I was thinking recently about how developers interact with AI tools, and I noticed something that goes deeper than just prompting techniques. It’s about mindset — specifically, the difference between being a software developer and being a solution developer.
The Distinction That Matters
Software developers focus on building software. Writing code. Crafting classes and functions. Solution developers think about developing solutions. It sounds like a subtle shift, but I think it’s a big deal.
Here’s the thing: a solution may or may not involve software. And ultimately, most people and most businesses don’t want software. They want solutions. They hire people to solve their problems, not to write code for them.
A Moment That Stuck With Me
I once worked on a team where a developer kept gold-plating his code — adding layers of abstraction, perfecting patterns, polishing things that didn’t need polishing. The team lead finally said: “We are here to sell shit. We are not here to write code.”
That landed hard. The nature of that business was selling products. Software was part of the solution to help them sell those products. But the software wasn’t the point. The sale was.
Starting with the Need
If we’re solving problems, the first question isn’t “What code should I write?” It’s “What is the need?” What’s preventing the company or the person from fulfilling that need? That’s the problem that needs solving. It may need a system, but not an automated system. Maybe not yet.
This shift in thinking changes how we approach everything — including how we work with AI.
How This Shows Up with AI
Developers who approach AI with a solution developer mindset are better able to deliver what they’re actually being paid to create.
When we think as a software developer, we typically prompt an AI tool to write code: “Implement this class.”“Build this feature.” If we’re prompting it to implement a user story described from a business or value perspective, that’s better. But the most common pattern I see is developers asking AI to just write code.
And that’s what it does. It writes code. If not given more guidance, it writes code based on the average of what it was trained on. Then many developers look at it and say, “I don’t like that. I can write better code than that.” And they stop there.
Codifying Your Approach
Developers who codify their opinions — their approach, their standards — into instructions for the AI will get results closer to what they need. They steer the AI, and the code gets better.
But as solution developers, we go beyond that. We give the AI the business context. The business problem. The business needs. Then we ask the AI to help us think through the solution. Not just implement it—think it through.
Then we ask the AI to help implement it. Test it. Deploy it. Monitor it. Improve it.
We’re treating the AI as a thinking partner in solving the problem, not just a code generator.
What I’m Noticing
The developers who are getting the most value from AI aren’t the ones who are best at writing prompts for code generation. They’re the ones who understand the problem they’re solving and can articulate the context clearly. And when they can’t, they use the tool to better understand it.
And I think that’s always been true, even before AI. But AI makes it more visible. Because if you only ask for code, that’s all you’ll get. If you ask for help solving a problem, you might get something closer to what you actually need.
What problem are you solving today — and is code really the solution?
There’s a story David Foster Wallace told about two young fish swimming along who meet an older fish. The older fish nods and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish swim on, and eventually one looks at the other and asks, “What the hell is water?”
I think about this story often. The most profound realities are the hardest to see because we’re submerged in them. We become blind to our own culture, our biases, our very identities—not because we’re ignorant, but because we lack the distance to view them objectively.
I was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil. Twenty million people. A concrete jungle. By any measure, it’s a world unto itself. And yet, for the first 24 years of my life, my entire existence fit within a three-to-four-hour driving radius. I thought I knew the world because the city was massive. But I was just staring at the glass walls of my own tank.
It wasn’t until I left—first to the United States, then to Germany and Austria, then to small villages and unfamiliar cities—that I started to see the water I’d been swimming in all along.
The Deception of the Familiar
Before I ever boarded an airplane, I assumed my experience was expansive simply because São Paulo was large. I had my routes, my neighborhoods, my version of normal. The fish tank felt complete.
This is the trick familiarity plays on us. We confuse the size of our environment with the depth of our experience. We think we’re seeing the world when we’re really just seeing the same patterns on repeat.
The younger fish don’t know what water is because they haven’t experienced enough to understand the context they’re living in. I didn’t know what my “São Paulo-ness” was until I left it behind.
