My use of AI has plateaued in the past year and I’ve pushed in the last week or so to find other uses.
My plateau has a few active AI use cases: - ChatGPT for creating pictures for the newsletter every week - Perplexity for search every day - ChatGPT for periodic technical questions (like code, functions) - ChatGPT for periodic brainstorming of cooking options
Those AI uses are helpful! But I’m certainly not on the cutting edge of AI.
I’ve been trying new things, with the following themes: bespoke tools, other LLMs, and more use cases with existing tools.
Bespoke: I’ve been paying attention to tools that other people recommend, finding new things (like the two I listed in Three Things below). There are some interesting bespoke solutions out there, but nothing I've really adopted yet.
Other LLM: I tried Claude and really like how they organize your work into projects. ChatGPT has a flat list, which isn’t helpful to organize context around different things I’m working on. Pi.ai was fun for conversation, and I had it give me feedback on an email I’d written.
More Use Cases: I’ve been trying to use ChatGPT for more things than cooking and technical questions. I had it challenge me on risks around some new ideas. I had it estimate the cost of a pool. I had it brainstorm with me. It was helpful, but I didn’t feel like anything “stuck” with me.
What’s next for me?
1️⃣ I want to play around more with CustomGPTs for my use cases. Then I want to think about how I might call them into conversations with each other.
2️⃣ I want to start using AI in automations / operations. How can I really get an agent to act on things?
3️⃣ I want to take advantage of the 22,000+ book highlights in my library (and the 2,800 notes in my non-work Obsidian vault). It’s all just sitting there, doing nothing! I read 10 book highlights a day, but otherwise they sit idle.
Where are you on your journey with AI? What’s the best thing you’re doing with AI right now? Any suggestions for what I should try next?
Habit is far more dependable than inspiration. Make progress by making habits. Don’t focus on getting into shape. Focus on becoming the kind of person who never misses a workout.
— Kevin Kelly in "Excellent Advice for Living"
Three Things
1 - 🖱️ Logitech MX Master 3S for Mac - I’ve been using the standard Apple mouse for a decade, starting when I moved to a company that used Apple products, and it kind of sucks. I just got this new Logitech mouse and I love it. As soon as I turned it on it was so smooooth. I have horizontal scroll for Excel! It’s more ergonomic. And…you can charge it while using it! (iykyk) Worth every penny.
2 - 🪞 Yoodli, AI Communication Coach - This is a cool AI video coach. You can practice presentations or use it in the background on live calls. My favorite thing is the stats at the end; you can get a count of your filler words, your speaking pace, and smiling duration; good feedback if that’s something you’re working on. During live calls it’ll alert you if it thinks you’re rambling! (video here)
3 - 🍫 Granola, Bot-less Meeting Notes - Someone sent this to me and I specifically love one thing about it; it can take meeting notes without having a weird bot join a call. It uses your computer audio as the source. You can take quick notes in a side panel and Granola will clean them up and add things you missed.
Deeper Dive on Affirmative Guidance
When you need something done, it’s more effective to tell people what to do. Not what not to do.
You tell people what something is, not what it’s not.
I call this idea “affirmative guidance.”
To illustrate by example, imagine you’re reading a document authored by your team, and you don’t like a section. If you respond with, “Don’t approach it this way” or “This is confusing,” what does the team know?
All the team will know is that you don’t like it. They won’t know what you want done.
If you have a strong perspective and want fast cycles, you need to tell the team what to do. Use affirmative guidance.
It’s where one person has an object in mind and the other players need to guess it. They do this by asking a series of yes/no questions and using deductive reasoning to figure out what you had in mind.
Is it an animal? Is it bigger than a mailbox? Is it common in Africa?
What am I thinking of?
Using 20 questions to figure out what’s in someone else’s head is hard! Certainly harder than if the person playing just said what they were thinking of.
This is happening to your team when you don’t use affirmative guidance. By saying all the things to avoid, or that you don’t want, you’re making them work harder to figure out what’s in your head.
Just tell them you want a cat.
...it was a cat.
Examples
Once you’re aware of this, you can see examples in all walks of life!
