Luca, your point about making room for hard things really caught my attention, especially in the context of AI.
I keep wondering what becomes possible when we deliberately free ourselves from repetitive cognitive work. Could that give us more room for the kinds of thinking that are difficult to rush, like connecting distant ideas, questioning assumptions, or exploring something we don't yet understand?
But there's an interesting catch in your energy jar analogy. Emptying the jar doesn't necessarily mean we'll fill it with rocks. We might just find more sand!
Perhaps one of the most important skills in the AI age will be learning to protect the space we've gained, and choosing what deserves our thinking.
The jar image matches a rule I keep: count the days in a row without a single block of deep work. That streak is the only alarm that has actually worked for me. My mornings mostly belong to other people, so the rock that fits is an afternoon I defend in advance, before the week fills it with sand.
The jar is exactly what I watched happen to the best people in large companies: the week fills with sand because good work earns more work, and the rocks never go in.
The fix that worked wasn't more discipline. It was booking the rock first, one real block, before anyone else planned the week, and defending it like a meeting with the CEO. Half the time on stretch work sounds ambitious; one protected block is where everyone can start.
The centaur framing matches my year better than the 'agents replace engineers' story. I stopped writing code by hand in December, and my job turned into deciding architecture and reviewing what comes back. My open question: how does a junior learn to review code they never had to write?
I trying this for my tea/ahsd
Luca, your point about making room for hard things really caught my attention, especially in the context of AI.
I keep wondering what becomes possible when we deliberately free ourselves from repetitive cognitive work. Could that give us more room for the kinds of thinking that are difficult to rush, like connecting distant ideas, questioning assumptions, or exploring something we don't yet understand?
But there's an interesting catch in your energy jar analogy. Emptying the jar doesn't necessarily mean we'll fill it with rocks. We might just find more sand!
Perhaps one of the most important skills in the AI age will be learning to protect the space we've gained, and choosing what deserves our thinking.
The jar image matches a rule I keep: count the days in a row without a single block of deep work. That streak is the only alarm that has actually worked for me. My mornings mostly belong to other people, so the rock that fits is an afternoon I defend in advance, before the week fills it with sand.
The jar is exactly what I watched happen to the best people in large companies: the week fills with sand because good work earns more work, and the rocks never go in.
The fix that worked wasn't more discipline. It was booking the rock first, one real block, before anyone else planned the week, and defending it like a meeting with the CEO. Half the time on stretch work sounds ambitious; one protected block is where everyone can start.
The centaur framing matches my year better than the 'agents replace engineers' story. I stopped writing code by hand in December, and my job turned into deciding architecture and reviewing what comes back. My open question: how does a junior learn to review code they never had to write?