Falling in love all over again

How do you know that you love what you’re doing? Some people say that you’d get out of bed excited. For some it might mean getting into the flow state as soon as you land on your desk. Well for me, the answer is different. When I’m absolutely in love with what I’m doing, I drool. Literally.

It’s weird I know. But it really does happen. And lately, I’m so in love that my mouth brims with water for a good part of the day. Whether I’m exploring architecture choices, fiddling with different tools, or grinding my way through a nasty bug. Every bit is thoroughly enjoyable.

One reason for this is that I’m doing my own thing. I have complete control over the product — taking the smallest of decisions across design, feature set, tooling, etc. I’d define this control as thrilling because sometimes you get all anxious like “omg that’s a lot of pieces to figure out!”. But then some of the pieces fit together and you scream, “wow this is taking shape!”

The control extends to the process as well. I can design my routine to work at my own pace, and my own depth. One day I hacked together a working prototype, while this entire week I just read about the best coding practices. It’s my choice how I want to build Ingenuity, no one’s bossing around. Obviously I’d enjoy it ;)

The other reason, ChatGPT. The more I use it, the more I realize how life changing this technology is. I use it as the starting point of my research, and for cross-questioning. It’s not the most accurate search engine, but I don’t care. To start learning something, it’s great because it gives you a vague idea of what you’d want to explore more. Then I can Google for accuracy and depth.

But cross questioning is where it actually shines. I can ask it endless questions, and even provide Ingenuity’s use case as context. Again, I don’t care about accuracy, I just wish to refine my thoughts to take the correct decision. And to do that, I’d drill it down to the last “why” until I’m 100% convinced; I’d counter it with every possible argument; I’d drag in related concepts to check if it’s giving me tailored answers or generic ones.

I use GPT as the brainstorm partner, beta tester, research assistant, and more. It’s the first stop I take when working on any task. Truly a remarkable technology.

And let me restate that I do not prefer it for speed or comfort (though it naturally provides both). Rather, it’s about the depths I can explore — the extent to which it can satisfy my curiosity — that has me sold.

When I was in school, I was nicknamed “question bank” and “question mark”. And rightly so — I had unbounded curiosity. I would fire a series of questions at my teachers. Some answered generously, others not so much. Over time, nobody would entertain because “we can’t spend whole day on this!”. So I stopped asking, and eventually stopped having questions altogether.

Now, I’m kinda back to that natural state. I don’t have to worry about judgement anymore, and I’m not in a hurry to get Ingenuity out. I’m learning more than ever before, and I am loving it!

Every time I find water in my mouth, good things come my way. It’s a sign.

Good night!
Aachman