Truth is Regional
I used to believe history was a collection of objective facts. Then I moved to the United States and discovered that “truth” is often a matter of geography.
In Brazil, it’s an undisputed fact that Santos Dumont invented manned flight. In the U.S., that honor belongs to the Wright Brothers. I carried my Brazilian truth with me, assuming everyone else was just wrong.
Then I visited the Deutsche Museum in Munich. There, the Wright Brothers, Santos Dumont, and French balloonists all share the stage. No single hero. Just a more complete story.
Later, I found an American author who had researched the Brazilian perspective to write a fuller history of Santos Dumont. Even a historian from the “Wright Brothers’ aquarium” had to leave their borders to find the whole picture.
This pattern showed up everywhere. Christmas imagery in Brazil? Beach barbecues, not snow. The “universal” holiday aesthetic I saw in American movies was just one region’s version of the story.
Travel taught me that intellectual growth requires challenging the truths we were raised to accept. Not because they’re lies, but because they’re incomplete.
Home is a Feeling, Not a Place
I used to think “home” was a physical address. A mailing coordinate. But travel forced me to redefine it.
I felt at home in Porto Alegre with an Italian-Brazilian family who opened their doors to a stranger. I felt it again in a small village near Salzburg, staying with musicians in a house filled with soul.
The moment that crystallized this was when my host, let’s call him Mr. F, heard a vinyl record his sister put on. He stopped mid-sentence, his face transforming as he realized he was hearing himself playing from 40 years ago—an album he thought was lost to time.
Watching the goosebumps rise on his arms, I felt a profound connection that transcended our broken English and Austrian-German. Home wasn’t the house. It was the connection at a level that doesn’t require a shared language.
If the house disappears, the home remains in the heart.
You Have to Leave to See What Was Always There
From age 14 to 19, I worked in downtown São Paulo. Every single day for five years, I walked past a magnificent cathedral. I never once stepped inside. It was too familiar. I lacked curiosity for my own backyard.
At age 48, after traveling the world and developing a traveler’s eye for architecture, I finally returned to that cathedral with my wife. I marveled at its beauty.
When I told my mother about the visit, she said, “That’s where you were baptized.”
I had spent decades observing history and beauty across the globe, only to realize I’d been blind to a foundational piece of my own origin. I had to travel the world to develop the eyes necessary to truly see where I started.
What I’m Noticing Now
Self-discovery isn’t about finding a new version of yourself. It’s about gaining the perspective to finally see the version that was there all along.
The fish don’t know they’re in water until they leave it. We don’t know our own culture, our biases, our identities until we step outside them.
This is why I keep traveling, even when it’s uncomfortable. Why I keep seeking out unfamiliar contexts and foreign tongues. Not because I’m running from home, but because leaving is the only way to truly understand it.
The shock of the unfamiliar cracks the walls of our personal aquarium. And in those cracks, we finally see the water we’ve been swimming in all along.
What aquarium are you currently swimming in without realizing it?
We’re all nudged – no, we’re all pushed -, into doing everything faster. We need to be more efficient. All the time. Go, go, go. More, more, more.
But sometimes we need to slow down to go fast.
Going fast, but out of control, can turn into a crash. Recovering from that crash often means delaying the achievement of a goal.
Slowing down to either establish or regain control often enables us to set a consistently fast pace and achieve a goal faster.
“What the heck are you talking about?”
I’m likely mixing metaphors based on experiences that resonate with me.
Riding
Riding a motorcycle fast is a thrill. But what’s the goal?
If I’m riding curvy roads, such as those in the Italian Alps, my goal is to enjoy the scenery on a motorcycle. Paraphrasing a passage of [[Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance]], “driving a car, we’re watching the scenery, while riding a motorcycle we’re a part of the scenery”.
If I’m going so fast that 100% of my focus is on staying on the road and not falling off a cliff or running into incoming traffic, then I’m disallowing myself from witnessing the amazing views around me.
