Right now I’m speaking my thoughts out loud using a tool called VoiceMod. It turns my voice into structured writing based on instructions I’ve given it. It doesn’t change what I mean, but it makes everything much faster. It cleans up grammar, pauses, and those moments where I correct myself mid-thought. What comes out is basically what I meant, just clearer.

AI has worked its way into almost every part of my daily life. As a software engineer, there’s no avoiding it. In many ways, it came out of our field and is now reshaping it.

What’s changed isn’t what I can do per se… It’s how I do it. I used to feel like I was placing each brick by hand. Now it feels like I’ve built a system that does it for me based on the structure I define. I can step back and think ahead while things keep moving.

Speed isn’t the only thing that it’s changed up for me. These tools can process information in real time and connect to things like weather, markets, and other data. With local models, you can keep that private. The shift is that I’m less focused on execution and more focused on what actually matters – but at the same time I know that more information faster isn’t automatically better.

There are some serious downsides to this new pattern of information gathering and processing. There always are when something this big changes how we work.

I think about the agricultural revolution. It pushed progress forward but wiped out large parts of natural land. The tradeoff was real crappy for a lot of people. The same is true of the Industrial Revolution. It shaped modern life but also created long-term environmental damage. We’re still dealing with that in modern days.

AI feels similar. I have mixed feelings, but it’s already here. The focus now has to be on how we adapt. We need to keep using our own thinking and not let it fade. I have to evolve to stay relevant, but I also want to. The upside is too compelling. I can learn faster and spend more time on things I actually care about.

If you look at the wish list under my name on this site, you’ll see one example. I used AI to build a WordPress plugin that keeps a database of things I like in a simple format. It has a clean bookmarklet and admin dashboard. No ads. No tracking. No algorithm trying to push something on me.

That’s the kind of project I used to really struggle to make time for. Not because it was too hard, but because it took too many steps, a lot of time, and flow state which is impossible sometimes after a long day at work. Now I can define what I want, set guardrails, and let AI handle getting it to a good starting point.

That shift matters more than the output. I don’t have to choose between building things and living my life. I can garden, see friends, work out, and still move ideas forward. I spend time reviewing instead of typing out line by line what I intended to build.

The biggest change is this: my hobbies and my projects aren’t competing anymore. That’s a huge improvement in how my day-to-day life feels.

I expect this will keep evolving. For now, I’m just focused on building.