January Round-Up: Are you Claude-pilled?
Software-shaped problems, trade-offs, art and authenticity
Hello! January’s been cold here in Berlin. It’s snowing again as a write this. It’s also been exciting: season two of the podcast kicked off, and I’m moving from “I need to figure everything out right now” to “just get lost, follow your curiosity, and have fun with it.” I’m sure this is directly inspired by my recent chats with Rick and Karin, as well as next week's episode with Dave Kang (spoiler alert!).
This is also a new format I’m trying, a monthly roundup of interesting articles and topics I’m thinking about. Let me know if you find it useful, or if there’s anything you’d like to see more (or less) of.
Are you Claude-pilled? I think I might be.
I’ve worked in tech and built websites and other nerdy side projects for 15+ years (yikes). So I don’t know why I’ve been slow to adopt tools like Claude Code in my personal life when I use it every day at work. Maybe it’s the AI-skeptic in me or the knowledge of just how much data these tools actually extract from us and where that may head. A lot of my friends in tech are also the least heavy personal users.
I don’t quite know where I land yet, and in this round-up I am intentionally trying to show both sides, from “the data grab is real” to “it’s damn fun to build with Claude”.
And that’s what I finally started doing this month: building personal projects with Claude. And I think I get it.
As Henrik Karlsson shared recently, once you start spotting “software-shaped problems” and realising the cost of building them is basically zero now, well, it becomes addictive. In one week, I’ve built:
A tool to backup all my Substack posts into Notion and local markdown files that runs every month (and can be fed back into Claude for playing around with content creation).
A small collection of utilities for my podcast to one-shot tasks like cleaning up messy transcripts.
A silly multiplayer web game I then played with my family online
A small journal prompts app that gives you a prompt in a certain category and a timer.
Each was done in a matter of hours. I can’t help but wonder how this changes the SaaS industry. Why pay for 20 euros a month for software that does “most” of what you want when you can create your own customised tool in about an hour with prompting?
A few more great articles I’ve been reading that convinced me to finally give it a go:
Claude Code and What Comes Next and Management as AI superpower from Ethan Mollick are fantastic.
claude code psychosis - paywalled, but worth it, from Jasmine Sun. “Claudecrastination” is absolutely going to be part of my vocabulary going forward.
And for a hilarious but still accurate take (albeit also partially paywalled), Generative AI is an expensive edging machine - “It is not a revolution in computing, but a revolution in accepting lower standards.”
Worth reading
On careers & trade-offs
The Opportunity Cost of Your Dream Job from Jon Miltimore resurfaced and reminded me of the great Thomas Sowell quote: “there are no solutions, only trade-offs”. Every decision opens some doors and closes others. Every yes is a no to something else. The tricky bit is that you often can’t see what you’re giving up in advance. I forget this lesson when it comes to my own work. Right now it feels like there are limitless opportunities, and it’s hard to resist trying to do all of the things all at once.
On audience growth & creative practice
How to grow a following without compromising everything good in your life - Michelle Elisabeth Varghese on sustainable audience building. She breaks down how to build something that doesn’t require you to sacrifice your sanity or turn into a content machine, which is very much on my mind right now.
Do what the platform wants - Sasha Chapin on growing a Substack audience and that if you’re trying to build an audience on a platform, you need to play to that platform’s strengths. It reminded me that I’m not very good at being disagreeable. The opposite is my biggest strength in my day job (building cohesion). But clear, persuasive opinions may matter more than hedging everything all the time.
The relentless pursuit of purpose can hold us back - Jing on moral perfectionism, and the trap of needing every creative thing to be world‑changing. Felt this one a lot as a recovering try-hard. I used to think every project had to prove something about me or connect to my ‘purpose’, but most things can just be joyful experiments that don’t carry the weight of my whole identity.
A cheat sheet to do great work - A straightforward, pretty little graphic based on a Paul Graham essay about doing things that are important to you.