Restaurant Planning Have you ever been coordinating with a friend where to go out to eat, and they just poo-poo your choices, or tell you where they don’t want to go? Infuriating!
You might have accidentally done this yourself!
Instead of saying where you don’t want to go, or don’t want to eat, use affirmative guidance. Say where you want to go or what you want to eat. Much clearer!
ChatGPT Images This one is personal and silly, but highly illustrative. When I was using ChatGPT to create the header image for this newsletter, I was having a hell of a time! The AI kept putting a phone in the guy’s hand.
I kept telling it different variations of “don’t put a phone in his hand,” thinking I was being really explicit.
It wasn’t until I told it the specific outcome I wanted - “make the hands empty” - that I finally got what I was looking for. Huzzah!
It took me a while to get this hands to be empty.
Diet Instructions If you wanted people to eat better, you could say “no junk food,” but that’s not clear. What’s junk food? Every time you wanted to eat, you’d have to run it through this junk food filter.
Alternatively, you could say, “Drink 64 ounces of water per day and consume one gram of protein per pound of body weight.” That’s quite clear! It’s easier to comply with because you know exactly what to do.
The person on the diet plan will have much greater clarity on their behavior in the second statement than the first.
Website I’ve been considering a new computer and investigated Apple’s MacBook line. On their website Apple tells me exactly what it is. It tells me the screen size, the battery life, the number of ports, the weight, the price, etc.
It give me two clear calls to action; I can either learn more or buy.
They do this because it works. It tells the consumer exactly what they’re getting and how to get it.
Can you imagine a universe where they didn’t tell me those things? I played around with it in the image below. It’s extremely confusing!
In an A/B test, I suspect the one on the left will win.
I don’t know what I’m getting! I don’t know how much it costs or how much it weighs. I don’t know the screen size. All I know is a few things it is not.
I’m much less likely to buy something when they don’t use affirmative guidance.
Why does affirmative guidance work?
It’s pretty clear that when outcomes and speed matter, using affirmative guidance is effective. But let’s dig deeper into some primary principles to see why this is better.
Ironic Process Theory This concept’s name is something I had to look up. You might know it better as the “pink elephant paradox.” If I told you not to think of a pink elephant, you’d be hard-pressed to do anything other than think of a pink elephant.
This is what you’re doing to your team if you tell them what you don’t want. You’re ironically loading into their active thought processes all the things you want to avoid. Not ideal! You clutter up their mind.
Provides Clarity, Avoids Infinite Possibilities When there’s something you want, that means there are an infinite number of things you don’t want.
In order to narrow down to the thing you want, you’d have to list all the things it’s not. Since there’s an infinite number of them, that’s a fools game. You can’t get there!
The best you can hope for is that your team eventually figures it out through deduction, but that’s error-prone and time-consuming. Don’t waste everyone’s time.
Reduces Cognitive Load Related to the above two points, it takes so much more cognitive load to stop thinking of the wrong thing, and to deduce from the infinite possibilities what someone truly wants but isn’t saying.
Not only does it take time to process that load, but it’s super effortful. You want your team to save their time and energy for the things that matter.
Emphasizes Action Momentum is a very powerful force in business. When you tell people what something isn’t, you’re putting up all these little roadblocks on their path to success.
The team now has to run through a list of things to avoid, which emphasizes inaction. “Don’t do this.” “Don’t do that.”
You want to emphasize action and forward momentum. You want to give the team a clear target to go after.
This does not inspire forward progress.
Now that you’ve got a lot of examples and the underlying principles of why this works, it’s time to put it into action!
Call to Action
Speaking to people with affirmative guidance is one of those things that’s simple, but not necessarily easy.
You might be surprised at how often you do the opposite! Listen for “no” or “don’t” words when speaking or listening to those around you. Those are clues that you’re not being clear.
The good news is you can start practicing immediately!
When you get to work this week, be conscious of affirmative guidance when you’re engaging with your team. Don’t emphasize all the things you don’t want, or what they should avoid. Get straight to the point and tell them what you want.
Remember: It’s a cat. 😁
If you catch yourself this week, I’d love to hear the examples. What did you say? How did it go? What affirmative guidance did you switch to, and how did that work? Let me know at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz.
