Hey folks,

Getting ready for a camping trip this weekend w/ our oldest 3. Lows in the 30's, so thoughts and prayers appreciated! A couple things on my mind...

1. AI As Your Boss: I heard a quote this week: "you have to quit treating AI as your assistant and start treating it as your boss." I tried it this week across all my clients, loading in transcripts and tasks, then taking turns "serving" it context and data. It really was more efficient. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call it my "boss," but I like the idea of enabling it to work more and more while I provide feedback and context.

2. Song From Mom's Text: Anybody else see this video this week? The creator got a middle-of-the-night text from his mother reflecting on her regrets raising him. He turned it around and used AI to make a song out of it. It really touched me. I also think it's a great example of someone using AI to create meaningful art they might not have made otherwise. For all the concern about the future of art, I think humanity can still come through no matter what tools we use.

3. How To Have Family Friends: I've written about this once before, but when Chandler and I decided to move to a place with no neighbors (after already committing to homeschooling), we realized we needed a strategy for our family's social life so we don't become those homeschoolers. Over the past 5 years we've embraced what we call "the circle." Our goal is to overlap as many times as possible every week with the people we love. We outlined our recurring weekly events, and actively recruit the people we want to be close to into them, and/or join theirs. The result is we hang with a lot of the same people 4-5 times per week. Rather than continually trying to schedule one-off play dates with an expanding list of families, we invest in the people we already overlap with most. They're our closest community. It's led to one of the richest seasons relationally we've ever had.

That's it for this week!

Best,

Blake

P.S. ANNOUNCEMENT: Chandler and I have a book launching on 10/13! We're building a launch team of 1,000 people to help us get the word out. As a part of that list, you'll get an early copy of the book, bonus content, and a role in shaping the launch. Would you be willing to help? If so, please click here if you're in: I'm in!