Things I'm thinking about before summer hits

A book I can't stop talking about, a prompt worth stealing, and why I am officially the most annoying person in my house

I'm staring down a summer with significantly less childcare, kids' camps that start later and are farther away, and rising job expectations due to the potential of AI. So this week we're talking about the AI catch-22, a book I'm still chewing on, a prompt I think is actually worth your time, my go-to work pants (on sale, if you need some), and the AI tool that has officially earned me the title of Most Annoying Person In This House.

What I’m reading lately

I recently finished the book Strangers* by Belle Burden, which is a non-fiction book about one stay-at-home mom’s journey through a messy divorce. I mostly found this book fascinating because this stay-at-home mom comes from ultra-wealthy background and had access to substantial wealth prior to joining the marriage. However, as the age old tale goes, she decided to opt-out of paid work and support her husband’s career. He happened to build an extremely lucrative career and then (predictably) marked those earnings as his own and discounted her effort to enable and generate them.

My friend, emilie dayan hill, cfa, wrote a fantastic article on this book through her unique point of view as a high-net worth wealth manager.

Summer schedules for working moms

Alas here we are again at the precipice of a summer which will inevitably include a significant amount of time without childcare while I have to still work. Part of the challenge of summer is related to the fact that I now have school aged kids who have camps that not only start later than school but that are also farther away from my house. All of this adds up to 2 or more hours less of childcare plus an additional hour in the car per day.

That reality meeting with the craze of AI in the workplace is going to come to a massive explosion this summer. I’m going to have less time to work (which I fully recognize is seasonal in the summer) and I’m going to have to figure out how to be more productive. Yes, AI can help, if I can find time to experiment and implement it. AHA! Now you see the problem. It really is a catch-22 of being able to spend the time to save the time. I feel like I’m getting hoodwinked by a good sale. “Think of how much money you can save if you just spend all of this money first!”

Not sure if I’m the only one feeling that way, I would love to know if you are, too.

AI Musings on “Just send me the prompt” and also here is a prompt I used

As we have recently gained access to new tools at work, I’ve been thinking about how many people are so focused on the prompt. “What is the prompt you used” is most often the question I hear when I am describing a win I got with AI. While I do think that prompting is an art and a science, I actually think the context matters much more than the prompt. Let me share an example:

Think about hiring a new employee. You can hire a brand new college grad who has almost zero life experience (I would say sorry for saying this, but zero new college grads read my musings, and for those of you who are reading this, I know you agree) and when you hire this person, you have to train them on everything - including how to send basic follow up emails and appropriate etiquette when scheduling meetings. If you hire someone who has 10-15 years of experience, they start the job much more equipped to make an impact on day one.

I don’t like thinking about your AI as an intern, because I do think it is much more capable than that, but without any context on your business and your projects, it won’t be able to deliver any value to you.

So I guess my lesson of the week is that AI is only going to give you what you want with a few key things:

1. A good prompt

2. Access to context (either you manually type this in, or you hook it up to your systems at work, or you build skills/projects and seed relevant information)

3. Your refinement (experimentation and feedback is required to get anything meaningful)

I do wish it were as easy as sending you a really good prompt, however, it’s not!

If you do want access to a really good prompt that I wrote for creating a Daily Morning Brief that scans your email inbox and calendar and sends you a brief of what to expect when you walk into work today, you can get both the prompt and detailed instructions on how to use it emailed to you → AI Daily Morning Brief Prompt and Instructions.

And if this kind of stuff is right up your alley, maybe you should join us in the AI Learning Lounge, a place where corporate working moms share ideas on how they are actually using AI at work and home today.

What I’m wearing lately

My go-to work pants are on sale right now*, so I thought I’d share them with you in case you need new pants. I own them in both Blue and Black, and personally I wear the petite at my 5’3” stature. The sale is 40% off plus an extra 15% off which I feel is a really weird way of saying 49% off, but its a good price for a good reliable pair of pants that actually works with my postpartum body. If you’re in need of a good work blazer, those are also on sale through the same link above.

The most jarring thing for my family

I talk to my friends on Marco-Polo and often if my family is around it will feel jarring to them because I will just randomly start speaking without any context and no one knows if I am speaking to them. Mostly this has just turned into no one listening to me unless I make it explicit that I am talking to only them. Oh what a joy.

However the thing that is even more jarring right now is that I purchased an AI tool that will allow me to speak directly to my computer instead of typing anything. I now am that person that talks to their Apple Watch, except I do it for literally everything including going back and forth with Claude in chat. Yes it does make me extra annoying but who can complain when I can speak 10x faster than I can write? Anyways, if you want to try it out, here is a link to the tool* I’m using.

*Affiliate link - If you purchase products using my link, I do get a small commission, at no additional cost to you