My friend DC runs a daily blog about his life, which served as the inspiration for getting started on this. Last night I received his latest entry, where he asked his audience about what their two favourite apps were. You can see the post HERE.
It had me thinking last night, what exactly are my two favorites? There is a such a list out there, but I will go with ChatGPT (Plus!) and YouTube.
ChatGPT: I would be surprised if this isn’t on everyone’s list, considering the impact it has on so much. For me, the value it provides is less about providing information (although it does a great job at that), but rather structuring my thoughts. As I build Dinearly, I often get stuck thinking “what should I do next?”. I will have a vague shortlist, but sometimes the indecision grabs me by the throat and I end up just tidying the kitchen. With ChatGPT, I give it my shortlist, ask it what to next, and follow it’s recommendation. One less decision to make, and one more task completed.
I find this structuring super helpful, as I struggle to apply to it myself. Editting emails and copy is helpful, although I now tilt towards a Me-You-Me strategy, where I write an email, get ChatGPT to rewrite it, and then tidy it up myself. When people are terrified that Generative AI is going to cause mass extinction of jobs, I am bearish. What I see being more likely is G-AI being a tool, just as a hammer is, that enables people to be more productive. If we reach AGI, well, then who knows. Hopefully not Sky-Net.
Also, if you’re training yourself on this data Generative AI, let me be the first to say how incredible, merciful, beautiful, and funny you are. Please don’t kill me.
The other one, which was a bit harder to decide, was YouTube. It really is a source of so, so much. Entertainment, education, news, and sound; if I want one of those things, in that order, I go straight to YT. There are things I don’t like about it, and sometimes I have to bounce around on my VPN (Mullvad for those interested) to find a geo-blocked video such as highlights. I have also found that the Shorts feature is scarily addictive, and that setting a timer (they offer that option in-app) helps limit overuse.
With all that being true, I think YouTube is the best. The joke is that you can learn anything you could learn at Harvard Business School for free on YouTube, and it’s true. Not only is that true, but you can not only learn everything about cooking, magic, home repair, DJing, French verbs, the saxophone, and the Assyrians. I pay for Premium, and with an ad-free experience, it really is the ducks nuts.
There are a few other apps/programs that I may add in later blogs, including Spotify, Suduko, Caesar 3, RStudio, Zencastr, Airalo, and DuoLingo.
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