When my goal is to get the thrill from riding a motorcycle as fast as I’m able to, I go to a race track.
But getting on the track and twisting the right wrist only makes me go as fast as I’m going. To learn to go as fast as I can possibly go, I need to slow down first. I need to know where the track goes. I need to know its camber, bumps, cracks, runoff areas, and references.
So first I’ll go on a track walk. That’s right, walk the track. See it up close.
Then get on a bike and go on a sighting lap. Then speed up just a little.
Stop and internalize what I’ve seen and how I’ve felt. Go out again, with the intention of working on specific aspects of my riding. Speed will come.
When winter comes, and the temperatures drop, it’s impossible to go as fast. Do I stop riding? No. Go out and ride my best, given what I have. As I do so, any sloppiness becomes immediately known: jerky body movements and sloppy throttle/brake control come to the surface. The braking approach into corners doesn’t work and requires adjusting. The mandatory slower pace brings extra awareness to things I was overlooking when I could just go fast.
Reading
Should I fast read or slow read?
What’s my goal?
Why have I picked up this book?
Say the goal is to learn as much as possible about the subject within a given timeframe. I’ll probably fast-read it. Flipping through the pages quickly, noticing the main sections, sub-sections, and images. Then go back to page one, and go through all the pages, slower this time, but still at a fast pace.
When my brain detects through my eyes something it deems important (I told my brain why I picked the book and what my goal is), it tells me to slow down. So I do. I highlight the passage. I write notes. I ponder. Then I speed up again.
Now I pick up another book. This is a work of fiction by an author whose writing I appreciate. I read the words at a much slower pace; I crawl through the words, savoring them, marveling at the craft.
Coding
I can write code pretty fast. I can use code snippets to speed up the process. I can use code generators. Or I can simply type fast. And lately, AI tools do that much, much faster.
But what’s the point of coding fast?
Typing as fast as I think doesn’t help if my thoughts are racing.
I’ve learned I should slow down when I’m not even sure what it is that I’m trying to accomplish. Slow down my racing thoughts. Once the goal and the best next steps are clear, then I use all the tricks I can to speed up coding.
I’ve also learned to deliberately slow things down, even when I know there’s a faster way to do it. For example, I may choose to use the mouse instead of a keyboard shortcut. Or type a long command on the terminal instead of any other faster way.
Food
Brazilian statehouses, such as Fogo de Chao, are an all-you-can-eat meat extravaganza. They have a little card or similar token on the table for each patron; one side is green, which means “Bring me meat”, and the other is red, which means “Stop bringing it”.
It’s common for the novice to sit at the table, turn the card green, get busy eating every cut the waiters bring, and then feel stuffed and done within 15 minutes.
Not me.
I keep flipping that card, green-red-green-red, controlling the pace, appreciating each cut. Figuring out which ones taste the best that day. After doing that for a while, someone always comes to the table and asks, “Sir, are you waiting on any cut in specific?” I tell them what I want, and take a few rounds of that. I get my money’s worth, enjoy a great meal, and head out very content.
Pace Yourself
Do I need one fast lap?
Or do I need as many consistent laps as possible?
Do I need to slow down to smooth things out? To rebalance? To regain control?
In 2019, I made a change that seemed small at the time, but it’s profoundly impacted my productivity: I turned on Do Not Disturb on my phone—and never turned it off.
That’s not an exaggeration. Ever since, my phone has been on Do Not Disturb 24/7. Only a few people can punch through that firewall. Everyone else? I’ll check missed messages and phone calls and reach out later if necessary.
This isn’t about being unreachable. It’s about being intentional. The practice was suggested as part of a leadership training at Improving.
Intentional Tech: Tools That Serve You
We often think of productivity as doing more in less time. But I’ve found it’s far more powerful to reframe the question: What are we optimizing for?
For me, productivity is about protecting my focus so I can solve meaningful problems and do deep thinking. That means stripping distractions down to the bare minimum.
