I've quit trying to keep up with AI. Here's what I do instead

Adapting to new things is what humans do.

BREAKING: 29 new AI models just released while you were reading this sentence.

Is it just me or has social media become unusable at this point?

Between the AI deepfakes, the fake AI influencers, and the “136 AI Tools you NEED to Know Yesterday!“, I’ve given up.

I was born in the eighties and remember a time before all this craziness. There’s a different way.

It’s a slow, boring, approach that can actually make you irreplaceable.

As an AI research engineer there’s too much to keep up with. So I don’t try anymore. Instead, I focus on one thing at a time.

This allows me to at least learn something.

And then I can learn the next thing.

And eventually compound knowledge takes over.

Act Like You’ll Be Around Tomorrow

One mistake that causes me to die a little inside is seeing people racing to produce instead of slowing down to understand.

They’re cramming like life is one big test. Without grasping the fundamentals underneath.

I get it. Sometimes you need to get shit done. But I try to tell my kids, my mentees, and anyone who will listen:

Go slower in the short term so you can go faster in the long term.

It’s the bitter lesson I’ve learned each time I dive into something new. Focus on understanding systems, principles, frameworks — the foundations that won’t change. Take as long as you need here.

Invest your time in what will stay the same.

How to Survive the Information Age

To build timeless knowledge you need quality inputs and space to focus.

Here’s what has helped me:

Protect your attention: I dropped most newsletters, removed social media from my phone, and set my colors to grayscale. I try to resist that impulse to check my phone or get a hit of dopamine scrolling a news feed. Sit with that feeling a little longer and allow your mind the space to be bored sometimes.

Go back to books: Books and research papers contain the best ideas from people who invested months or years of effort to distill their knowledge into something potent. There can be useful nuggets in blog posts and youtube videos, but the ratio of signal to noise is much more consistent in books.

Read with intention: I read non-fiction with pencil, circling concepts I don’t understand and taking notes in the margins. I love my Kindle, but holy cow it’s liberating to write all over the paper. When I’m done, I voice record myself reviewing the notes. Then have an LLM organize that transcript so I can save a digital copy for my second brain. I don’t finish every book I start, sometimes I just read the chapter I needed.

Consume the same good content more than once: When you read something of high quality, go back and savor it again. Instill the lesson, don’t rush off to the next thing looking for another answer. I struggled with this- always wanting to finish something so I could move on. But learning takes time. I’ve given myself permission to be a slow reader.

Embrace the struggle: This discomfort is what stretching yourself to learn feels like. The pain or resistance you feel is often a signal that something good is on the other side if you just sit with it a little longer. When you encounter this feeling, take a moment to go deeper, go slower. Ask AI for a personal explanation of what you might be stuck on. It takes courage to face the struggle, but you get rewarded for doing so.

Are you optimizing for output or growth? Be conscious of what you are trying to accomplish. Are you just vibe coding a demo to have something to show? Or are you building a foundation of skills and knowledge so you can do something special in the future? Short term output is fine at times, but pay attention to the balance here and make sure it’s what you want it to be. I’m still experimenting with the right way to use AI that doesn’t completely outsource my thinking.

While the world gets noisier, your ability to think deeply and sustain attention becomes increasingly rare and valuable.

You Don’t Need to Do It All

The beauty of being human is that you CAN’T do it all. You’ll always be missing out on something.

Next time you feel overwhelmed, focus on what you can control. Don’t worry about where AI is going; worry about what you are doing.

You don’t need to become an AI expert by tomorrow. You just need to take one small step.

Then tomorrow, take another.