Instead of a newsletter this week I thought I'd experiment with a longer form email on an idea that I think is worth sharing.

Let me know what you think and if you want more / less of this format. In my head I've been calling this the 'single good idea'.

One of my favourite questions to ask people is "what is a new thing you've recently done with AI", often followed up by a "what do you want to be able to do next". It's a pretty quick way to find out where their learning edge is.

"I have a note take that goes to meetings I can't attend and gives me a summary in slack"
"I learned git by working with claude code, it took me all weekend but I got there in the end"
"I spent the weekend trying to get claude code integrated with my email, got it nearly working but not quite"
"I used nano banana to create an image of an alternate vision for a motorway project I disagree with" <- that was Joel sitting next to me as I write this.
"Running multiple coding agents in parallel github worktrees" <- also Joel. Joel's a dev.

A couple of things I've noticed doing this over and over again

• Everyone is trying new stuff, some people fast, some people slow
• There is a spectrum from 'took me 5 minutes, loved it' to 'took me a whole lot of time and I got stuck'
• We can all be doing more, there opportunity space is immense

I usually finish with the same suggestion - spend 30 minutes a day using AI in a new way. A new task, a new workflow on an old task, a different tool. Whatever. Like exercise, the details do matter, but no where near as much as just showing up consistently.

But a lot of people don't have a plan on what to do next.

Here's a simple strategy: talk to people you know about what they've been doing. Steal my question. Pay less attention to what you see on social media and more to what people you know are actually doing (or want to do). Build up a "new AI stuff to try" list and every day, try something new.

Naturally, you can also jump on a course like the AI Level Up and you'll go faster than on your own. But, again like exercise, everyone can do it on their own and should. You don't need to join a gym to go for a 30 min walk everyday.

The thing I love about the 30 minutes a day thing is we can all do that in the context of our work, it can be 30 minutes on something that's already on your to-do list. The results might be a little unpredictable (either good or bad impacts on quality or time) because you're trying something new.
a) it's only 30 minutes so it isn't an uncapped risk
b) the more you practice it, the more likely you are to have wins and get net positive overall.

That's why I structured the time requirements for my courses at 3-5 hours per week. 30 min each workday trying something new, 30 min a week to read/watch the curriculum. An hour a week for a call if you're in a live cohort.

My goal is to set people up to have a whole lot of little wins and walk away with a big net positive return.

cheers,

JV

PS: today is the last day for enrollments in the live AI Level Up cohort kicking off on March 2. A bunch of you are on it already and I'm super excited to be spending some time with you all.