Take my phone, for example. When I unlock it, I don’t see a wall of apps or unread notifications. I see a phone—because that’s what it is—a tool for making calls (well, I know, I’m old…). The apps I do need, like the one I use to track my daily walk or reading habit, are right there. Everything else—email, chat, etc—is pushed to the far end of the phone, buried where I have to make a conscious decision to go looking.
Organize With Purpose
Not everything belongs in one place. I keep practical information—like records of my cars and motorcycles—in simple digital folders. But for deeper thinking and learning, I rely on Obsidian (or whichever tool may serve me in that moment).
When I read, I don’t just capture quotes. I create connections. And I’m deliberate about it. I don’t want AI to auto-generate those links for me. I want my mind doing the work—making sense of what I’m learning, drawing connections between books, ideas, and experiences. Because the value isn’t just in the notes. It’s in the relationships between them.
And those relationships evolve. When I revisit a book a year later, I might see new connections I couldn’t have imagined. That’s not machine learning. That’s human learning.
Productivity Isn’t a Feature—It’s a Practice
I’ve been talking more with teams about designing workflows and setups that support deep work. For developers, this might mean refactoring their code or embracing test-driven development. For consultants, it might be about writing better user stories or aligning more closely with stakeholder goals.
And sometimes, it’s as simple as rethinking your desk setup. I work with multiple monitors, but I’ve learned that more screens don’t always mean more productivity. It depends on how you use them. (I wrote more about that in my post “Multiple Screens May Not Make You Productive”, if you’re curious.)
The key takeaway is this: tools don’t make you productive. How you use them (and what you use them for) does, if they support a good why.
A Gentle Nudge
If there’s one thing I hope readers take away from this, it’s that productivity isn’t something that happens automatically. It’s something we have to design for. On purpose. Every day.
So the next time you pick up your phone, open your laptop, or sit down to read—pause and ask: What am I optimizing for right now?
In 2024, I mentioned bike maintenance. In 2025, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. No time. Stressed out. I wanted to ride, not work on bikes.
Now, 2025…
Blogging
I’ve set a new record of posts published in a year: 92
Both views and visitors went up, so I hope some of my content resonates with others
Out of the Top 10 most-viewed posts of the year, 7 of them were posted in previous years; I like knowing that the older content is still relevant
In August, I celebrated 20 years of blogging. I had a goal to celebrate, but I had no idea how. At the last minute, I decided to publish a book with the main lessons that stuck with me over this period.
The coolest thing about my keeping my blog this long: I have written and published a LOT of my opinions and approaches over the years. In the same way I have shared many of those posts with several people, I’ve been sharing them with AI tools so they know how to produce content the same way I would. I showed an example of that in “Can AI Really Pair Program My Experiment with BDD TDD and the Prime Factors Kata“.
I was flattered to learn somebody created an “askClaudio” custom command in Claude Code, prompting it to crawl my blog and write AI instructions from it. 🙂
I’ve also added an Other Publications tab to my blog to include links to articles or posts I wrote for other sources (at least the ones I can still find a link to)
YouTube
I had a goal to publish more content on my YouTube channel, and so I did: I posted 54 videos
Views, watch time, and subscribers went up. I hope that the content is helpful to anybody out there.
Books
I intended to publish a short book. I didn’t publish the one I intended (I made good progress and will likely release it this year)
But, released two short books that were not planned at all!
I need to do a better job at keeping track of my talks. I let AI loose on my notes, and it tells me I’ve given 15+ talks. That sounds about right, but I’m positive it’s not counting several internal talks I gave at Improving.
One of the best things about public speaking was leveraging AI to streamline my content creation process and analyze my talk transcripts to extract blog posts and generate new talks. Huge multiplier.
Giving my transcripts to NotebookLM and using its “audio overviews” to create debates and critiques has been an excellent way to improve my content.
Music
I started the year strong by releasing two original songs in January: Hindsight and Divide and Conquer (One Take). Both songs were recorded at the end of 2024.
