Over the years we switched most of our projects to autopilot, thanks to automation. Now we discovered, that with AI and Alice we can go even further! Here are the fundamentals of this approach.

Today I slept through a disaster.

At 4:35 a.m. I got the text message that one of my servers is down. Reason? Trivial. No funds on a connected credit card. Did I miss some notifications beforehand? No. I turn them all OFF by default. I consciously opt-out of any things that may distract my work and life. And with over 150 subscription services that my business handles I’d be notified every millisecond. But hey! Shouldn’t notifications that come before the blackout be AT LEAST the ones that I opt-in for? No.

I have robots to deal with them 🤖

At 4:35 one of them got woken up. He checked the balance on my different disposable credit cards, took the first one with sufficient funds and plugged it in via hosting service billing API. At 4:36 I got another text message. Server Status: up.

I spotted the messages after I went cycling, had a shower and morning coffee, around 8. Good ol’ bots — I thought.

The first time the idea resembled me while reading about nomadlist ran by Pieter Levels, who hired over 1000 bots on his site, including those calculating beer prices 🍺 I picked up the idea and started learning about cron, automation, AWS Lambda, web scrapers and writing first small pieces of software.

Holy sh*t, that’s awesome! — I thought.

I’ve learned to code early in my career, but then switched to web design, UX and biz dev. Although I could code anything I didn’t find it too exciting. It was taking too long and I kind of missed the instant gratification you get from graphic and motion design.

When I discovered bots and automation it instantly felt like the missing piece of the puzzle in my life just got in place.

The results are quick and powerful and no or little code is required to make software, that actually works.

As I was exploring more tools and techniques I discovered that almost every daunting part of my work can be replaced with smart automation. Starting from organising my schedule and sending invoices to my accountant, to running an entire online business on autopilot, with bots taking care of purchases and returns, invoicing, customer service and marketing. Result? Today I run multiple online projects including the one with 300k clients and only few people on board, thanks to bots and automation.

Automation as I know it

Most of the people I talk to have come across the concept of automation. However, their understanding of this topic is different from what I want to present, so I believe it is very important for you to be aware of how the evolution of automation looks from my point of view and how I understand this concept. For me, automation is the use of available tools to minimize human involvement in various areas of online projects, such as sales, customer service, accounting, or marketing. I want to share my approach and set of techniques that I use every day to make my work simpler and not involve me where it is not necessary.

A simple example is handling returns where we need to issue a corrected invoice, receive confirmation from the customer, process the return, and book it. Seemingly a simple operation, as it turns out, in larger companies, it involves several positions. Polish airlines LOT recently processed my refund for a canceled flight for 7 months. That’s not all; changing company data on an invoice in the Microsoft Azure service took almost a year and required the exchange of 151 emails. Meanwhile, while the thread was open, one of the customer service representatives managed to get pregnant, give birth, and go on maternity leave. In Vimeo, a similar process is still ongoing, I can’t count the messages, but at the moment, 14 people on the Vimeo side are involved, including 4 managers, legal department personnel, accountants, and several others.

You could say these are procedures of large corporations. Meanwhile, in smaller companies, even though the process may be faster, most of the time nothing is described, and each case is considered individually, with the peak of dreams being template responses that slightly speed up the work.

Meanwhile, all repetitive tasks can be delegated to robots and automated, almost entirely, even if the process is complex and requires confirmation exchanges. On one hand, this is a huge time and money saver for companies where hours are spent on boring and repetitive tasks, and on the other hand, a huge opportunity to gain a competitive advantage, or even compete with much larger companies, for smaller ones. Another huge benefit of automating boring, monotonous tasks is unleashing the potential of people who could be much more creative and satisfied with their work.

For years, there was a belief (and few still think differently) that automation requires specialized knowledge and armies of programmers. Indeed, until now, process optimization was mainly done by larger companies that employed RPA (Robotic Process Automation) specialists, people who first spent 3 months recognizing a process, then produced dedicated software for several months, and then maintained it indefinitely. You could say that automation was only available to the largest and wealthiest.

Probably the most revolutionary change in this area is the evolution of tools that support automation and, consequently, the democratization of these techniques. Today, literally everyone is able to automate, and most importantly, reaching a truly advanced level does not require any programming knowledge. Additionally, tools supporting automation are affordable, which also guarantees wide access to technology.

The background (boring but worth it)

When the Internet became almost universally accessible, options for data synchronization in the cloud and the ability to collaborate simultaneously on the same data emerged. Initially, there were project management applications and then document editing tools (Google Apps). Today, even designers can work simultaneously on the same project, for example, using Figma. This clearly shows a progression, leading us from a situation where applications worked independently to the point where they moved to the Internet and browser-based versions. This facilitated collaborative work and access to our data from any device.

And since we’re talking about devices, we have gone through a revolution related to mobile devices, or rather, multi-platform support. This has made the process of software development and design much more complex. Now, developers not only had to develop the main version of the application but also take care of their mobile versions for smartphones and tablets. This led to the strategy of designing application architecture using APIs, which stands for Application Programming Interface.

Definition of API

To understand what an API is, it is important to know that an “interface” is a way to enable communication. And an API is a way to enable communication within one or multiple applications.

This strategy simplified the process of creating applications for multiple platforms because developers no longer had to create multiple versions of the application. Instead (using a simplified schema), a single server providing user data was sufficient for applications created on specific platforms, with a lower level of complexity in this case.

Furthermore, not only the developers of a specific application have access to a well-prepared API but also anyone who obtains access keys (e.g., API key).

API-First Design and the Online Business

All of this led to the creation of a software development strategy called “API First”. From what I have just written, this approach is fully justified. If we can write one code to handle multiple platforms, why wouldn’t we do it?

And what does this mean for non-programmers? Well, the API-First approach can be used as a business strategy and for utilizing applications — thanks to automation.

As we have already mentioned, APIs allow for data exchange within applications and between applications. This opens up entirely new possibilities. It turns out that we can connect various services we use and exchange data between them. This means we are no longer limited by the functions available in selected applications but have a full range of possibilities provided by all the tools we use!

How is this possible? Well, developers provide access to their API not only to their own applications (for example, the mobile and browser application of your bank), but also… to other developers, who can build solutions based on their software.

These other developers will be us, using tools specialized in specific tasks — sending emails (e.g., Mailchimp), SMS messages (e.g., Twilio), enriching customer data (e.g., Clearbit), notifying the sales department (e.g., Slack), etc., and combining them through Automation. With this approach, we will never have to log into the graphical interface of the applications we use, for example, to send marketing emails. Automation will do it for us by “logging in” to the API and sending emails of specific content to a designated group of recipients. This means that neither we nor our employees will ever have to log in (and forget passwords) to the online services we use, which have good, accessible APIs.

The benefits of this approach include:

• No need to use GUI (reloading pages, slow tool operation, forgetting passwords, logging in again — all of these waste time!)
• The ability to connect the best, specialized services instead of relying on one provider who may constantly lack certain functionality
• Reactive work, not proactive work — we don’t have to check what needs to be done; automation assigns tasks that humans should complete in the process (more on that later)

Looking at this through the lens of my earlier definition of automation, a technical aspect can be added to the list:

1. Detailed process mapping
2. Attempt to simplify/improve the process
3. Choosing the right tools for the right tasks in the process
4. Connecting these tools through APIs to work at the right time, without the need for human intervention and logging into GUI
5. Supervision, error correction, and experiments

Example of API + Automation

Let’s take the example of organizing an online event, such as a webinar. The webinar tool allows for participant registration, so we have access to email addresses and phone numbers. With the help of API and automation, we can automatically transfer this user’s data to the Clearbit service responsible for Data Enrichment, which enriches data. By sending, for example, a corporate email address, we receive additional information about the person signing up for our event. These enriched data can also be automatically sent to our CRM system (e.g., Pipedrive), positively impacting the sales process because when contacting such a potential customer, we have more information about them to better tailor our services to their needs. Alternatively, we can use the phone number to automatically send a short SMS reminder about the event. This increases attendance, which can benefit us and our potential customers.

