trail notes

Therapist + systems thinker. exploring why we become stuck in inaction and how we start moving again. Building with Ai to get these ideas out of my head.

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https://t.co/vwRvyNHy0s

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Most teachers use AI like a vending machine. Type a request, take whatever drops out, wonder why it sounds like a robot. Here are 5 Shifts you can make today to improve the output you get with AI.

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Pick one. Try it this week. One click, one question, one tiny build.

We're building a home for teachers who build. Come hang out: https://t.co/hYTzFojOnm

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Most teachers use AI like a vending machine. Type a request, take whatever drops out, wonder why it sounds like a robot.

It doesn't have to be that way. 5 small shifts that make AI actually work for you:

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5. Build something small first.

Not an app. One tiny tool. Mine takes one form and spits out a calendar invite, an email, and a signed PDF. A day to build, hours saved every week. Start with your most repetitive task.

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AI will produce anything you ask for. It can't tell you what's worth producing.

That's the skill now. Knowing what you want before you ask. Holding the picture in your head. Iterating until the output matches it.

Discernment is the whole job now.

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A student kept reaching for the phone every fifteen minutes, frustrated nothing was working.

They just wanted to study, but "cant"

So, I asked what the phone in their hand was a vote for.

Toward the person they wanted to become, or away.

When things are hard to get started we just need to remember that moving toward what matters is what matters.

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The best AI skill I’ve learned came from my therapy training. You sit there, pay attention, and follow what shows up. Turns out that’s exactly how you get good at prompting an LLM too.

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@kwonlabs Sick!

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I love a zero inbox.

I also subscribe to way too many newsletters.

For a long time those two things fought each other.

Either my inbox was flooded, or I archived everything unread just to clear the noise.

So I built something to fix it.

A separate space where newsletters live on their own, away from my inbox.

I sign up with a dedicated email, forward the ones I already get, and read them when I actually have time.

Turns out the problem was never the newsletters. It was where they lived.

What’s a problem you got tired of complaining about and just built instead?

#Builders #buildinpublic #claude #vibecoding

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Most people think social media costs them time.

Talked to someone this week who took three months off. More creative. More engaged. More alive to what’s possible.

It wasn’t taking her time. It was taking the space where her best thinking lived.

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You can't train AI to sound like you if you don't know what you sound like.

And it’s not a tech problem.

Most people have never studied their own voice. You just write. You don't watch yourself writing.

So when it's time to "train the AI," they hand over adjectives.

"Conversational. Warm. Direct."

Adjectives are interpretations. The AI gets a costume, not a person.

That gap is where every flat, lifeless output comes from.

Your voice isn't your word choice. It's the specific stuff you'd never think to list.

Do you start paragraphs with "Look" when you're about to disagree?

Do you drop a one-sentence paragraph after a long one for emphasis?

Do you refuse to define terms your audience should already know?

Those patterns ARE the voice. And most people can't name a single one of theirs.

Here's what made this uncomfortable for me:

it's the same reason people struggle to articulate their values, their positioning, their so-called personal brand.

Voice is just the surface layer of a deeper self-opacity.

Before you fine-tune anything, do the slower work.

Pull up your last 20 posts. Read them like a stranger.

Mark the patterns, the tics, the structural habits you repeat without deciding to.

That observation is the actual labor. Everything after it is just copy-paste.

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Teachers finally have the upper hand.

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AI is going to destroy the Ed Tec subscription empire

You didn’t get into education because it paid a lot, but every subscription just kills your already tight budget. You want to engage your class in new and invovative ways, but is it worth 20$ a month?

Then there another tool for 20$ a month and another. It’s frankly getting rediculous.

AI is giving teachers to the opportunity to build apps and resources that actually help their students learn and engage with the material in a novel way. It’s finally removing the toll booth.

Teacher have always been strapped and they keep showing up cause they care. This allows them to finally do cool things without paying for it too.

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https://t.co/rkQEMkghPe

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You don't need a better prompt.

You need to stop acting like you're only allowed one question.

People spend 20 minutes crafting one perfect prompt instead of asking 5 imperfect ones.

All that effort front-loaded into a single attempt, optimizing the wrong variable entirely.

Kinda makes sense why, though.

Search engines trained us to compress everything into the fewest possible words. We've been rewarded for brevity our whole digital lives.

But this isn't a search engine.

That first response isn't the answer.

It's new information about what to ask next, the first pull of a loose thread, not a finished product.

Ask it to critique its own answer.
Ask what it assumed.
Ask what it left out.

Three follow-ups, ten seconds each. That's where the real output lives.

Worth sitting with: what else are you treating like a one-shot problem because somewhere you learned that needing more than one try meant you weren't good enough?

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your procrastination problem isnt always a willpower problem.

My dog Gus Gus pulls so hard on the leash he chokes himself. Grunting, gasping, still going.

Most of us do the same thing with the tasks we keep putting off.

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Gus Gus off leash doesn't run away.

Neither do you.

When you name what's pulling back, the jaw unclenches.

You move at your own pace.

You cover more ground.

Not because you pulled harder, but because you stopped fighting.

Follow @trail_notes for weekly essays on getting unstuck.

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My dog Gus Gus pulls so hard on the leash he chokes himself. Grunting, gasping, still going.

His only strategy is more force.Eventually he stops.

Not because he wants to walk beside me. Because the fight drained him.

He's compliant. Not calm.
🧵

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The quieter move: stop pulling and look at the leash itself.

What am I actually afraid will happen if I do this imperfectly?

Sometimes the answer loosens the collar on its own.