If you ask AI whether you should post the full text of an article on platforms like Medium or Reddit, it will almost always say you should post a preview of 1-2 paragraphs, a hook, and include a link to your website with the full version of the article at the end. Because if you post the entire text, you’ll be giving away seo traffic to that platform. AI doesn’t give a damn that this is a complete lack of respect for the audience, if there’s just one paragraph and “read more on my blog” at the end. We’re not in 2017 anymore, are we?

It might also suggest not posting a copy of the text, but creating an adapted version for each platform. That’s nonsense. You’d have to spend time adapting the text to turn one article into several different ones, and what’s the point if you’re just going to give seo value of the adapted version to that platform anyway?

If you tell AI that this doesn’t suit you, it’ll say that you shouldn't post your content on other platforms at all, you should only keep an archive of your texts on your own site. It doesn’t care that seo traffic won’t come for several years, until search engines start trusting the site.

This is yet another example of how asking AI for advice, let alone following it, can be harmful. When it comes to marketing, advertising, and user acquisition, AI is almost useless.

It’s much more effective in the early stages to publish your content wherever possible. The full text, not a teaser or an adapted version. And add a link to your blog at the end.

Many years ago, I came across this phrase: dream as much as you can, because it won’t cost you a thing. But is that really true?

When I fall in love, I can spend hours or days fantasizing about our future together.
When I get a job offer, I imagine how I’ll reach the top of my career there in a few years.
When a project brings in its first $100, I’m already thinking about how I’ll make millions from it.

I can spend a lot of time dreaming and get lost in memories of the future. And this can hinder my productivity.

If dreams take up so much time, do they really cost nothing?
And in that case, which is better, to dream or not to dream?

If a startup becomes profitable, you can try to trace the chain of events that led to it. You might actually find reasons and believe them. It’s as if you’ve discovered some kind of truth and now you understand exactly what needs to be done and how. This is especially noticeable when your very first startup succeeds. You think it’s because your product is better than your competitors’. Or maybe it was your distribution, or the best developers, or your persistence. Or any of a million other reasons. You believe so strongly in the infallibility of your actions that you start to lose sight of the facts.

It’s much harder to admit that you have no idea why the startup became successful. Because investors and partners won’t appreciate that.

Why is there a belief that we should stop comparing ourselves to others?

What’s more, if you haven’t reached zen yet, you’re unlikely to be able to stop doing it at all. When you compare yourself to people you think are better than you, you have something to strive for. You want to become like them or even better. This motivates you to grow. If you compare yourself to those worse than you, it boosts your self-esteem.

If I compare myself to who I was yesterday, rather than to others, how will I know which rung of the social ladder I’m on? Or do I not need to know my place in society?

Recruiters often ask this question when they want to check whether a candidate’s time zone matches the team’s working hours. Suppose it’s -5 in their city, while your team is at +3. That’s an eight-hour difference. But why does it matter what city they live in?

What if the candidate named a city but is planning to move away from it? Or they constantly travel and live in different time zones. And what if their life isn’t tied to a time zone at all?

The mistake is asking the candidate for their time zone instead of stating yours. It doesn’t matter what city they live in today or where they’ll live in a month. If you need them to work at specific times of day, just ask whether they’re willing to work those hours.

I found GitHub repositories that were spreading malware. I asked AI what to do about it, but it gave me nothing useful. So I opened a discussion on GitHub. Someone replied. It was the exact same text the AI had given me. I called it out and the comment was deleted. Then another person replied. It was the same AI answer again.

I worked as a developer at a company. I asked the business owner a question about a business task. He sent me a ChatGPT screenshot with the answer. I replied that it had nothing to do with my question and everything there was wrong. A minute later he sent me another ChatGPT screenshot. He didn’t even read the AI’s answer. He just took a screenshot and forwarded it to me.

Recently someone messaged me on Reddit about my post. I replied. They wrote again, I replied again. After a few messages I realized I was talking to an AI agent.

I’m tired of talking to AI.
I want to talk to real people.
But even when I talk to people, they forward my questions to AI and send me the AI’s answer.

If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve had that moment when you almost lost everything, but somehow didn’t. You accidentally deleted your customer database, but a backup you’d only just set up saved your business. You sold an asset the day before it surged in value, but the exchange canceled the trade because of an error. You could have lost your life, but an incredible confluence of circumstances saved you. None of us would have trouble recalling a moment like that.

What changes a person more: losing something important or keeping it by sheer luck?

When launching a startup, don’t make it multilingual until you have stable revenue and a team to support it. You can’t know whether the startup will become profitable, so early on, your time is better spent finding PMF and acquiring users. AI can write scripts to manage translation files and help with text translation, but the quality will still be poor. Users might as well use the browser’s built-in translator.