I then had the ambition to revisit an old, long song (about 13 minutes) that had never been properly recorded. I relearned all guitar parts, mapped out the click track, and recorded a guide guitar track.
I was planning to invest in a new V-Drum kit to replace my (very) old one.
As I started practicing playing the drums to it and rewriting some parts, my audio interface stopped working.
And then a series of events drained the funds I was saving for that.
So I redirected my musical efforts for the rest of the year to playing my acoustic guitar and working on my singing.
Work Environment
My home office’s setup is still the same.
I did upgrade my work environment at the Improving office, though, by adding another 34-inch widescreen monitor, bringing the total to three screens (the laptop’s screen is the 3rd). Still one screen short compared to my home office, but I’m making that work.
I’ll have a dedicated post to talk about that change.
Tech
After three years of enjoying my Heavys headphones, always keeping them in their case when not in use, taking extremely good care of them (it still looks brand new!), they stopped working.
I reached out to them and didn’t like the answer I got (“buy a new one with a 30% discount”). No, thanks, I’ll look for a brand with a better durability record.
Learning
I’ve been taking a long Google UX Design course on Coursera
In April, I set a new record for how long I’ve stayed at a company, and in August, I celebrated my 9th anniversary with the company.
I’ve only run one book club. That’s a low number compared to previous years, but we had two groups and great conversations.
At the beginning of the year, I had a goal of pairing with another Improver to co-present an internal talk, possibly once a quarter. It didn’t happen each quarter, but I did get 4 co-presented talks! I enjoyed each one and will likely keep doing so this year.
I presented a 4-part series on productivity, which I plan to revisit and offer through my YouTube channel.
On some of my mindful breaks, I go to the pool table to hit a few shots, always trying to learn something. Sometimes I hit some amazing shots. Most of the time, nobody sees it.
I’ve leveraged AI on a few occasions to bring to life some ideas I’ve had for years, but never set time to work on them. I’m pleased with the results.
I have used AI tools every single day, all year long, learning how they can boost my productivity as a consultant and solution/software developer, and sharing everything I can with Improvers and through this blog, my YouTube Channel, Improving’s blog, and webinars.
Soundtrack
I listen to music every day. The list below is a subset of my soundtrack in 2025:
Full discographies: Devin Townsend, Led Zeppelin, Motorhead.
Various albums by: Opeth, Kiko Loureiro, Warrel Dane, Sanctuary, Body Count, Serj Tankian, Jinjer, Dream Theater, Alexia Evellyn, Lacuna Coil, Jinjer, System of a Down, Nevermore, Rush, The Warning, Halestorm, and Testament.
Duolingo
Still a daily thing.
Most Useful Things I Learned
How to use AI to make me and those around me better. That was my main goal for the year.
I gave an LLM a ton of information to help me prepare this annual review. It gave me a very good summary of my journey throughout the year:
Q1: Experimentation and learning
Q2: Integration into workflows
Q3: Teaching and evangelizing
Q4: Production mastery
It explained each point based on what it found in my notes. It included this interesting meta-pattern:
“Human intent + good architecture + pragmatic scope + tests → AI can build end-to-end solutions with genuine 10x speedups.”
Every year around this time, there’s a familiar energy in the air.
Clean slates. Fresh starts. Big goals. Bold declarations.
I feel it too.
But over the years, I’ve learned to be a little suspicious of that feeling.
Not because goals are bad. Not because ambition is wrong. But because starting with what’s next often skips something more important:
Understanding where you actually are.
That’s what this recent episode of Reflective Practice Radio became about—not by design, but by honesty. Instead of asking “What are we going to do this year?” we found ourselves asking a quieter question:
What changed?
Looking backward to understand direction
For a long time, large stretches of my life blur together when I look back.
I don’t remember years as distinct chapters. I remember fragments—projects, people, moments—floating without a clear sense of sequence. That realization hit me hard more than a decade ago, and it’s what pushed me to start doing an annual review.