If we combine this with a system that collects customer data on our website, such as Intercom, our salesperson can also receive precise notifications with information like:

Adam from the Browser company logged in 10 minutes ago, he participated in the “Financial Markets” Webinar and visited the pages: offer, faq, contact. His phone number is: 888999000

As you can easily imagine, using one tool in this process is impossible. There is no single tool that can handle webinars, website data, company communicators, etc. And this is the power of automation — we use various tools specialized in specific tasks, juggle their data, and the results go exactly where our team feels comfortable.

So, as you can see, we used the API here to transfer data between different services and thus optimize a process that was either previously done manually or not done at all. This approach streamlines existing processes or creates new ones. I have personally found that in the case of online businesses, this approach truly takes our projects not just to the next level but often ten levels higher.

For example, the projects we have undertaken, considering the scale of operations and their profitability, can easily be compared to businesses that require the involvement of even a team of dozens of people!

Let’s have fun (you survived the boring part)

As we established above, modern applications are increasingly communicating through APIs. Let’s take Facebook as an example. The business logic is responsible for adding your post to a certain type of database and your feed. This logic can be triggered from various places. You can add a post through a mobile application or the Facebook website, and as you know well, other applications can connect with Facebook and post on your behalf.

To enforce this logic, you need to:

1. Know where the back-end expects this data (an endpoint URL)
2. Send the data in a way understandable to the back-end (usually in JSON format)
3. Authenticate using certain access data (login, token, etc.)

And voila! The post is on your feed.

How to Utilize the API First Approach

The entire internet works this way. And thanks to this model, everyone can add, modify, and execute commands in web applications.

But instead of becoming a developer and learning how to structure, format, and send data through various APIs, you can use tools that will do it for you. I call them LEGO tools. When you authorize any application in such tools, they can perform various actions on your behalf. For example, create a spreadsheet and add rows to it.

Now, let’s think about this more broadly. If LEGO tools can connect with different applications, they can also exchange data between those applications. For instance, these tools can take rows from a spreadsheet and post them on your Facebook feed. Sequencing, timing, delays, conditions — everything can be set.

Infinite Possibilities

Now imagine you want to gather data from your spreadsheet and distribute it to all your social media profiles — Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, all at once. LEGO tools allow you to connect with numerous applications and services you use and exchange information between them or work on changes in one tool while notifying others.

Here are a few example scenarios:

• Searching for events in your calendar and sending you reminders about the most important ones;
• Collecting tasks you enter into Trello and syncing them with your Google calendar;
• Sending emails to webinar participants, posting on social media, and assigning tasks to your team on Slack — all simultaneously.

The beauty of LEGO tools is that they expand the capabilities of the software you already use, allowing you to achieve practically anything you can imagine. Often, the tool you are using may lack just one feature, such as text reminders. With LEGO tools, you can add a text messaging service to your existing arsenal of options in just a few minutes.

Popular LEGO Tools

The most popular LEGO tools are zapier and Make. Its main advantage is that it supports hundreds of available applications. It offers a clear and intuitive interface for creating automations. Make It has a very interesting, visual interface that allows you to build automations by literally connecting a few dots. Additionally, it offers a rich, free plan to experiment with automation.

These are the tools I use most often, but there are also many other tools, usually designed for more specific tasks.

• Parabola — a very good tool for data transformation. This means reorganizing, splitting, changing the order, formatting, and much more. If you have data from multiple sources or a lot of data that you want to transform and send to other tools, this is a great choice.
• Actiondesk — based on a spreadsheet interface, allowing manipulation, transformation, and creating logic within your data. If you like spreadsheets, it’s worth checking out this tool. It allows you to make various transformations on data and send it to another tool.
• Retool — this tool fetches data from APIs or databases and allows you to transform it or even send commands back for execution. If you want to create an admin interface for your database or a report panel, this is a good option.

Additionally, there are other tools, created for specific actions, that I don’t categorize as LEGO tools — they allow you to combine one or two services and create something new. A good example is Glide, which lets you create a mobile app from a spreadsheet. There are many interesting tools of this type, but that’s a topic for another article.

If you want to learn more about different tools and techniques we use for automation and productivity, make sure you check out Everyday on Autopilot — our productivity and automation bible, currently 50% off for Techsistence readers only 💥 This is the best start to your automation journey. Here’s few recent reviews from Product Hunt.

I think one of top books in it’s category. Shows interesting approach to automation. I get to know bunch of new tools from it.
 — Ben

Imho this ebook and other information products from this authors are the best quality and most advanded soruce of knowlege about proces automation and productivity improvment! Shut up and take my money again! ;)
— Jakub

Mind-blowing knowledge. There’s no fluff only apply-at-once solutions. Very reliable. Worth every minute and money spent. I thought I knew something about automation and was enjoying riding a bike instead of walking… these guys showed me Floo Powder!
— Karolina

Everyday on Autopilot

Get 10x more productive! Imagine the essence of our knowledge about automation, excluding complicated techniques, which you can implement even in the course of one evening. This bundle serves as the cornerstone of our work, providing a robust foundation for optimising your tasks and automating daily activities.

Your first automations!

All of this may seem overwhelming. But once you understand the concept behind LEGO tools, it will be quite easy to implement and learn any new tools. It’s worth knowing at least a few of them. Sometimes the application you want to automate is available in Zapier but not in Make. Sometimes you want to work with a larger amount of data, and Parabola may be more convenient. Unfortunately, there isn’t a single LEGO tool that meets all your expectations, but that’s… not a bad thing. By learning different tools, you encounter diverse scenarios and thought patterns.

When I fully grasped how Zapier works, I was very excited. But then I struggled with implementing this concept into my business. Tutorials were available but taught everything from the wrong angle, saying “connect X to Y” instead of “achieve X by doing Y.” This made it very difficult for me to work with these tools, and it took me over a year to come up with good automation strategies and their utilization.

Automation in Zapier

First automation we will prepare based on one of the most popular platforms in the world — Zapier. This tool is very beginner-friendly and allows you to connect various tools and transfer data between them without coding. Our first automation will show you how to work with Zaps, as Zapier calls scenarios, or individual “robots”.

What will we automate? We will create a simple automation that will save your Gmail attachments to a Google Drive folder. Then we will slightly modify it to have a practical application by saving the invoices you receive in your mailbox in one place.

Start by creating a free account on Zapier. To do this, go to zapier and register, then create a new Zap by clicking this button, and then Open Editor, creating a Custom Zap.

Now you need to add a trigger — something that will start your robot. Search for and select the Gmail application. There’s an experimental AI search above, but we’ll skip it to better understand the process

In the next step, you need to connect your Google account with the Zapier application and specify the appropriate mailbox. You only do this once, and subsequent automations will not require reconnection

The trigger event for us is New Email Matching Search, meaning we want to trigger the robot every time we receive a message with specific topic and attachment

Next, we can fine-tune our trigger, and here Zapier offers a very interesting possibility. We can perform more complex queries, according to the Gmail search documentation. For example, I used invoice OR bill AND filename:pdf, which means among messages with attachments, it will only search for those containing the phrase invoice or faktura (or similar because I didn't use quotation marks). Additionally, I am only looking among results containing PDF as an attachment

You can test your automation with the Test Trigger feature, and if the mailbox already contains elements that match the entered phrase, you should receive them as results (if there is nothing, simulate test data by sending yourself an invoice to the mailbox)

And you should be able to see results

Select the appropriate result and click Continue.