If you build the service in 10 languages right away, you’ll struggle to maintain it. Every interface change means updating translation files across all languages, even though most of your users will likely understand an English interface anyway. But if you’re building for a specific country, build it in that country’s language and don’t add English. Even two languages at the start are worse than one. With a single language, you can keep text directly in the code instead of splitting it into separate translation files.

— Why did my last post on X get 0 impressions? Is it a shadowban?
— It’s not necessarily a shadowban. First, X shows the post to a small group of followers, and if there are no reactions, it doesn’t push it any further.
— So it showed the post to 0 people, got 0 reactions, and didn’t show it to anyone else?
— Yes.
— But if there were 0 impressions, how could there be reactions?
— Maybe the stats just haven’t updated. Try posting this from another account.
— The stats haven’t updated in 2 days? Why would I post it from another account?
— You’re right. I got sidetracked. Going back to your original question. First, X shows the post to a small group...

You start out wanting to become a millionaire. Then you become one and realize you’re just one of a million people just like you. You’re not special, you’re no better than anyone else, you’re not even one in a thousand. You’re one in a million.

I once asked Composer 2 to add support for a third-party API in the code. I was so lazy that I just dropped the token into the chat and gave it the task. It replied in bold “This is urgent. You sent the token in the chat. Revoke it right now”. At least it wasn’t in all caps. It didn’t even try to do the task. No other model has ever talked to me in that urgent tone, like some cheap marketing gimmick. Of course, I didn’t bother changing the token.

American style uses double typographic quotes “ ”, British style uses single typographic quotes ‘ ’, and technical documentation uses straight quotes " ". In American style, punctuation goes inside the quotation marks; in British style, placement follows meaning. But even in American blogs and technical books, punctuation is often placed by meaning rather than inside.

The apostrophe is either straight ' or typographic ’. For articles and posts, the typographic apostrophe is recommended. But if you look at popular news outlets or blogs from large tech companies, you’ll often find straight and typographic apostrophes and quotation marks mixed even within the same article. Some AI agents can’t use typographic symbols and replace them with straight ones.

Straight quotes are always easier to type than holding 3 keys for typographic ones. On top of that, with straight quotes the opening and closing mark is the same character, while typographic quotes use different ones. Smart auto-replacement to typographic symbols can be set up on a laptop, but most apps ignore that setting. If you write in different languages or for different styles, smart replacement will not help. You can set up a script to replace them before publishing articles, but if the article contains code examples, you can’t replace them there. You can also replace them manually before publishing, but when replying to comments you end up with straight ones again. Some fonts render the straight apostrophe beautifully, but you control the font only on your own site. Some websites automatically convert typed text into typographic marks, but if you paste text, they leave the straight ones in.

Statistics say that 90% of startups shut down in the first few years. But this only applies to venture-backed startups. Startups with other kinds of funding may have a 50% chance of success, and your own odds may be even higher.

If you’ve already launched 5 startups, even if all of them shut down, your next startup will have better odds of success than someone on their first startup. And if some of your startups became profitable, your next startup will have better odds than someone whose 5 startups all lost money. With each new attempt, you improve your odds of success.

You can read all you want about psychedelic states, panic attacks, or being drunk. But no description can convey what they actually feel like. Only by experiencing something like that yourself do you realize how big the gap is between merely knowing about it and actually feeling it. And how hard it is to find the right words to describe those sensations.

How do you explain to someone who’s never had a dream what dreaming feels like?

Right now I have over 10K tasks written down across all my projects. If I completed one task every day, it would take me 30 years to complete all of them. But when I do a task, I get new ideas and write down a few more new tasks. My task list will never end. The number of tasks in it only grows every day.

Writing down a task doesn’t mean I have to do it. It just frees up mental space. When I write something down, I don’t spend time assigning priorities or deadlines. An idea comes up, I save it to a file right away, and I’m done thinking about it.

The most profitable project of my life hasn’t been built yet.
My most viral post hasn’t been written yet.
I haven’t met the most wonderful person yet.
I haven’t come up with my strongest idea yet.

I believe that the best is yet to come, and that the best of the past will eventually stop being the best. That’s why I keep working on new projects, even if my current ones are at their revenue peak. I keep writing new essays, even if a recent one brought in the most readers. This helps me avoid getting attached to past successes and makes it easier to handle setbacks.

I have doubts not only while making a decision, but also after I’ve made it. I publish a post, and the next day I already want to change the wording. I put an unpromising project on hold, and a month later I want to continue working on it. I come up with a cool name for a product, register the domain, and claim the social media handles, but a week later I no longer like the name. I publish an essay, and a year later I want to delete it so no one can see it anymore.

No matter how many hours I spend thinking things through and making a decision, the doubts won’t go away. I just make decisions knowing that I may no longer agree with them in the future.