Not a performance review. Not a highlight reel.
A pause.
A chance to sit with the year long enough to understand its shape.
Before you can decide where you’re going, you need to understand your trajectory. Direction only makes sense when you know where you’ve been and how you got here.
That’s something Matthew and I kept circling back to in the episode: orientation matters more than speed.
Busyness is not the same as progress
One of the recurring themes in our conversation was busyness.
“I’m busy” is an easy thing to say. It sounds responsible. Productive. Necessary.
But busy by choice and busy by default are very different experiences.
When you’re busy by choice, there’s a sense of ownership. You know why you’re doing the thing. You can explain the tradeoffs.
When you’re busy by default, time fills itself. Requests pile up. Tools multiply. Motion replaces intention.
That’s where reflection becomes uncomfortable—and necessary.
Because reflection forces the question:
Did I choose this?
Reflection as a practice, not an event
One thing I’ve learned over time is that reflection doesn’t work well as a once-a-year ritual.
Annual reviews matter—but they work best when they’re supported by smaller feedback loops.
Weekly check-ins. Quarterly pauses. Moments to notice patterns rather than reconstruct them later.
For me, that’s evolved into walking, journaling, capturing quotes that stop me mid-page, and lately, voice journaling. Not to optimize output—but to externalize thought.
What surprised me this year wasn’t just what I remembered.
It was what I noticed.
Connections I hadn’t consciously made. Tensions between the values I hold at the same time. Patterns of patience and initiative showing up together—not as opposites, but as a rhythm.
That kind of clarity doesn’t come from trying harder. It comes from slowing down long enough to see.
Why this episode matters
This episode isn’t about tools. It’s not about productivity hacks. It’s not even really about AI.
It’s about being human in the midst of fast-moving work.
About resisting the urge to fill every quiet moment with action. About learning from experience instead of racing past it.
We talk about craftsmanship, intuition, perceptual learning, and why some things can’t be fully explained—only practiced. We talk about building too much too early, mistaking motion for momentum, and how easily capability turns into distraction.
Most of all, we talk about paying attention.
A pause before moving forward
If you’re feeling the pull to reinvent everything right now, maybe pause.
Not to stop. Not to retreat.
Just to notice.
What carried you here? What quietly changed last year? What no longer fits—but you’ve been holding onto anyway?
You don’t need a clean slate. You already have momentum.
The work is noticing where it’s taking you.
If that question resonates, this episode is for you.
And if nothing else, let this be a moment to breathe before the year accelerates again.
One of the recurring themes on Reflective Practice Radio is that speed, by itself, isn’t the problem. Losing context is.
In this episode, Matthew and I spent time unpacking what it feels like to work faster than ever—often on multiple things at once—while staying grounded, intentional, and aware of what actually matters. The conversation flowed through journaling, focus, boundaries, AI, and even pool tables, but it all kept circling back to the same question:
How do we avoid drifting when everything is moving quickly?
Capturing Context Instead of Chasing It
I shared some of the recent experiments I’ve been running with voice journaling and lightweight note capture. The goal isn’t to journal ideally or even entirely—it’s to leave breadcrumbs.
A few words. A short reminder. Just enough to preserve context so that later, when there is time to slow down, reflection has something to grab onto.
This has changed how I move through the day. Instead of interrupting deep work to journal fully, I can quickly capture a thought and return to what I was doing—without losing it.
Dashboards, Not Distractions
We also talked about physical and digital workspaces—specifically, how more screens don’t automatically mean more distraction.
Used intentionally, dashboards can reduce cognitive load. A fixed place to see what you’re working on, where you were last, and what’s coming next makes it easier to re‑orient after context switches.
The key distinction we kept coming back to: everything in view must belong to the same context. Email, chat, and notifications don’t live there unless they directly serve the work at hand.
Boundaries as a Form of Care
From there, the conversation turned to boundaries—how they protect not just focus but people.