Great! We have configured our trigger, meaning we can receive messages with attachments, additionally filtered. In this case, we only need to configure what will allow us to save the attachment to Google Drive. As part of the Action (what happens as a result of the trigger’s action, we search for Google Drive)

Then, we choose what we want to do, which is to upload the file to Google Drive

Connect your Google Drive account, or select it if it has been previously connected

If you haven’t created the appropriate invoice folder on Drive before, now go to drive.google.com and create a folder named invoices. If it’s already created, you will be able to specify it as the location in Zapier

Now click on the file and from the drop-down list, select the Attachment option, simply passing the attachment as a file to Drive. Leave the other fields unchanged, except for the File Name field, where you can get creative and change the name of the saved file, using various metadata from the email, such as the sender’s address, combining it with the file name. I added hyphens between them for clarity

Tip: If you paste the following phrase in the Zapier field: {{zap_meta_human_now}}, Zapier will substitute the current date in that place. By formatting names in this way, it will be easy to find files with the correct date. Additionally, sorting by name or date will now return neatly arranged results, which means you don't need to create additional folders (but if you want to do it, feel free to do so. Try modifying the automation to place invoices in a folder with the correct name, for example, January. You will need to create these folders manually or with the help of another automation).

That’s it! Select Continue, and then Test & Continue to check the automation’s operation. If everything went smoothly, you will see a success screen

Now you can Publish your scenario! Test invoice is already on Google Drive

Remember to turn on the Zap using the switch at the bottom so that it starts analyzing all incoming messages from now on. Otherwise, the Zap won’t work!

Automation with Make

We prepared our first automation in Zapier for a reason. Make, the application we will be working with now, is not as good at integrating with Google tools. You could say that Zapier is better aligned with Google, and this is a good example of why it’s worth having various automation solutions and using the ones that work best in a given situation. In Make, to use Gmail, you need to have a paid Google Workspace account.

Although automating with Zapier is incredibly simple and intuitive, there are many other tools in the world of automation that you will use. Why? There are many reasons. For example, Zapier is a bit expensive, and you can find cheaper alternatives. Additionally, while it offers many interesting features, other tools sometimes work better and function slightly differently. In Zapier, although it is possible, splitting scenarios based on conditions is not the most intuitive.

For example, we can create a bit more advanced scenario in Make, that searches for invoices then renames, catalogs and save them to drive, checking if the folder structure is correct. It looks like this:

On the left, we have the trigger, which listens to emails on Gmail. Then we rename the file, and search for the appropriate folder on drive. The folder should contain month and year to catalog our invoices, so if it doesn’t exist, we will create it in the next step and then put the invoice there. You don’t need to understand exactly what these elements mean right now, but the concept should be a bit clearer now.

What will we automate this time? We won’t repeat the same task in Make. Instead, we will add another automation that will send a notification on the 10th day of the month, informing our accountant or our email address that the collected documents are ready.

Create an account on Make (this is our special link, that grants you 1 free month on the pro plan 🎉)

Create a new scenario (equivalent to a Zap) using the Create Scenario option

Click on the first circle and select the Gmail application

Choose the action Send an email

Click Add in the Connection option, name your connection, and like in Zapier, connect to the appropriate Google account

Now add recipients, subject, and content of the sent email along with the link to the shared Invoices folder on Drive

Select OK to confirm the changes in the module

Now set the schedule, for the Gmail module, click on the clock, and then schedule sending this email on the 10th day of the month

Save the module by clicking OK

Turn scheduling to ON and you’re done!

This is a super simple scenario, but introduces a nice concept of scheduling and running your robots remotely. If you want to expand it, try sending a Slack message to yourself with confirmation, after you send email. Small tip:

You already have your first automations on your account — congratulations! As you can see, it’s child’s play. Of course, these are just the basics, and in practice, automations can be much more complex, including, for example:

• Many more modules and routers, i.e., paths
• Conditional instructions “perform only when the data contains X”
• Functions, for example, searching through returned data
• Data completion, for example, with the current date or data calculation using mathematical operations
• Error handling and modules for testing
• Custom scripts, for example, JavaScript
• Modules allowing data reformatting (parsing)
• Modules capable of iterating, for example, over records in a database or rows in Google Sheets
• And so on

There are plenty of possibilities. But let’s break down what really happens in the scenarios we created. The fact that Zapier or Make allows us to choose the Gmail module simply means that the tool can integrate with it. How? Of course, through APIs! For example, Gmail has an API, where we can refer to the appropriate endpoint and listen to incoming emails. Once we retrieve information about the incoming message, the next endpoint allows us to download the attachments. Zapier, which we use, just has these things built-in, but they work on the standard Gmail or Slack API. We work exactly like a programmer who would prepare an integration for us, except we use a visual builder and a set of prepared modules. The account connection we made is essentially the authentication in the API using one of the methods discussed earlier. It’s programming without programming!

Make, like Zapier, offers the possibility to use hundreds of ready-made scenarios or import any blueprints prepared by us or others!

Automations & AI — the ultimate productivity tool

As you probably guess, over the years we’ve created quite a lot of automation for our needs. You might be surprised, but currently over 3000 robots work for me, performing hundreds of thousands of operations daily. This is just one of the Make accounts I use, where I process nearly half a million operations monthly!

But this is just the beginning! Just under a year ago, we realized how useful NLP and AI could be to help us work with automations. It turned out that input data for automations, which needed to be formatted in a specific way (we send them the so-called JSON object), could be prepared by AI! What does this mean in practice? It means that you can say or write, for example:

Add client John Doe to CRM

And then the language model will take care of translating this into the proper format, meaning into the “automation language,” and then send it to a ready scenario on Zapier or Make! It’s truly amazing how vast the possibilities are when using such an approach.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a tool that allowed us to communicate AI with automations in this way, so over a year ago, we started working on our own solution to help us with this.

And that’s how Alice app was born.

In addition to being able to chat with Alice like with ChatGPT, her biggest advantage lies in the ability to remotely trigger our automations, and consequently — perform actions! ChatGPT offers this concept also with GPTs and their API standard, however, this approach proved to be much less efficient so far, at least for our use-cases.

Future of remote actions in Alice is very promising, and probably we will, in time, start adding native integrations to Alice. Also, performance of LLMs is rapidly increasing, and also access to local models in Alice is a possibility. Today with Groq we’re able to perform operations faster than ever before, and this will evolve. Take a look at this command to Spotify and the speed of its execution.

In this context, I’ve prepared some tutorials for you, showing how you can integrate the Alice app with Make or Zapier. Please, see how it works in practice!

Remote Actions

Calendar scenario

Schedulink links scenario

Using existing scenarios

That’s it for today, but stay tuned! I’ve prepared for you a collection of inspirations and readymade automation blueprints that help us every day! Will be dropping it soon!

And you can get Alice here within our lifetime deal »

And one more thing. If you find today’s edition interesting, and you want to dig deeper into Alice, automations and our vision for productivity, we have something cooking for you! We’re considering creating a full-blown, 4-week AI+Automation cohort that you can take part in! There’s so much to learn, and here’s what we’re planning:

• 20 practical lessons — text + video (10+ hours of content)
• 4 live consultations (2h each)
• Very practical approach to AI (from the ground up)
• Showcase of the tools we already use on production
• Access to Alice and creating automations!
• Community-driven cohort and our support

If we manage to get 50 interested people (we have 7 so far!), we’ll start preparations!

