The client email came back opening with "I hope this finds you well." You cut it in four seconds, without thinking, the way you did last month and the month before. You have been calling that "AI being weird this week." Or "I must have phrased it differently." Or nothing at all. It has a name. It is drift, and it is not random. Random and patterned fail differently This matters more than it sounds like it does. If a thing is random, the rational response is tolerance. You absorb it. You check...
21 days ago • 2 min read
A lot is moving at once. Anthropic shipped Opus 5.5 on Tuesday, and OpenAI shipped GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna an hour later. The week before, TypeSafe shipped Jev, a model that answers with a typed decision and a probability attached instead of a paragraph. I wrote about Jev and that probability on Monday. Any of these may get an issue of its own. This one is about something older than all of them. Your prompt document is on version seven, and somewhere in its filename is the word FINAL,...
27 days ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader,A confession, and then a count you can run in ninety seconds. Try a count with me. Right now, list every place something can arrive and become your problem: every inbox, app, thread, pad and voice memo. Most people expect three. Most people find six or seven, and they built most of them on purpose, each one solving something real at the time. Mini Insight Here is what the count reveals, and it is not what most people expect. The problem was never that I was disorganised. Everything...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
This is Issue #1 of Build a Business that Learns, focused on AI-powered business growth and automation. AI related content not your cup of tea? Stop the Thursday AI newsletter. You wrote the rule for your AI tool down. You told the tool to use this rule. You told it again on Tuesday. Thursday's draft came back without it. So you corrected it a third time, and somewhere in the back of your head a small tally went up by one. I did the same thing to myself last week. I want to show you the exact...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader,Short one this week. I spent most of it in Ruth Poundwhite's Aligned AI Summit, and the useful thing I have for you takes four minutes. Mini Insight Here is a test worth running on whatever system you are using. Can you see your week, the whole shape of it, without opening an app, expanding a view, or clicking into anything? If the answer is no, the problem is not that you need a better tool. It is that your week lives in a place that requires a retrieval step, and a retrieval step...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader,157 of you have never told me how you work. That is not a complaint. It is the reason some weeks this letter probably reads like it was written for somebody else. Today I want to fix that, and it takes two questions. Mini Insight Most productivity advice fails for a reason that has nothing to do with the advice. It was built by someone whose wiring is not yours. They needed structure, so they prescribe structure. They thrive on momentum, so they prescribe momentum. It worked for...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader,Last week you wrote three lines: the Tell, the First Move, the Floor. Most people spend thirty seconds on the third one and move on. This week we go back to it, because the Floor is the line that decides whether September holds. Mini Insight Here is the thing nobody says about a system that stopped working. It did not fail because you got lazy in August. It failed because you designed it on a good day, for a good day. Full energy, clear calendar, nothing on fire. That version of you...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader, On Monday I sent you one question. Few of you answered (which is its own answer) and the answers that came mostly said the same thing: stay in the lane. So this is the lane. Saturday Reset goes back to what it has always been: productivity that fits your wiring, designed for your worst day. The AI work gets its own home. I’ll tell you where at the very end, in one short note you’re free to skip. That’s the whole change. Now, September. Mini Insight The end of August does something...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader,One correction before anything else: I told you the live session was August 12. I’m moving it. Here’s the honest reason — the Sampler Pack lands Monday, August 17, and running a live workshop on the loop five days before you have the thing that runs it was backwards sequencing on my part. The workshop moves to September, after you’ve had a few weeks to put the Sampler to work in your own business — so when you watch the loop run live, your own work is in it, not mine. The Sampler...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Hi Reader,Open the AI you use most and ask one question: if I stopped using it tomorrow, what would I take with me? If the answer is “nothing — my standards live in their tool,” you’re using an assistant, and renting. If the answer is “my standards, my corrections, my whole way of working, because they live in my system,” you’re running an operating system, and owning. Most people, honestly, are renting. Assistant vs. operating system An assistant responds to the request in front of it and...
3 months ago • 2 min read