I shared stories from earlier in my career about being constantly interrupted and how learning to set explicit time windows for collaboration led to better outcomes for everyone involved. Boundaries weren’t about saying no to people; they were about creating space for thinking, learning, and doing meaningful work.
Matthew reflected on how easy it is to use interruptions as an escape from complex problems—and how awareness of that pattern is often the first step toward changing it.
Journaling as an Early Warning System
One of the most important threads in this episode was journaling as a way to notice burnout before it takes over.
By capturing not just what we did, but how the work felt, patterns start to emerge. Repetitive tasks with no perceived value. Resistance that keeps showing up. Days that blur together.
Those signals are always there. Journaling makes them visible—early enough to respond with intention rather than react too late.
Winning the Lesson
We closed with a metaphor that kept resurfacing: strengthening the non‑dominant hand.
Whether it’s brushing your teeth differently, taking a left‑handed pool shot, or approaching familiar work from a new angle, the practice isn’t about winning in the moment. It’s about building adaptability, perspective, and resilience.
Sometimes the real prize isn’t finishing faster or performing better—it’s learning something you can carry forward.
Reflection Over Speed
This episode felt like a fitting pause as the year winds down.
Before asking where you’re going next, it helps to know where you’ve been—and how you felt along the way. Journaling, reflection, and thoughtful use of AI aren’t about doing more. They’re about staying oriented while you do it.
If this conversation resonated, I encourage you to watch the full episode and sit with the ideas for a bit. The insights often show up after the pace slows.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between pace and sustainability. The image that keeps coming back to me is racing.
When you push a car or a motorcycle to its limits—full acceleration, late braking, high RPMs—you’re stressing every system. Brake pads wear faster. Engines run hotter. Parts need more frequent checks. You can’t keep that pace forever. At some point, you have to slow down, inspect what’s been stressed, replace what’s worn, and learn from the last stretch before going again.
That analogy has felt uncomfortably familiar these past few months.
Running Hot
A few months ago, I started my newsletter. Once a week, every week. No skips. At the same time, I kept publishing blog posts—sometimes one, sometimes three, sometimes five in a single week.
It was intense. Productive. Energizing, even.
I had a system. I had momentum. And for a while, I didn’t question the pace.
Then, over the last two weeks, I didn’t publish a newsletter issue. I wrote fewer blog posts. I slowed down.
That wasn’t a lapse. It was maintenance.
Checking the System
Slowing down gave me space to check in with myself.
Was I still grounded in the things that matter to me? Did my process still reflect my values? Was the system I had built helping me focus on the parts of the work I actually enjoy—or was it starting to create friction?
During the previous three-plus months, I had put together a workflow for capturing ideas and turning them into content. It worked. But under sustained load, a few rough edges started to show.
So I spent the last two weeks doing small adjustments.
Not a full rebuild. Not a dramatic overhaul.
Just enough automation to reduce friction. Just enough refinement to keep the flow intact.
We have better tools than ever. It’s tempting to shake the whole boat and rebuild everything from scratch. I resisted that. I already had something that worked. What I needed were minor adjustments, not a new system.
It felt like an oil change. Replacing a worn cog. Tightening a bolt.
Listening for the Warning Signs
Part of this pause has been about learning to recognize the signals—especially the quiet ones.
My body usually tells me first.
On weekends, it’s harder to get out of bed. Not because I’m lazy, but because I need more rest. I don’t set an alarm on Saturdays. I let my body decide. Nine hours. Sometimes ten. More than I ever get during the week.
Sometimes my body just aches in bed, telling me it’s time to move. Other times, I need a short nap during the day—twenty minutes is usually enough to reset things physically.
My sleep patterns shifted too. I had been waking up earlier for months, excited to work on things that pulled me out of bed. That’s usually a good sign for me.
Last week, that changed. I slept later. I stayed up later. My days stretched longer than they had in a long time.
Those are signals. Not emergencies—but warnings.
So I cut back where I could. The newsletter. Blog posts. A few other commitments.