Sure, count me in! »

See you in the next one!
Greg

Journey from Chaos to Control — Introduction to Automation was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of the questions I most frequently receive from people who’ve just met me and have been observing me for a while is:

How come you handle so much?

Firstly: I handle as much as I handle. To determine whether that’s a lot or a little, one would need to know everything I’m doing at a given moment, and only I know that. Therefore, we should reconcile with the fact that it’s purely subjective perceptions of other people and only we know how much we actually deliver.

However, the key is not how much we deliver, but how we feel about it. While everyone claims that I deliver for 10 people, I myself may be unhappy, feeling that I’m doing too little.

As long as we’re okay with what we’re accomplishing, everything is fine. The problem is that few people are okay with it. At least I am: even though everyone claims that I do a lot, I still demand more from myself. This affects many things I do outside of work. Sometimes I catch myself multitasking and trying to solve a work problem while playing with my kids. I know it’s wrong. But it’s part of who I am. I can work on it, but I can’t and don’t want to deny that it’s part of me. What I’m getting at is that being in harmony with ourselves should be our constant endeavor and it’s what matters most, and along the way we need to accept that not everything always goes perfectly.

This acceptance must come from us and not from others, because only you know exactly what’s going on in your head and whether the tasks you’re carrying out align with your goals. This is also good evidence that we should abandon all that others think about this topic, because they never have a complete view of our goals, methods, and degree of their realization.

You could say it’s a kind of harmony of goals. I usually find out how important it is to respect it when I fail to achieve it. For example, going on vacation when I have unfinished business makes me feel simply bad about myself and I can’t relax. As a result, I come back even more tired than I was, just to finally finish what I previously failed to do. Understanding this phenomenon has allowed me to plan my free time much better and accept that to rest, you have to prepare with proper, conscious action.

I used to think that I could find peace by resolving all the accumulated issues. However, the number of issues is infinite. The only way is to find inner peace by rejecting the concept that all external matters must be resolved.

How to define goals

Realizing that the struggle with goal achievement and the associated feelings occur internally and should be detached from the opinions of others is only half the battle. Equally important is defining goals in such a way that they come from us, not from how we want others to perceive us. This may be obvious to you, but it wasn’t to me. A good example of this is the fact that I completed law studies because the external message suggested that it was a good idea. Maybe if I had known earlier about how to properly select goals in line with my values, I could have saved a lot of time.

The lack of proper goal selection results in a pattern that I’ve repeated for years. It involves getting caught up in a whirlwind of work to achieve something. Then I feel burned out, take a moment to recover, and throw myself into the next whirlwind. Despite everything, with the right dose of motivation and self-discipline, I can move mountains. However, this method turns out to be suboptimal in the context of my health and overall well-being, as well as relationships with loved ones. Over the years, I found it very difficult to enjoy successes or even recognize them. Something that others perceived as a great result, for me at best provided temporary relief that I finally managed to achieve it and could move on to the next thing that had been on my mind for a long time.

I haven’t found a perfect cure for this problem and we have to accept that sometimes it’s just like that. In this light, the perspective of work-life balance is not attractive to me at all. I often managed to work almost non-stop for 2 weeks to achieve one important goal and I (and my environment) learned to feel good about it. It’s important to me to be able to appreciate what I’ve done at the end, not just jump to the next task. From personal experience, I also understood that despite everything, rest during the process is beneficial, which I will write about below.

Authenticity

I also realized that this state of affairs can be significantly improved by choosing goals that are authentic, and then methods of their execution that allow me to enjoy the process itself, not just the result.

What are these authentic goals? They come from asking a few important questions:

• What exactly does success mean to me?
• What do I value in life — what are my values?
• How do I want to feel every day — what gives me satisfaction?

These may seem lofty and existential questions. However, having such a moral code allows me to manage goals and time more effectively and plan what is truly important to me. The answers to these questions helped me understand what is AUTHENTIC for me.

Contrary to appearances, it is not obvious.

There are things that others may judge negatively (e.g., divorce), while in a person’s life it may be the best thing that could happen (e.g., breaking free from a toxic relationship). It took me a long time to understand that certain social norms, even guidelines from our loved ones and parents (e.g., the best course of study) are wrong, as are the harmful values they uphold (e.g., the work ethic as a value in itself, that nothing in life comes easily, that failures always result from mistakes made). I was a person who was constantly busy for years. This constant busyness is like a badge we pin on ourselves and wear proudly, the alternative cost of which is our health — physical and mental, and relationships.

A good test of whether I should really set a particular goal is to ask myself: would I do it if I couldn’t tell anyone about it?

At some point in my life, I simply understood that I should pursue goals that are authentic to me and completely stop worrying about the opinion of others, their criticism of my failures as well as praising my successes. This may not have helped me deliver better, but deliver what actually matters.

Let’s get back to these important questions — based on my answers, you might better understand what I mean.

What does success mean to me exactly?

As much as me and my close family are happy.

Just that. Underneath it hides a lot of things, such as that I am healthy, safe, fulfilled. Underneath feeling safe hides financial security, so maybe the goal will also be the results of my projects. As you can see, digging deeper it’s easy to extract individual goals from such a general statement and then prioritize them over time. It’s possible that once I’m financially free permanently, I’ll be able to cross out the goal of feeling safe. And that’s the point.

However, even such a broadly defined definition of success does a good job for a simple reason: every goal I set in the short term can be checked by reverse engineering with the question: “will delivering it bring me and my loved ones closer to happiness?”

The answer is not always obvious, but getting to it allows me to understand why I do what I do. And this in turn has a huge impact on motivation.

What do I value in life — what are my values?

There are many, but let’s take the most important one: freedom.

To narrow it down to the current context: it’s very easy to filter assumed goals through the prism of whether they meet my definition of freedom, or rather whether the realization of such a goal will be in line with my values.

Some time ago I went to San Francisco to pitch one of my projects. Then I had several meetings with investors and potentially secured high funding. However, the requirement was to move to California. This might be the pinnacle of many entrepreneurs’ dreams. However, for me, it disrupted the foundation of my values: the sense of freedom, and for this reason, I rejected the offer.

If I know that a given goal will bring me closer to my understanding of success, and is also in line with my values, I have even more rational, internal reasons why I should achieve it, especially when I encounter adversity.

How do I want to feel every day — what gives me satisfaction?

I want to be in a state of flow as often as possible.

This is the state in which Leo Messi is during a free kick. He probably doesn’t hear the audience then and thinks about nothing else but scoring a goal. He identifies with the goal to such an extent that he becomes one with it. This state causes us to ignore the passage of time, and the accompanying dopamine makes us feel satisfied being in the process itself, not just after its completion.

Once research was done on a group of IT managers, which showed that their average attention span was 3 minutes. I had exactly the same. The number of distractors determined that at the end of the day when asked what I did today, I couldn’t answer (and I felt tired). The average energy cost of switching context is 20 minutes, even if you just look at a notification. The moment I blocked myself 1.5 hours for work without distractors, I started to enter the state of focus and deliver results much easier.

I love flow. Not only related to work, but also play, sports and generally spending free time in an interesting way. That’s why I want to stay in this state as long as possible. Well-set goals, but also a conscious and planned way of achieving them, make it easy to find yourself in it.

Additionally, to bring truly unique value to the world, you need an obsession, which can sometimes be identified with the state of flow. Delivering at the highest level requires flow.

You could say that being in a state of flow is a significant hint as to whether I have skillfully set a goal for myself that is authentic.

