learning life · the so-called log

Small Tweaks #1: Semi-Automated Daily Work Logging

Intro

Welcome to the first post of the “Small Tweaks” series 🙂 I’ll be sharing small tweaks that I found useful, and I think others might find useful as well.

I’d admit, I’m a pretty lazy person. I’m so lazy that I tend to be always taking the path of least resistance (read: shortcuts). A notable recent example:

I hate washing dishes so much that I try to make my morning instant oat breakfast just with one bowl. The twist: The breakfast consists of multiple steps of mixing different ingredients:

• Liquid: Milk
• Coarse powder: Oat
• Viscous liquid: Yogurt
• Fine-grained powder: Protein powder and cacao powder

Armed with this laziness, I experimented with various “workflows”, and finally found an efficient way to get what I want with just one bowl, while perfecting the texture and taste of the breakfast. This itself worth a post, but not this one OK.

AI-assisted Coding / Problem Solving

(Note: For the purposes of this post, I’ll be using the term “AI” to refer to large language models, or LLMs.)

How I got myself trying it out

• Social media, mainly TwitterX. This is heavy on a few tech personas sharing their thoughts on AI, e.g. how it’s changing the industry, the things they built with it, etc.
  • YouTube videos. This is more about the technical side behind AI, e.g. 3Blue1Brown’s videos explaining the math behind AI (this one and all videos within the series).
• Development of AI-related tools at work. This is more about the practical side of AI, e.g. how to use them to help people at work with their daily tasks: coding, answering questions, etc.
  • The company also started asking its employees to use more AI (ref).