Was it enough? Probably not.
But it was what I could afford at the time.
Journaling as Diagnostics
Throughout these two weeks, I kept journaling daily. Not just tracking what I did, but why I did it—and what I learned from it.
That mattered.
Instead of measuring output, I paid attention to enjoyment and insight. I noticed which activities energized me and which ones quietly drained me.
Those notes are already paying dividends.
This time of year, I naturally start preparing for my annual review. Last year, I did it with long walks in nearby parks—walking, sitting, writing, thinking. That practice helped me get through a difficult year. Not because things magically improved, but because I approached the year with intention.
This year, I have even more material to work with.
Voice journaling made it easier than ever to get thoughts out of my head and into text. That gives me data—not in a cold, analytical sense, but as raw material for reflection.
I’m looking forward to using AI tools to summarize, connect, and surface patterns I might have missed. Not to replace the reflection, but to support it.
Long Walks and Loose Plans
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be going on long walks again. Two to four hours, with breaks.
Sometimes I walk for thirty minutes, sit for thirty, write whatever comes up. Then I walk again. Sometimes I record thoughts while I’m still moving.
The goal is simple: get things out of my mind and onto the page.
From there, I can reflect. Find clarity. Understand where I am. Remember where I’ve been. And sketch a loose map of where I might be going.
I don’t know what the future holds.
But I can influence my trajectory. I can prepare for the known possibilities. And I can build enough resilience to handle the unknown ones.
Pace Is a Choice
I don’t know yet what my publishing cadence will look like next.
Three months? Four weeks? Twenty-four weeks?
All of those are fine.
What matters is awareness—of my pace, of my limits, and of the signals my system sends when it needs attention.
Most of my thinking doesn’t start at a keyboard. It starts while I’m driving, walking, or stepping away from a meeting—talking things through out loud, one imperfect sentence at a time. Over the years, I’ve learned that if I don’t capture those moments right then, they disappear. This post is a walkthrough of the voice journaling process I use today—from recording quick audio notes on my phone to turning them into connected, searchable thoughts in Obsidian, with a bit of help from automation and AI along the way.
Long story short, here’s my current voice journaling process.
Step 1: I voice out my thoughts and record them using the Voice Record Pro app on my iPhone.
I often do that multiple times during the day: driving, walking, in between meetings, taking a quick break…
Step 2: I “Save to Google Drive” either as soon as I get to my computer, or at least later in the day…
Step 3: I use my Process Journal workflow in Alfred on my Mac when I’m ready to work on my transcripts…
At this point, I may proceed with Step 4, Step 5, or both.
Step 4: I open the transcript in Obsidian and use its Local Graph tool to view additional connections to my daily note.
Step 5: I open the transcript in either Cursor or Windsurf and use AI to analyze, summarize, extract content, or perform other tasks as needed.
How this all works
This is how this all works as of this writing. I continually evolve my system, so I’ll provide an update if there are any essential changes.
When I “Save to Google Drive” a file from Voice Record Pro, it goes to a “Voice Record Pro” folder. I added that folder to the “Offline files” in the Google Drive app on my Mac.
I have set that folder on my local file system as a “Watched Folder” in MacWhisper…
…so it automatically transcribes into a Markdown file.
The original .m4a audio file and its .md file stay in the Voice Record Pro folder…
…until I run my Process Journal Alfred workflow:
That workflow…
cleans up the markdown, removing timestamps that I don’t need, adding the date to the top of the file as a link to my daily note (e.g., 2025-12-15),
moves the files to a “voice journal processed” folder
copies the .md file to my Obsidian Vault (to the “_inbox/voice journal” folder)
I have a “Voice Journaling.code-workspace” file, which I open in Cursor or Windsurf. That workspace includes the “Voice Record Pro” folder in Google Drive and the “voice journal” folder in the Obsidian Vault. I have other “code-workspace” files that include my “voice journal” folder as the source to specific projects where I leverage that content.