At this point, I need to make one important caveat. I mentioned overarching goals and values like happiness and freedom. Striving for something is a contract I make with myself. This means that I agree to sometimes be unhappy along the way, but achieving the goal will give me satisfaction and in the long term will bring me closer to my definition of success. The same applies to values such as freedom. If building a project would require me to make several trips to California, I am willing to accept such a trade-off. However, if taking funding would mean having to cooperate with investors in making decisions and permanently moving to San Francisco, this is a significant violation of this value.

The realization of every assumption involves the fact that we will have to temporarily sacrifice some of our values for the greater good. But even more often, we will have to do things along the way that we don’t particularly like and this is completely normal. Key for me was understanding the following relationship:

How much time during the day I spend doing things I have to do, versus those that actually interest me.

From the perspective of delivery, this seems key to me for a simple reason. I once heard of a theory in which motivation is a depleted resource and for me such reasoning just works. If we set a goal that is very distant, there is a high risk that just thinking about its realization will not provide us with enough motivation on a daily basis to overcome boring tasks.

Journey versus goal

Let’s assume that reaching the goal requires performing 1000 tasks. Each task that interests us adds 5 points of motivation, and each one that we simply have to do takes away 5 points of motivation. Awareness of the goal itself gives us a starting credit of 100 points of motivation. We have to take care of the rest along the way. If we only perform tasks that we have to force ourselves to do, the credit will quickly run out. There are goals that give us more motivation in themselves: for example, “I have to earn money for an apartment rental to move out of my parents’ house” had an infinite credit of motivation points for me, considering the jobs I was undertaking at the time. But this balance always exists and it is crucial to be able to consciously evaluate it.

The fewer existential, critical needs we have, the more important it becomes to set goals, the pursuit of which will be conditioned by a series of activities that interest us and add points of motivation.

I came to the conclusion that over time the journey becomes much more important than the goal. It took me years to reach this conclusion. Which doesn’t mean that I wasn’t aware of it earlier. On the contrary. I heard it from everyone who achieved something and read it in every major book in my life. However, it turns out that this is one of those things in the category of “easy for you to say” and you just have to come to it yourself. Partly by doing those harder tasks to achieve critical, existential goals.

What I unfortunately understood too late is the fact that until a certain time, my primary goal (success) in life was to find the people who need me the most and projects in which I have the biggest advantages. This is about things that performing for others is work, and for me — pleasure (most of the time). Building goals based on what others are doing and striving for is a mistake. Also for this reason, all universal guides or success stories don’t matter much.

This also means that you have to often return to the key questions and redefine them. The beginning of the year is a good occasion for this. It may turn out that our values have changed, which is completely normal, but without revision, we can fall into the trap of feeling that something is wrong. A good example is material goals, which often evolve over time. For example, buying a Lambo may seem like a great goal, but most people, with age, simply come to the conclusion that it is not in line with their values.

Habits Instead of Goals

I’ve also outlined the problem of perspective. Whether I feel satisfaction comes from performing current tasks, not from the fact that I’ve moved a hundredth of a percent closer to, most often distant, goal.

That’s why, instead of focusing on goals, I prefer to create habits that will bring me closer to them.

Among top athletes, a characteristic that they all share was studied — the so-called hyperfocus. It’s about the fact that the best ones focus on one important thing, eliminating all distractions. But it’s not about winning an Olympic medal in 2 years but rather running the nearest 200 meters in training. It’s about focusing fully on the nearest thing that will bring us closer to a distant goal.

Why habits are important, I understood reading this quote:

At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people who you spend the most time with.

In some studies, I read that if I really don’t want to do something, I should try to focus for a few seconds on some distant object and then switch to action. I don’t know why, but it works. Currently in such situations, I choose one of two things: sport, because usually it’s enough to make a decision, put on shoes and you can go for a run (when I come back, I have a lot of energy and time spent on running or walking is never wasted) or this technique, to narrow the focus, release a bit of dopamine and overcome the crisis.

If I have a larger personal goal, for example related to health, I always try to turn it into a habit. After some time, I evaluate whether a given habit effectively brings me closer to the goal, and if not, I calibrate it. However, I never judge myself. I also don’t expect to always be able to implement a given habit. I believe that this is not effective and only leads to feelings of guilt. I treat habits like projects, the implementation of which I planned — if I don’t get the right result from them, I try to pivot them.

Habits have one magical feature — once ingrained in our system, they are incredibly effective. Building them has been helped by the book Atomic Habits, as well as Andrew Huberman’s podcast. Effective habit building requires persistence, but the results are spectacular. Currently, as soon as the thought “I don’t feel like it” appears in my head, the next thought jumps in automatically: sport, or narrow focus. This is because I managed to develop such a habit. I also discovered that if you systematically work on instilling the right habits, shaping the next ones is much easier. We kind of create a habit of shaping new habits (or getting rid of harmful ones).

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Trust as a Foundation

However, what books and podcasts didn’t tell me is the fact that building habits starts with building trust in yourself.

I always thought of myself as not particularly clever, but hardworking. This perception of reality is good for me because it allows me to rely on something I have influence over and it’s worth approaching tasks in this way. Usually, when I managed to do something, I always subconsciously credited all the merit to myself. If something didn’t go well, I tried to find a million reasons beyond my control that led to it. Even if these are just excuses we want to use to convince others of our worth, I noticed that to deceive someone else, we always have to deceive ourselves first. Shifting thinking from factors beyond our control (“I’m too stupid for this”) to what we can influence (“I’ll start with what I can do”) was crucial for me in achieving long-term goals.

Ergo, it is also important in the context of habits — every time we carry out a task we have committed to, we gain trust points, i.e. self-confidence. Over time, such a built foundation is increasingly difficult to crumble and gives a stronger effect than the biggest streak in Duolingo.

When I started trusting myself and stopped being disappointed, I started delivering better.

Building Habits

However, even with such a foundation, habit formation is difficult and very individual. Dr. Huberman mentioned a study in which habit formation of a walk after lunch took different people from 18 to 244 days. How to measure if we have already formed a habit? Primarily by how much it depends on context and environment. Even if you’re on vacation, you probably can’t imagine not brushing your teeth. People who have, for example, a running habit, feel the same way about this activity, regardless of the place and time they are in. It is scientifically proven (among others in Psychology of Habit), that with each repetition of a given activity, certain sequences are created that reduce the so-called limbic friction, i.e. in simplification, the resistance of the nervous system to performing a given activity, modifying the structure of the brain — the hippocampus. Being aware of this has allowed me to overcome the slightly harder moments of habit formation many times, where I could tell myself that if I do something now, next time it will be “a little easier”.

Shortcut notes from the podcast that accompany my habit building are:

• I choose a maximum of 6 new habits
• I try to carry out at least 4 every day
• The time to perform the task is irrelevant, the state in which our body and mind are is important, I don’t use any schedule

For this reason, it is better to operate on phases of the day:

• 0–8 hours after waking up — active state, during this time it is worth placing the most difficult habits, because the chemistry of our body helps to overcome limbic friction. It’s worth taking care of light exposure after waking up and activity.
• 9–15 hours after waking up — more serotonin supports a state of relaxation, we should rather prepare our body for the process of consolidating learning habits, which takes place at night, you can place habits with less friction here. Reduce the amount of light in the room, take a warm bath.
• 16–24 hours after waking up — a darkened room and low room temperature facilitate the important process of so-called reinforced learning, extremely important in consolidating habits, which reduces friction the next day. If you want to develop a meditation habit, try before sleep.

