look across the room and see someone playing (and winning!) with tools you jealously wish your governance referees would allow you to use.
The best consultants are the ones who can figure out the best approach to the game, who can stack and run the best plays for using AI strategically in their work and not shovel slop onto their colleagues and clients.
I am continually outmaneuvering my workload with speed and UX hacks with the tools at my disposal. Increasingly so, those are tools I work with AI to build and operate, to create results at scale from my own fingertips on a keyboard or voice into a microphone.
The cover art for this post and many on this site is created by directing claude to work with a github repo called dotscene that I created as a tool to define and operationalize some personal branding through a consistent aesthetic across my work.
Redux 2
The same holds true for “product development.”
Where empowered use of AI tools, and tool building, have taken hold within organizations and enterprises, no longer is “the business” “waiting on IT” or “waiting on the software engineers.”
Like an Uno Reverse card, developers are increasingly waiting on business & product intent.
That’s why it’s more important than ever to keep your backlog full.
Just make sure you’re also giving yourself a good chunk of the time earned back as well.
