Hey there! Welcome back to this propeller plane edition of Plane Thoughts, written on ATR 72s between London, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. This week, five short reflections on things I've been doing and thinking about, rather than the usual single idea.
Amber warning lights
The lack of editions for the last two Sundays has been due to illness. The last few weeks have been a run of very long days of business trips, client events and filming studios, with weekends spent just about patching myself up enough to go again on Monday. It wasn't a surprise; I could feel the symptoms appearing a couple of days before, but I pushed on regardless to meet all my commitments.
It reminded me of one of my favourite things I've read in a book over the years. In The Success Principles, Jack Canfield makes the point that in life there are rarely unexpected events, but most things come with yellow warning lights ahead of time. These are the small signals that something is not right. We simply choose to ignore them, feign ignorance or notice and then explain away until the choice to deal with them is taken away from us. The body usually knows first.
There's nothing to it but to do it
When we take on something new, we tend to spend a long time doing our homework. But there is no better preparation than simply doing the thing.
Over the last couple of weeks I have done a lot of interviewing and podcasting in front of cameras, and there is so much about posture, facial expressions, AV, editing, social cuts, lighting and clothes that I could only have learned by doing. The quicker we start, the quicker we learn through iteration, and the quicker we reach proficiency.
The importance of learning new things
It has also been a very rewarding couple of weeks, in part because of that. In self-determination theory of motivation in psychology, competence, the experience of getting better at something, is one of three basic psychological needs, alongside autonomy and connection, and wellbeing tracks whether those needs are being met.
Developing a new skill is not a luxury for when life settles down; it is an important determinant of feeling good and satisfied in our lives.
A use case for learning
We learn best when we can practically apply that learning. For those wanting to broaden their technical skillset with AI, I think that having a personal project outside of work is a great way to push yourself by trying to build solutions for problems you face every day.
This week I spent a few hours with Claude Code building a habit tracker and dashboard to keep me on track with new habits I am trying to adhere to for the rest of the year. I find it pretty exciting that instead of downloading an existing app, you can now build one entirely around your own design and user experience preferences, and how you actually live.
AI is so valuable at context
Sticking with AI, the single most useful thing I did with it last week was use it to find context. Ahead of a Q&A I hosted with a Formula 1 driver on mindset and decision-making (more another time), I attached the questions I’d drafted and submitted, and used it to produce a briefing pack. It provided me with detailed background on each of my questions, drawn from previous podcasts featuring the driver, articles and recent events. It took approximately five minutes to produce what would have taken me many hours.
I wrote in Cognitive surrender about the risk of handing our thinking to the machine. But on the other side of that line, AI is extraordinary at processing huge amounts of context, drawing patterns and finding meaning in it. I find it extremely high value-add not in doing the thinking but in deepening it: submit your original thought, and let it go further than your time constraints (or priorities) allow you.
This is the first edition made up of shorter thoughts rather than one topic, so I’d appreciate any feedback on the format.
Have a great week,
— AJ
My recent publications
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