Ever seen a python try to swallow an elephant? Or Niagara Falls funneled through a straw?
That’s what it feels like in my brain right now.
Most days I have two AI platforms open at once.
I start in one place and end up ten layers deep somewhere else.
It keeps going. I don’t.
My brain can’t hold all of the possibilities. Version after version after version.
I know. I’ll use AI to create a system for how I keep track of all the things. Or do I?
Maybe what I really need are constraints.
This email is a constraint. Name it after a day of the week, and just like that, one morning has a job.
It’s a time constraint...and a social one.
I’ve told the world I’m doing this, which means on Thursday morning, I don’t get to negotiate with myself.
It’s why people sign up for marathons… to make running non-negotiable.
Choice
Give someone three options, they pick one. Give them thirty, they choose nothing.
Barry Schwartz talks about this in his TED talk on the paradox of choice. More choice paralyzes us.
Me and AI, daily. Why choose when you can keep digging?
Creative
Dr. Seuss wrote Green Eggs and Ham using just 50 words.
No, I will not eat them, Sam I am.
I didn’t know the constraint, but I can recite it. You could say it worked.
Resource
While in orbit, Apollo 13 had to make a square filter fit a round hole using only what was on the ship… which forced a solution no one would have planned.
GE had to take a $100,000 ultrasound machine and make it work for under $15,000 in rural China… which forced them to rethink everything.
When you don’t have everything… you get resourceful. Today we have more than everything.
We have everything’s everything.
Unlimited input. Unlimited options. Unlimited ways to start.
The real skill now is deciding what not to do.
I’m… working on it.
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Each week, I share something I’m learning, living, or working out in real time. It’s part storytelling, part reflection. I hope there’s something in it for you too.
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