I practice habits for 21 days

• I don’t feel guilty if it doesn’t work out one day, I don’t compensate for habits the next day
• After 21 days I observe how many habits work automatically (usually 1–2)
• I start the next cycle leaving habits that require work and adding new ones

I want to emphasize something that results from these points but in my opinion is crucial for effective delivery, and completely non-obvious: rest is part of the process. This was counterintuitive for me for years. After all, if I sit non-stop for 3 weeks on a given task, I will deliver faster. Apparently yes, but in practice it will have more negative effects than benefits. Probably, in the next period I will achieve much less, or slower. Rest is crucial not only for consolidating neural connections in order to shape habits. Contrary to appearances, our body also works on solving the current problem when we rest. I became more aware of this by reading The Creative Act: A Way of Being, which I recommend if you want to approach your work in a more metaphysical way.

Maintaining Habits

In a perfect world, if we manage to actually form a habit, there’s no need to maintain it because it happens automatically. However, there are often situations where, for example, illness knocks us out for a while, or there is another reason why we can’t perform a given task. The most important thing is to have a pre-thought-out plan for such situations. The fact that we won’t be able to deliver once in a while is 100% certain. It’s up to us, however, whether this will knock us out of rhythm for longer or maybe even forever. To counteract this, it’s enough to accept the fact that we don’t always have to deliver for more important habits and practice emergency scenarios. If we assume beforehand that we can let go in situation a) b) c), our body will simply treat it as fulfilling a condition, not as a failure from which a rule can be made.

The ability to let go is also very important. Most often in difficult situations, when I couldn’t achieve something, it was natural for me to push until I got something done. I pulled countless all-nighters because of this. However, over time I understood that in such situations a better strategy is to let go for a while. Often the next day I already had an idea of how to solve the problem. When we rest, our body works on its own on what’s bothering us. Not without reason mom always repeated that “morning will be wiser”.

Sometimes it’s worth giving up striving for a certain result altogether, because during the process it turned out that the goal is not right. I used to have a big problem with this. This is another reason why setting, especially distant and large goals, is not entirely correct. When I still did this, I was generally emotionally and time invested in delivering the goal, so I tried to achieve it at all costs, despite the fact that all objective circumstances indicated that it was pointless. After a longer time, I found a simple remedy for this. First: I always test bigger ideas. I create small MVPs, or talk to customers before releasing a new feature, how and in what way they plan to use it. I know that I know nothing and only think so. This intuition often proves to be correct, but despite everything, before committing large resources, I always try to perform small tests, which confirm my belief that a given decision is good and it’s worth investing resources to achieve a given assumption. Secondly, I learned to mentally let go. This was even harder and in short it meant that I changed my approach to the implementation of each task — my main goal is simply to learn. The fact that something won’t work out for me or I have to redefine the goal in this light is not a failure, but a lesson from which I can draw conclusions. I always try to describe such a process and encourage my team to do so as part of the post mortem process. In this way, valuable conclusions can be drawn from every situation.

Breaking Bad Habits

When acquiring habits, it’s beneficial to ignore the fact that we failed to realize it one day. However, there are exceptions to this rule, and these are resolutions based on prohibitions. It was always beneficial for me to think of willpower as a muscle that I train:

Today is hard for me, but tomorrow will be easier because the muscle will work better

Indeed, that’s how it works in practice.

When I said goodbye to sweets, caffeine, or alcohol in my life for good, I didn’t so much give myself permission “once in a while”, on the contrary, I thought of myself as a person addicted, for whom one piece of chocolate is enough to return to addiction. In my case, it was like that and once I let go, I allowed myself to let go again. So if we want to part with something categorically (even for a while), this technique was effective for me. I was inspired to it by Jerzy Gregorek in the book The Happy Body: The Simple Science of Nutrition, Exercise, and Relaxation, which I definitely recommend.

For exceptionally difficult cases of habits, I also recommend transferring, for example, 500 PLN to charitable purposes for each “side jump”. You’ll be surprised how well it works. Personally, it also helped me to understand why a given substance, e.g. sugar, leads directly to diseases and alcohol to bad mood — not on the principle of “because it is” but step by step, how our body functions with it. Perplexity is great for this, which can be thoroughly asked about such causal relationships.

Just Do It

On my way to effective work or achieving goals, this quote also played a big role:

Stop asking why and start saying wow

I noticed that in my case, focusing on this narrow goal actually solves most of the problems associated with procrastination, even the hidden one. An example of hidden procrastination is planning a meeting to discuss a given problem. If it’s important enough, let’s discuss it here and now. The same applies to meetings without an agenda. I always know what I’m aiming for. This greatly facilitates the decision-making process. At the stage of minor interactions, it’s equally important. For example, I’m starting a conversation right away. I always strive for reflection at the beginning, what the parties want to get from such a conversation, and then I filter all my statements based on that. Does what I say actually serve to achieve a specific result, or is it just an attempt to prove that I’m right or to present my views?

Every time we say “I intend to do this” we actually postpone it in time and signal that we don’t have the right priority for it. Instead, we should just do it. This also results from the fact that we subconsciously believe that some things are more important than others. The goal is something we need to plan, write down, discuss, commit to. But cleaning Puszka’s litter box needs to be done now, because the air in the room reminds us of it with every breath. In practice, whatever currently occupies our mind is the most important, regardless of what it is. When I realized this, I started consciously directing thoughts towards things that bring me closer to achieving an important goal. And so — meditation helps a lot in this. It helps to steer them on the right track when suddenly priority gives way to a minor issue.

Or Maybe I’ll Help Myself a Bit…

At this stage, you understand why I don’t believe in goals and why I consider their planning as procrastination. I definitely prefer specific tasks or building habits, which successfully replace goal planning. Much more important to me is the motivation that brings us closer to achieving them. I consider the skillful adaptation of our environment to facilitate pushing things forward as a great art in this area.

I once read an interview with Dan Bilzerian (a colorful character, if you don’t know him, check him out). I remember how systematically Dan approached increasing his “luck” with girls. He simply invited significantly fewer men than women to parties, which naturally increased his chances. Although I haven’t read his book, I think he called it “The Setup” for this reason. Even though our goals are undoubtedly different, the way of thinking about them seems to be very similar. I heard from a friend that Dan is very effective in the areas that interest him.

In the context of habits, this is equally effective. Both Dr. Huberman’s concept of bracketing and James Clear defining triggers for habitual behaviors suggest that it’s a good idea to shape your environment to minimize friction before performing a task. That’s why I always have a book on the shelf next to the bed, and my workstation is constructed so that everything is ready to record. One button launches the camera, lights, microphone. In this way, I significantly reduce the number of activities, which brings me closer to achieving the goal. Sometimes, even without knowing what I will be recording, I press the button and it turns out that after a few minutes I already know and start delivering.

How it works in a team

Until a certain point, I thought that my striving for the intended result was a certain character trait and it’s hard to revive it in someone who simply doesn’t have it. People from my environment tried to convince me of this. Today I know that this is wrong thinking and sometimes an excuse, allowing to justify the lack of results, which for example we expect from people we work with. You’ve probably heard the statement:

You can’t expect others to work like you do. After all, it’s your company, not theirs.

From a time perspective, I consider it a false justification for poor communication or management skills, or simply lack of professional approach on the other side. But thanks to what I described above, I was able to better understand why this is the case. We simply didn’t think to consider how such a person answered key questions and consequently, how to make their and our goals align. When you give someone money for work by employing them, you lower their status, so you need to help them find greater value in common tasks and goals.

It’s true that if you want quick results, act alone, and if you want long-term ones — play as a team. But there’s no obstacle for a team to work very effectively, almost like a goal-focused individual. However, this is not something that will happen spontaneously and internal, authentic needs have an impact on it.

