Daniel Wentsch

Life can be pretty good at 10 or 20, but it's often frustrating at 15. This is too big a problem to solve here, but certainly one reason life sucks at 15 is that kids are trapped in a world designed for 10 year olds.

To-Do List as a Menu

📝 If you feel overwhelmed by your to-do list, try a new perspective:

• 🍔 Treat your to-do list like a menu. Instead of a list of chores you must complete, see it as a menu of options you get to choose from.


• 🤔 Acknowledge that you won't finish everything. This is a key part of shifting your mindset from overwhelmed to empowered.

It’s difficult as a parent to, on one hand, want to shower your kids with protection and help while, on the other, know how important it is to teach them independence. “Teach” is probably the wrong word, because you know they’ll figure it out on their own. Sometimes you provide the most help with the assistance you withhold.

One of the most intelligent case studies in design is the Chinese tea cup. They’re made without handles simply because if it’s too hot to touch, it’s too hot to drink.

Humans naturally want to add more. Add a cardboard sleeve, add a warning on the outside of the cup, add a handle. The result of all these things never cools down the actual contents.

I’m proposing a pragmatic approach: treat AI as if it were human because, in many ways, it behaves like one. This mindset, which echoes my “treat it like a person” principle of AI, can significantly improve your understanding of how and when to use AI in a practical, if not technical, sense.

AI excels at tasks that are intensely human. It can write,

This is the very essence of meditation: we reprogram unconscious mental processes by repeating basic tasks over and over with a clear intention.

And when we panic and feel intensely anxious about the future, we need to remember that we are in essence worrying about our fundamental legitimacy and lovability. Our survival depends on a swift mastery of the varied arts of self-compassion.