Happy Easter! :-)
I hope the “spring pastel colors” of my Google Calendar give you friendly Easter Vibes, because this “in-person” week ahead is feelin’ a little crazy right now!
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Monday: Pick up my farm truck (3 week repair, yikes!)
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Tuesday: Private school visit with my oldest son
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Thursday: Tiger 21 Investment Portfolio Defense
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Friday: 1:1 VIP Day with a client in Boston
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Saturday/Sunday: 2-Day “Return to Real” Mastermind
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Monday (Next Week): Another 1:1 Client VIP Day
Oh, and somewhere in all of that…
I just handed off the FINAL book cover brief for Return to Real to my designer :-)
AND I’m sitting on nearly 10,000 beta reader comments on the manuscript that I’m currently working through as we speak!
(So yeah. Light week.)
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But in a week where my truck (my primary farm vehicle) been in the shop…
My MacBook Pro (my primary work vehicle) also somehow managed to die as well…
AND due to all the demand right now for Apple M5 Pro/Max chips, a replacement is going to take about three weeks to get here…
And yet…
Despite all this “real world” disruption, there are five (5) specific ways AI is making this absolutely crazy week ahead not only possible…
But dare I say, manageable??…
So in today’s Easter Sunday issue of The Digital Contrarian, I thought I’d walk you through some of the weird and wonderful ways I’m using AI this week…
Because I think it will not only give you some tactical ideas to think about utilizing yourself…
But also consider one of the questions at the heart of Return to Real:
What is it in YOUR life that you insist on keeping human? And what are you willing to hand over to the machines so you can hold that line?
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As you ponder that question, I’ll give you a few examples from MY own life this week where this showed up…
1. The book cover handoff.
I used Adobe Firefly and Claude to generate dozens of AI cover variants over the past several weeks.
This would have taken me hundreds of hours of design work if I were illustrating these mockups by hand.
But with the help of AI…
By the time my designer received the brief earlier this week, I had a super clear creative direction with visual references to work from based on my dozens of iterations…
This is not only going to create a more compelling cover design but it’s also going to shave weeks off the timeline.
2. The school visit.
This was an opportunity for my son and me to work on an AI project together, which was a lot of fun.
We used Claude to build a rubric and graphic interface to compare and contrast several of the schools that he is currently deciding between – AND also to help us identify gaps that we want to get clarity on during our visit this week…
3. The Tiger 21 portfolio defense.
This portfolio analysis that would have me taken weeks to build was something I was able to complete in a single Saturday afternoon using Claude’s Co-Work feature in Excel.
On Thursday, I’ll walk into a room full of some of the most sophisticated investors in the country with a sharpened investment thesis and a detailed model behind it.
(AI also helped me identify a few gaps in my portfolio that I’m going to be able to address in the next 30 days…)
4. Two 1:1 client VIP days.
Two full-day, one-on-one sessions… one on Friday and the second the following Monday, bookending the mastermind weekend.
AI handled my pre-session research. Synthesized prior notes. Prepared frameworks in advance.
When I sit down across from each of these clients, I’ll be locked in on that person from minute one because of all the pre-work I was able to do with AI leading up to each of these days.
5. The RTR mastermind.
With the help of AI, I’ve been able to analyze pages of member intake answers that I’ve now processed for patterns.
Connections between members. Potential referral partnerships. Shared challenges that aren’t obvious on the surface.
Before stepping into the room on Saturday, I’ve already identified trends that would otherwise be impossible to uncover.
All of this helps create for a more meaningful in-person experience for everyone in the room, when we’re together a few short days from now…
Speaking of which, if you’re interested in being part of the next in-person Return to Real mastermind experience, you can get onto the waitlist here. I’ll likely be doing another one of these later this summer after the launch of my book. Stay tuned :-)
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And one thing running underneath all five of these: Wispr Flow.
Voice-to-text as my primary input method across everything above.
I was literally drafting financial model prompts while baking 9 loaves of sourdough (so far) this week.
Like these right here (including one that we couldn’t wait to sink our teeth into before I could snap this photo) :-)
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If you take a look at this list…
Every moment that really matters this week requires being 100% “in the room”…
AI won’t present to Tiger 21….
It won’t sit across from a client facing a pivotal decision during a VIP day….
It won’t be touring a school with my son…
But AI cleared the path so I can actually be there for all of it.
And that’s the question at the heart of the book I’ve been toiling over for the last year:
In this age of artificial everything, what in your life and business must stay human? And what are you willing to hand over to the machines so it can?
Return to Real: The Last Human Advantage in an Age of Artificial Everything.
Set to release on June 30th…
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Okay, that’s all I’ve got!
Busy Easter Sunday today…
Farm truck to pick up Monday morning…
And a VERY full week ahead…
Have a wonderful Easter.
Remember to hug the ones you love.
And until next week,
Ryan :-)
