From overwhelmed to empowered
And staying ahead despite the volatility
Hello there friend.
This week we resume the experiments, powerups and more.
Let’s get into it!
Main quest 🛡
Following on last week’s post about questions to help you discover new answers.
This time, I want to bring a new perspective on learning. A positive, encouraging, and empowering one.
Here’s the gist of it:
Our world will keep changing faster and using previous methods or tools won’t cut it . But instead of getting stuck, not able to “catch up fast enough”, there’s a tool we can use to reclaim control and put ourselves in a great position for years to come.
So, first of…
It’s fine.
Your feelings of anxiousness, overwhelm, or plain tiredness are okay.
It’s normal.
You’re not dysfunctional or need “fixing”.
We’ve all had similar feelings over the past few years (especially coming out of a historical pandemic).
But you know what?
You’re still here.
You’re alive and much better than most people out there.
And because you’re in this journey of self-improvement, you have much better odds at succeeding in the next years than being “replaced by an AI”.
But the thing is…
Self-improvement, kaizen, and a growth mindset are no longer “nice-to-haves”.
They’re now “must-haves”.
We can keep discussing whether being a “specialist” or a “generalist” is better in this new world for long enough.
But what most of us can agree with it…
If you’re not learning and adapting you won’t last long.
(Cue the examples of Kodak, Blockbuster, MySpace, and so on…)
So, what do we do?
How to change and learn in an effective way far different from traditional education?
Enter Supercharged Learning.
(That’s the whole point of this newsletter btw.)
With it, you can do stuff like:
Stay relevant in a rapidly changing job market.
Develop a competitive edge in your career.
Build confidence and resilience in the face of uncertainty.
Expand your professional network & opportunities (more than just having a “stable” job).
Move to a new role or new industry and shortcut the reskilling process.
Among other things…
If anything, I’m proof of that.
I started working on call centers, then moved on to high-school/college tutoring, then DJing and EDM production, then full-time web development, then technical writing, then online marketing and SEO…
And now I’m leveling up in this new and fast changing area of AI and deep learning.
So, even though it looks difficult and/or time consuming, it is possible.
And assisted by AI, is even more possible now than it’s ever been.
If you’re hearing about this for the first time…
Here are 3 posts that will get you started right away:
Bonus one: How it works in practice.
Take a look at them and you’ll be off to the races. 🏎️
Experiments 🧪
This week, I’ve been experimenting with tools and technologies to integrate my existing web developer skills with my increasing AI/deep learning ones.
Because building demos to show in Twitter or elsewhere is cool but that’s about it.
So I’ve spent quite a lot of time testing and trying out options to create UI’s for apps that use local LLM’s. I can go full Python using Flask, PyScript, Gradio or go full JavaScript using Svelte, Next, (any other framework), or a middle point with HTMX, Astro, etc.
After this week I can say I’ve reduced the whole world of possibilities down to 2. So, next week I’ll use both and see which one has a better (or more comfortable) workflow.
Power-ups ✨
For my fellow AI enthusiasts and developers, this week I found a tool called CraftGen. It’s basically a no-code platform to create AI agents that, most importantly, is open source.
It uses a different approach than tools like LangChain or Flowise and it is like a bridge between powerful agentic workflows and practical usability.
You can take a look and star the repo to stay updated with its regular updates.
From the vault 🏛️
Speaking of AI…
I think this a good time to bring this post about Open Source vs Closed AI.
Hope you like it.
That’s it for this week.
Thanks for reading.
Enjoy your Sunday and have a great start of the week.
Talk soon,
Juan.