The Joy of Building
Hey, I'm fighting through our first wave of daycare sickness (first of many) while we have our annual company summit happening this week. Despite all that, I finally have something small to write about.
This is more of an overshared introspection than some insightful piece, but as I've been vibing with Claude Code more and seeing its potential impacts, I've re-learned some things about myself. The shortest way I can describe it is that I have a joy of building. I like making things. And when something takes that away from me, it's not a plus. I don't mean this in a professional capacity, but I generally orient my life and my time around spending time on things I enjoy. And I enjoy building. I've been building a couple new apps with Claude and first off, it's insane how fast it is. It can be fun and addictive to watch it work. But at the same time, I'm feeling an empty sense of FOMO. It's like using a puzzle solving robot. Where's the fun in that? I want to be the one combing through the pieces and feeling the irrational satisfaction of finally finding that shade of grey for the cloud that looks exactly the same as every other damn white and grey piece. Don’t take my fun away.
I don't think this is the case for everyone, and that's fine. But when I think about where I want to spend my time, it's more in the doing and the building and the hands-on, instead of just telling Claude what to build. Don't get me wrong, it's fun too. But it doesn't give me the same satisfaction and it doesn't actually feel like I'm the one building. I don't feel the same sense of pride and attachment to the thing once it's done. Without going too far from introspection into extrapolation, I think this is going to be a major issue in the medium term as a ton of new things are built and released by people who don't care about it. I don’t care as much about the end result, I care more about the process. This explains why I, unironically, have a half-drafted newsletter reminding me (and you) to just finish the things you’re working on.
Anyway, that just means I want to continue to spend more of my time doing things I enjoy, even if they are becoming archaic in the age of AI. And I am still a big AI bull, but more for the things I don't want to be spending time on, or to make me smarter.
Elsewhere: I've listened to this mix 3 times and shared this article numerous times with friends. I also have finally finished a new(ish) game and it's sitting in Apple's servers, waiting for me to hit RELEASE.
What have you been up to?
PS: I’m starting a new writing project. Hold me to it; I’ll keep you updated.