Lowering your cortisol

I’m knee deep in AI literature and hypedom these days (jealous yet?). It’s important for me to know what the implications of OpenAI and Microsoft’s relationship falling apart is for their partnership and future AI investments. I need to have a POV on what Cursor’s play is when they hire talent from Anthropic to build up their agentic capabilities.¹ Part of what my clients expect is my synthesis of what’s happening, and how that can help inform their AI strategy.

But that also means I need to drink from the firehose of AI headlines, which cover the gamut of AI taking our jobs, AI companies with bad workplace mojo, the browser wars, new SOTA model capabilities, and other potentially useful information.² 

It’s a lot to keep up with, and AI fads in particular tend to age like milk.³ To that end, something I try to avoid is spending too much time on media that has a short half life, which is most media these days. There’s something about time being the ultimate arbiter of what’s important vs. what’s ephemeral that I try be mindful of.⁴ It’s fine if you’re actively trying to keep up with the latest, but be honest with yourself - much of what you’re reading (in particular related to AI) isn’t useful, long term information that will be relevant in 12 (3? 6?) months.

Try as I might though, it’s hard to read the label from inside of the bottle.

🇮🇹 And then Italy called

In the midst of sprinting on the hamster wheel, my family and I took a long planned vacation to the Puglia region of Italy.⁵ Beyond the ridiculous beauty of the region, we immediately noticed that the reception and WiFi were spotty at best. After a few days of attempting to keep up with my daily diet of current events and AI happenings, I grew increasingly frustrated when my internet dropped halfway though a thoughtful article on the merits of individual privacy in the AI age.⁶ Refresh after painful refresh, we concluded that if WiFi were always this bad, we wouldn't be checking our phones nearly as often. So we put them away and...get this...experienced the moment.

In addition to the benefits of living in the now, this experience stood in stark contrast to my daily life. I was unconcerned with new AI workflows, or if Cursor or Windsurf or Claude Code were the best coding assistant, or if Grok was antisemitic or just based.

Every now and then I checked what's going on, started to care, quickly lost interest (the WiFi dropping didn’t help), and put down the phone. This repeated every few days. And it turns out, I didn't miss much (that mattered anyway!).

🐔 Chicken Soup for the Soul

So, is it time to throw away your phones and adopt a Mediterranean lifestyle? Almost certainly yes if you can swing it.

But also, rather than refilling your bucket once a year during a big vacation, why not try to incorporate that feeling into your lifestyle? I wish I knew how to meditate, as folks seems to love that practice. For me, though, recharging (or maybe simply disconnecting) looks like hiking, cycling, reading fiction⁷, calling my parents, IRL activities with friends⁸, and spending time with my family (preferably outside). What's on your list?⁹

💁 Everyone can use a little help

If you’re like me, you get sucked into things, and find it hard to escape. Don’t feel bad as the system (by which I mean, the internet) has been A/B tested to the nth degree to keep you enraged and engaged. I happen to be very habit and calendar oriented, so things like a recurring monthly calendar hold with old friends, weekly reminders to call the folks, a timer on my phone limiting my use of social media, etc. make it easier. But your mileage may vary¹⁰. What rituals or tools do you use?

🧘 Lowering our collective cortisol levels

So yeah, AI is coming (or already here) and I recommend everyone get up to speed in a way that works for you¹¹. And for those already on the cutting edge, who are optimizing your AI-enabled workflows every 3 days, consider, for your own sanity, taking a break and stepping back for a period of time. You’re not going to miss the AI bullet-train¹². The news (whether its AI, finance, politics, whatever) is coming at us faster than ever, making our bullshit filters more important than ever.

Instead of spending your time mindlessly keeping up with the latest (for the sake of it? because we feel like we have to? because....society?), pause and (paraphrasing the Kondo method) ask yourself if you’re gaining or losing energy from that activity. Despite the juiciness of the Elon vs. Trump saga, sometimes the best move is to disconnect, slow down, and invest in the people, places, and practices that make you feel alive and present.¹³

¹ The tech talent wars are heating up!

² During the process, I catch a lot of strays too. One learning after following multiple daily AI newsletters for a while is that they repeat and repackage each other’s information, making it really easy to skim.

³ Pour one out for our Prompt Engineers.

⁴ Think of it as a short term version of the Lindy effect.

⁵ If anyone needs recommendations on stuff to do here with two young kids, let me know!

⁶ Or my 10th instagram video dissecting the important discussion of if 100 men (no weapons) can beat a single gorilla 🦍 (tldr: it depends)

⁷ This remains my white whale.

⁸ Preferably those that are non-techies, where people type out things like "in real life", don’t have opinions on CoreWeaves acquisition strategy, and don't put their phones on the table facing up during dinner.

⁹   If you don’t know, then that’s a good sign it’s an important question for you to think about.

¹⁰ See, I’m already avoiding YMMV!

¹¹ Happy to share my recommendations!

¹² More likely than not, what you’re “optimizing” is going to be make obsolete in 3 months when a frontier model can do it out of the box (unless you enjoy tinkering for the sake of it, then go wild!).

¹³ Like subscribing to this newsletter, duh.