In practice, the goals for the team are the result of working with clients and analyzing their needs, and the overall, larger vision we have for our project. So there’s no philosophy or difficult decisions in setting them. There’s also no need to deceive ourselves — companies are usually created to make money, and the mission and vision have a chance to materialize when funding is ensured. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Generally, the money we earn is an indicator of the value our clients receive from us (in a healthy model, where flows are not distorted e.g. by VC).

Very often I set the goals to be achieved, i.e. the tasks we have, taking this aspect into account. I try to estimate what value in time a planned function may have for us and present it to the team. This makes it easy to assess what approximate time for its implementation will cause it to strain. Thanks to this, we don’t have to operate on any specific goals (milestones) or deadlines nor waste time on micromanagement. In a team where trust is the foundation, this mode of operation works very well. It may not be optimal for building rockets to Mars, but we don’t have such aspirations. Thanks to this, we only operate on tasks and small habits that facilitate our work (e.g. filling in the changelog in Notion).

How it works for me

I believe there’s no sense in overthinking goals. For example, the workout that works best for me is simply one that I have enough enthusiasm to do every day.

In summary:

• I don’t have defined specific goals (nor do I believe in setting them)
• What I have to do is fairly obvious to me
• I don’t plan several years ahead, a quarter is the maximum predictability
• I don’t impose deadlines and pressures on myself
• I don’t systematize goals, beyond a simple task list
• The list is there to drop something that momentarily comes to mind (to not knock myself out of the current context)
• I have an empty calendar and don’t impose schedules on myself or others
• I always try to understand (not just know) the reason why I do something
• I strive to make the most of the time I have
• I don’t demand anything from others beyond what I demand from myself

Does this mean that I don’t think at all about what will be in a year, two, what’s the bigger vision for what I do? Maybe not at all, but I don’t think about it too much. If I didn’t know where I wanted to go, I wouldn’t start new projects at all. Within each of them, I set a long-term vision and mission, which I always have in mind and modify if necessary. But I don’t think about where I see myself and my projects in 3, 5 years. I’m not saying such goals are bad, for someone who wants to achieve extraordinary results. You could say it’s a consequence of my definition of success, which is not to build a unicorn, but rather to enjoy the journey in accordance with values.

In my teams, it’s very important that everyone has a clear vision of where we want to go and row in the same direction. However, this does not mean that you have to set hundreds of goals for years and then arrange them in roadmaps marked with deadlines. Usually, it’s a very well described upcoming quarter. The main goals set by the mission and vision are helpful in decision-making, but also the key values we follow. A list of such values often allows to confront them with key decisions and make the one that is most consistent with our principles.

The key is that I try to cooperate with people who have values similar to mine. If someone values freedom and independence, they are likely to be committed to delivering on their principles. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses is also useful, for example with the help of the Gallup test. The result is matched individuals who trust each other — both themselves and others. As you know, trust is the foundation for me to achieve goals.

Daily work

My daily work includes 1.5-hour focus blocks when I concentrate on a specific task. In my case, this most increases the chances of achieving a flow state. I try to have at least 3 such blocks a day. Apart from these blocks, I handle all current matters and distractors, which despite everything I have quite a lot of. However, if something starts to occupy my mental space during focus, I use a shortcut that adds a task to the list on Notion in order to offload it from my memory as quickly as possible.

This list, and one main goal that I set for the given week, are the only signposts supporting decisions on which task to throw into the next block. I don’t operate according to any daily schedule, I don’t block slots in my calendar and I hardly use it. My work requires creativity and focus, and unfortunately, this is not something I can generate on demand. Blocks in the calendar imposed on me the need to be focused at a given moment, and it just doesn’t work for me. Tasks in Notion have only two fields: name and deadline, because sometimes it is necessary. The list only shows me tasks for today, overdue tasks and tasks without a deadline.

I try to set current tasks that are neither too hard nor too easy to do. Some research suggests 85% difficulty. The idea is for such a task to be a bigger challenge, to release a dose of dopamine that will motivate me to continue working, but also not to be too difficult so that I have to sit on it for weeks. Usually during the day I tick off a few simpler tasks and one more important one, which pushes the most important resolutions forward, I implement from week to week.

Conclusion

Everything is in our heads. Our body is capable of almost impossible things. If we abandon all the blockades that we impose on ourselves — we will be unstoppable. The foundation is mental and physical health and to ensure it, I try to create healthy habits and eliminate harmful ones (not collect goals). However, this is a very individual matter. Until I knew my advantages and the people who could benefit from my work, it was the most important determinant of success for me. Once I developed the habit of creating habits and understood where my work has the greatest value, goals became an obvious continuation of this thought. Their realization is relatively simple for me, because I mostly try to do things that interest me and I understand why they give value to others, which provides an additional dose of motivation.

That’s all for now. Did you enjoy this article? If so, please join my newsletter to receive such insights weekly! 📬

— Greg

My Framework for 10x Productivity was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It is estimated that in 2024 we will generate 120 zettabytes of data. It’s difficult to even present this number in perspective, as it’s hard to comprehend that it’s approximately 328.77 quintillion bytes per day, or 328.77 million terabytes.

But that’s beside the point.

What’s important is comparing how much data we generate annually to previous years:

It’s somewhat easier to grasp this in the perspective that various sources report that from the dawn of humanity to around the year 2000, mankind produced a total of 5 exabytes of data. Nowadays, we generate 328.77 exabytes every day. This means that every day, we produce 65 times more data than the entire human race did in 2000 years.

On a side note, it’s fascinating that currently, we’re trying to pack all this data into one small data jar. Essentially, a large language model (LLM), such as the one that powers ChatGPT, which contains a substantial portion of the internet, is essentially two files. One file contains the program execution instructions, which aren’t overly complicated and at most a few hundred lines of code. The second file is the output file of all the magic and the result of training the model — in short, gigabytes of zeros and ones.

By the way, this is quite an expensive game. It’s exactly for this that Sam Altman from OpenAI is currently fundraising for a project that may consume, a trifle, $7 trillion dollars.

But what does all this have to do with the competencies of the future?

We’re slowly getting there. This means that stranded on a deserted island, with the knowledge of how to build a computer and a solar battery, and the aforementioned two files, you’ll probably be able to recreate most of humanity’s intellectual achievements.

Can you imagine discussing such topics with your grandparents, or even your parents?

I’m getting at the fact that most things that were relevant a few years ago in the context of education, or what is worth betting on as competencies that could potentially give us the opportunity for a well-paying job or social advancement in the future, are becoming obsolete right before our eyes.

It’s hard to advise someone on choosing a field of study these days. Because after all, studies that used to offer certainty and prestige, such as law studies, may soon be completely useless. First of all — absorbing vast volumes of legal knowledge and memorizing them seems, to put it mildly, a waste of time in the era of Perplexity, and soon also specialized models, trained for example on the entire database of judgments and legislation.

So how to cope in the rapidly changing technology space that surrounds us, which is changing faster than ever due to AI? What skills to acquire and what will actually be important in some time?

First of all — it is difficult to give a clear answer to this question. Will trends such as VR and AR, Blockchain, Cloud Computing, Data Science, which already seem ultra-modern and promising, stay with us for longer? We can’t predict that at the moment. It’s possible that AI will change our reality so much that even these clear trends will not survive the confrontation with a specialized model.

One thing is certain. The way we perceive our base knowledge will change significantly. This is about the possibilities of an individual who, with access to information with the help of AI, will be able to instantly reach most information from any field.

In this context, any textbook knowledge and memorization of detailed information seem completely unnecessary. It seems much more important to acquire information more superficially, but from different fields.