On AI & creativity
Ben Affleck on why AI won’t replace writers - Joe Lazer (FKA Lazauskas) explains how AI companies are incentivised to scare us, but the reality is that AI is still very much in “the vortex of mid” in creative work. I feel this every time I try to brainstorm anything genuinely creative with AI and the result is “meh”.
James Popsy’s latest video on art and authenticity - Can you tell what you’re looking at is made by a human? Is that important? Personally I’m with James: it is. As he says, “there is nothing more interesting in the world than another person’s perspective.” I want art to be imperfect, flawed, and well... human. I also love the idea of “participatory discrepancies”. Human error in art is how art becomes relatable and palatable. With generative art looming over us, it’s nice to be reminded that good art is inherently flawed and human.
The Ladder to Nowhere: How OpenAI Plans to Learn Everything About You - Privacat’s harrowing deep-dive shows just exactly how AI companies are laddering themselves to more and more of your data.
Books
Art Work: On the Creative Life by Sally Mann - Really, really good. A few things that stuck with me:
Every creative should write or log their journey over time.
Everyone doubts or goes through periods where nothing works. Keep creating anyway. Let something emerge, happy accidents happen.
You can’t just wait to have time. A lot of good work happens in the cracks of life. Sometimes you have to just squeeze it in where you can.
It’s really damn hard to make a living doing creative work that matters to you. You absolutely should do it anyway.
Yes luck matters. Making connections matters. Talking to real people and making new connections has to be a regular part of your life.
Your relationship to your work is going to change over time. The important thing is you keep making it. You’ll discard bangers and publish flops. But keep honing your gut and putting stuff out.
Sometimes the hardest part is keeping things simple and avoiding gimmicks and trends.
Sally keeps a notepad that she fills with quotes by hand and it kind of makes me want to make one.
Passion doesn’t ensure success and it’s not an excuse to drop everything in your life (including civic duty). It’s something to be harnessed.
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm - One of the most inventive, crazy, brain-bending original stories I’ve ever read. Hard to describe. Essentially it’s a fight against “antimemes,” ideas that attack memory. Recommended if you like bizarre and creative sci-fi.
Unhinged Habits - Pre-ordered the hardback. Really excited to read this after hearing lots of good things, and I’ve loved following Jonathan Goodman’s journey on Substack with his Diary of a Book Launch.
In the Imperfect World
New podcast episodes:
→ Karin Majoka on why experimentation beats perfection, creative balance, and the pressure to pick just one thing
I got to chat with one of my photography heroes who juggles a career in psychology with photography and YouTube. Her first answer when I asked how she balances it all? “Probably don’t do it like me. It’s not healthy.”
→ Rick Foerster - Why Getting Lost Might Be Exactly What You Need
Rick walked away from a lucrative corporate career and almost barrelled straight into the next thing. And then he stopped and let himself get lost. He emerged on the other side writing apocalyptic fiction. This conversation felt very pivotal for me and I’m still thinking about how I can embrace “the wilderness phase” of figuring out what to do in life.
I’m posting all new episodes to YouTube! I’m enjoying the challenge of doing video and slowly growing on a new platform much more than I expected. 31 subscribers is a start!
Regarding creative experiments and having fun, I’ve switched my default camera app on my phone to Leica Lux. I have started shooting way more when I’m out and about, it’s made my day a little bit more creative and reduced the friction to shoot. I’m frequently surprised by the quality (like the two shots above) that I can now get with just my phone
In summary, it seems January's been about building things, getting lost, and lowering the barriers to creating. Whether that's coding tools with Claude or just having a better camera app ready in my pocket. If you liked this round-up format please let me know and I’ll do it again in February.
— Mike.
An interesting compilation of resources! I don‘t even know where to start :D Thank you for that, and for the mention! Keep up the great work, Michael 💪
Thanks for having me on the podcast I enjoyed our conversation!