Week 5: Squeezing too tight makes it harder to actually hold on

The answer isn't more efficiency

Alright, week 5.

Last week I published an article about the business models of digital work, and I ended it saying I wanted CodedConstructs to be a service firm that also builds products. I also said I knew from experience that balancing those two is hard, and that I’d eventually have to build better boundaries between them.

Well this week, I got a preview of just how annoyingly difficult that is.

The product I built did the wrong thing

I have been working on a product alongside trying to get clients and creating content.

But the tempting thing with LLMs is that you let them do more and more as you get busier and busier with other things. And as I got busy creating content or doing client work, there were a few times I just let it run.

This week though, it “finished” and it’s time to test. I have automated tests but this was the end to end one. The one where I put myself in the shoes of my users and go through the product itself.

In the first 20 minutes, I listed maybe 15+ things that were wrong with it. Which was to be expected, but 1/15 needed significant rework. It was part of the core design of the product and the LLM had gotten it so so wrong.

So, I went to look back at all the notes and plans it worked off. I saw that I actually approved the wrong design. Probably because I was busy with something else and it kept asking me questions, so I just approved everything. The LLM, not knowing any better, just kept piling on top of that.

When the foundation is already wrong, building more on top of it makes it worse and that’s where I am at now. I have the cost of building the wrong thing and also now the added cost of fixing the thing because I said yes without knowing the consequences.

Focus more is not the answer

The easy answer here is “focus more”. In fact, I can almost hear my ex-managers giving me this same advice. To do less.

And I think it’s partly true but it’s not the whole story. It’s not to give up any of my current endeavors, I think it’s to focus on a few things at a time, not everything at once.

I was being too greedy.

If you’re a software developer, you would understand this. When we made stuff pre-AI, every time we made a change, we would have to wait for the computer to recompile. It would take 2 maybe 5 minutes before you can type a line of code again.

What do you do in this time ? You can scroll your phone, read something, stare at the screen, etc.

Now, in the AI world, it’s waiting for agents to finish.

So, what do I do now? Well, I start another agent to do something else.

Then, what do I do while waiting for that ? I start another

So, I end up having 2-3 agents at the same time. There was one time, I had up to 6.

It sounds awesome, like I am this grand puppet master with an army of agents working for me. But this actually means my attention and judgement (which arguably is my most valuable asset) is split across multiple equally important tasks.

It’s just plain greedy. Instead of 1 amazing result, I now have 6 mediocre ones.

So, my lesson for week 5 is to resist the urge to squeeze as much as I can. Because the harder I try to be efficient, the less I actually am.

Thanks for reading,

Onward to week six.

Thanks for reading
Subscribe to CodedShapes to follow along in my journey!

Work with me: https://codedconstructs.com/contact/

Resources on Computational Design: https://www.codedshapes.com/p/scripository