Until recently, we lived in times of narrow specialization. We are already seeing that the best experts are beginning to draw from different fields of knowledge and apply it to a specific case, going far beyond the area of their narrow specialization. In practice, specialized AI models, which will soon start appearing on the market, will be able to perform any specialized work better than humans. The more “processed” it is, the easier it will be for the model to navigate around specific rules.

That’s why an interesting way of testing models is to do it in an environment of closed rules. For example, AlphaGo, using a strictly defined set of Go game rules, was able to defeat any human after a certain number of iterations. The same goes for chess. Within defined rules, it’s easy to train a model that plays against itself, learning in this way, or to compare the effectiveness of two different models by inviting them to a joint game.

This is a good example of how specialization can translate into practical applications and implementations of AI in professions such as lawyers, accountants, architects, doctors, or builders. This also applies to professions related to technology and programming. And even primarily, as programming languages are even more natural environments for large models than the languages used by people. So, one can assume that soon models will be better than the best programmer in the world and will work with incomparable efficiency.

However, this does not mean that I predict the decline of the programming profession. The effects of such a transformation will simply be twofold:

Firstly, there will be a huge democratization of knowledge and technology. People who previously could not create a program, website, or mobile application will be able to do so with the help of interaction with the model. In this way, we will get enormous added value for the world, where only 4% of people are able to program anything. Soon this value will be close to 100%. Access to the internet and the ability to acquire knowledge, not where you were born, will be the determining factor of what you can achieve.

Secondly, specialists will gain incredible assistance at work, where AI will perform most of the tasks such as writing code, which currently had to be done manually. The programmer will use his specialization and knowledge of technology limitations to guide the model to create a significantly better application than one that would be created by a person without specialized knowledge. In addition, these will be experts who will create the infrastructure for completely new tools and technologies that the rest of humanity will use.

The time saved by AI, such a person will use to gain more general knowledge, for example about interface design, and in this way will be able to deliver more complex tools, programs, and products.

We are slowly entering a phase where an individual will be capable of implementing projects that until now were carried out by huge companies and corporations. Like Sam Altman I am also sure that a single person will be able to build a billion-dollar enterprise.

If you think about it for a moment, this means that such a person will have to find their way in all the processes that are currently carried out by specialized departments. In addition to operational functions, this person will manage marketing, sales, product, customer service, and all other processes — of course, with the help of artificial intelligence and tools, especially no-code and low-code.

But this directly suggests that the current structure of companies and corporations, where each of the employees has some designated role, is a product of a system that will soon become a thing of the past. The competencies of employees will intersect more, and companies will focus on skills that can be described as M-shaped.

However, there is a very important obstacle on the way — our mentality, beliefs, and habits. Everything that currently surrounds us at work is related to specialization. For example, we apply for a marketing position, work in the marketing department, and people from other departments are responsible for other things, such as programming.

The question is whether mentally we will be able to switch to thinking without limitations and, as a marketer, try our hand at programming or another field.

With the help of artificial intelligence, we will be able to effectively step out of our role and carry out tasks whose technical details we do not know and do not even need to understand. And within our specialization, we will in turn reach for new tools, also without the need to understand their mechanics, but only aware of the goal we want to achieve with their help and the general framework and limitations.

In this context, we will do things that we have done so far, but with completely different results, or on a completely different scale. A programmer, for example, will be able to use a language he does not know to program a new application in record time.

On the other hand, for example, a creator who creates videos on YouTube, will be able to create them more effectively and for a significantly larger audience and reach people on different platforms. Thanks to tools that are already able to generate video and content in different formats, distribution to social media or different media of the same original content will be childishly simple. What entire publishers or television stations are currently doing, one influencer will be able to achieve.

In short, all this means that it will no longer matter “how” to do something, and “what” to do will be much more important.

And this is where experience and industry knowledge come into play. The point is that people who understand a given industry well and are specialists within it will gain a huge advantage. However, understanding industry knowledge will be much more holistic and less focused on narrow specialization. Instead of learning new programming languages, the programmer will be able to understand how UI design and interface design work, in order to later use both these fields to create a complete application from A to Z. And in turn, the designer will know the principles of creating software and no-code and low-code tools, which will allow him to complete the project independently.

What will become a key competence can be described as the ability to search for and assimilate relevant knowledge — that is, knowledge that allows understanding of the problem but not necessarily its solution.

Considering how much data and information we generate, and in addition, how quickly this information can become outdated in the era of such rapid transformations in the field of technology, the ability to assess which data are valuable and necessary will become absolutely crucial.

This in turn comes down again to knowledge from many fields, the ability to make a proper assessment and also to ask the right questions. The ability to formulate them is also essential. In the future, most of the effects that we currently get from work with various tools and software are obtained from user interfaces. In the future, we will get these effects from the interaction with the model itself — this means that we will have to learn to issue effective commands and in this way we will receive not only answers, but also actions controlled by AI.

This concept is not at all a far-reaching, futuristic vision. We ourselves, right now, within the Alice application that we are developing, interact with tools and software in this way. For example, in this X, I show how Alice is already able to manage my calendar through conversation:

We are gradually granting access to Alice to Techsistence subscribers. We also plan a larger educational program that will help you understand the mechanisms of creating automations that allow Alice to interact with other tools. I will inform about this in the next posts.

In summary, the foundation of what we should consider as competencies of the future is a set of skills: firstly, adaptation and curiosity to discover new technologies and work with AI. Secondly, holistic knowledge, going beyond narrow specialization, but rather shaped in an “M-shaped” way, i.e., with the acquisition of specialist knowledge from various intersecting fields. In addition, accepting the fact that we do not need to know how something works underneath (basic competencies), but rather have an awareness of frames and schemes — limitations within which we operate. Finally, the ability to assess the truth, relevance, and search for reliable and necessary information, as well as conversation with the AI model — something we can safely bet on as key competencies in the coming years.

That’s all for now. Did you enjoy this article? If so, please join my newsletter to receive such insights weekly! 📬

— Greg

Navigating the AI-Driven Future: Skills for Success was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey, glad to see you here 👋

I’d like to invite you to my next big journey.

Over the course of nearly two decades, I’ve been immersed in the creation and development of internet projects, startups, and ventures of all kinds.

This includes eduweb (🇵🇱 platform teaching technology, with 250k+ students), learnux (education in UI&UX), toolsl and frameworks like SystemFlow, startups I currently scale (Zencal and easy_) and much more.

I’ve worn many hats, from management and design to product management, development, and even CEO, among others. This diverse range of roles has honed a unique set of skills and knowledge that I’m eager to share with you.

Throughout the years, my fascination with productivity and automation has led me to automate nearly all of my ventures. The recent surge in AI technology made me realize that my comprehensive knowledge and skills form a unique combination.

Together with my close friend Adam Gospodarczyk, I’ve spent over a year working on our side project, Alice — an AI Assistant that helps us with everyday tasks.

Above all, my passion lies in technology and sharing the wealth of knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years. Until now, my primary focus has been on creating content for a local Polish 🇵🇱 audience, which has grown to hundreds of thousands. However, my major objective in the coming months is to extend my educational reach globally, providing you with my insights, knowledge, and tools.

I aim to publish weekly, about:

• My approach to productivity and running big projects with few people
• Automation & AI in very practical, business applications
• Lessons learnt from running ventures as solopreneur and co-founder
• Finding joy in working hand-in-hand with technology
• My thoughts on various topics and mindset

While I will be publishing a portion of the content here on Medium, the entirety of it will be accessible, through our latest project, which I encourage you to be a part of:

Join Techsistence →

I look forward to having you on board as we embark on this exciting new journey!

All the best,
Greg