AI has made my job easier. There's no denying the fact that as a software engineer, there has been no tool that has had a bigger impact on the speed and efficiency with which I am able to work than AI code authoring. This is great for business, but not so great for the mind. It's all to easy to slip into mental complacency as agents begin to take much of our day to day work and make it easy to the point of being mundane.
Just like our physical muscles, our mental strength begins to wane when it is not placed under any load. As things become second nature and move from our conscious effort to subconscious automation we need to find new ways to progressively increase the load on our minds if we want to maintain that mental agility. For most creatives, we got enough mental exercise at our jobs. With AI, that may no longer be the case. Just like making time to stand up and exercise, we're going to need to make time to maintain our mental sharpness.
At the start of this year I started writing cursive again, something I hadn't done outside of writing my signature since the third grade. I could feel the mental friction happening while I attempted to take notes as fast as I was used to during calls and presentations. This friction is uncomfortable, but it's what happens when our brain is forming new pathways. The first day I almost gave up, the second day wasn't much better, even after a few weeks I'd find myself reverting to a mix of print and script accidentally. After just about a year it's become quite comfortable to do, I even write out web addresses in cursive without much thought.
Today, I am faced with that feeling of friction learning another new skill, Neovim. For those that don't know Vim is a text editor that runs in the terminal that's been around for decades. Many programmers are die hard fans--there's an ancient feud between Vim and Emacs similar to that of tabs vs. spaces. The famous thing about Vim is it's reliance entirely on keyboard commands. If you've ever watched a Vim master at work you'll know what I'm talking about. While us mere mortals highlight and copy text, a Vim master can do it all with a few keystrokes. The first time I saw it, I thought it was pure wizardry and far above my capacity to learn. I took one lesson on it and tried for all of an hour before giving up. At the time, the mental friction of learning to program well as well as learning to use Vim was too daunting.
Two weeks ago I decided to convert an old Windows laptop to Arch Linux by way of DHH's Omarchy. This configuration relies heavily on keyboard commands and comes default with, you guessed it, Neovim. A new wrinkle on the classic Vim editor that shut me down all those years ago. Except this seems to be the year of doing hard things, so I'm committed to learning it. The same way I pushed through the friction of learning a new programming language or writing cursive again, I'm determined to prevail.
With AI taking so much of our work away from us, it's become imperative to make sure that you are always doing hard things. That might be learning a new language, picking up a sport, a new writing style, or even a new operating system like Linux. Whatever it is though, you're going to have to seek it out and make a point of sticking with it. The great thing about this is AI has made it easier than ever to get started. You have a personal trainer for nearly anything you want to learn at your fingertips! The hard part is to use it in such a way to push yourself to learn and not letting it do all the things for you. With physical fitness, this is easy, AI can't work out for you--with things like programming it's all too easy to lose your edge letting AI agents do all the work.
It's an incredible time to be alive, innovation is everywhere, but it's also all too easy to slip into a type of mental sloth. So get out there and DO HARD THINGS!
Best,
Michael Rispoli
Co-founder and CTO at Cause of a Kind
Just like our physical muscles, our mental strength begins to wane when it is not placed under any load. As things become second nature and move from our conscious effort to subconscious automation we need to find new ways to progressively increase the load on our minds if we want to maintain that mental agility. For most creatives, we got enough mental exercise at our jobs. With AI, that may no longer be the case. Just like making time to stand up and exercise, we're going to need to make time to maintain our mental sharpness.
At the start of this year I started writing cursive again, something I hadn't done outside of writing my signature since the third grade. I could feel the mental friction happening while I attempted to take notes as fast as I was used to during calls and presentations. This friction is uncomfortable, but it's what happens when our brain is forming new pathways. The first day I almost gave up, the second day wasn't much better, even after a few weeks I'd find myself reverting to a mix of print and script accidentally. After just about a year it's become quite comfortable to do, I even write out web addresses in cursive without much thought.
Today, I am faced with that feeling of friction learning another new skill, Neovim. For those that don't know Vim is a text editor that runs in the terminal that's been around for decades. Many programmers are die hard fans--there's an ancient feud between Vim and Emacs similar to that of tabs vs. spaces. The famous thing about Vim is it's reliance entirely on keyboard commands. If you've ever watched a Vim master at work you'll know what I'm talking about. While us mere mortals highlight and copy text, a Vim master can do it all with a few keystrokes. The first time I saw it, I thought it was pure wizardry and far above my capacity to learn. I took one lesson on it and tried for all of an hour before giving up. At the time, the mental friction of learning to program well as well as learning to use Vim was too daunting.
Two weeks ago I decided to convert an old Windows laptop to Arch Linux by way of DHH's Omarchy. This configuration relies heavily on keyboard commands and comes default with, you guessed it, Neovim. A new wrinkle on the classic Vim editor that shut me down all those years ago. Except this seems to be the year of doing hard things, so I'm committed to learning it. The same way I pushed through the friction of learning a new programming language or writing cursive again, I'm determined to prevail.
With AI taking so much of our work away from us, it's become imperative to make sure that you are always doing hard things. That might be learning a new language, picking up a sport, a new writing style, or even a new operating system like Linux. Whatever it is though, you're going to have to seek it out and make a point of sticking with it. The great thing about this is AI has made it easier than ever to get started. You have a personal trainer for nearly anything you want to learn at your fingertips! The hard part is to use it in such a way to push yourself to learn and not letting it do all the things for you. With physical fitness, this is easy, AI can't work out for you--with things like programming it's all too easy to lose your edge letting AI agents do all the work.
It's an incredible time to be alive, innovation is everywhere, but it's also all too easy to slip into a type of mental sloth. So get out there and DO HARD THINGS!
Best,
Michael Rispoli
Co-founder and CTO at Cause of a Kind