Facing Forward
I identify with this far more than I should admit. Anyway, this dude’s beard is pretty epic, too. Anyway….
It is interesting, as I look back, how important being “cool” was. Way back. And how that’s pretty much completely faded. Maturity, I suppose. Or just exhaustion. I have the bandwidth for that bull$!*t.
Cassidy Williams is a tech blogger I’ve followed for years. Recently, she wrote about her views on AI Usage, which I find exceptionally relevant right now. She references the “AI Manifesto” by Damola Morenikeji. Damola suggests creating an /AI section on your page, which I think I’ll do soon. But I’m just starting the exploration now.
I believe the transparency around our respective use of AI is critical. Being able to trust what you see is becoming harder.
Me? I’ve used AI as something of an editor for this site, and have explored using it to create pages. I’ve never been 100% satisfied with what Gemini or ChatGPT has created, but I will say it’s carved my workflows significantly. I don’t envision ever wholly turning things over to AI, and see the possibility of adopting Cassidy’s attitude of “Everything on this website is written by me, personally, not an AI.” This quote she shared really gives me pause: “If you couldn’t be bothered to write something, I won’t be bothered to read it”. Yeah, I feel that. I know there’s a reason it’s called “AI slop” and the last thing I want to do is contribute to the enshittification of the internet.
So, have you created a “Slash AI” page? If so, have you shared it to this list (https://slashai.page/)? If not, but you want to, submit it here. Are you planning on it? Let me know! I’m intensely curious.
I’ve long been a fan of the Oatmeal. Sometimes crass, sometimes disturbing, sometimes thought-provoking, and always funny.
This one speaks to me and my overactive mind. Perhaps a bit too well. I guess it’s good to be seen. I guess.
I’ve been adjusting my studies to focus on data. Right now, I’ve working on mastering Power BI, a Microsoft data analytics tool. Yesterday, as I’m finally starting to dive deep, I had a moment of sadness. I remember a role where this tool didn’t exist. I was cleaning up data from a multitude of sources, just me, Excel, and a wee bit of Visual Basic. And I had to tweak the process every month. The powerful tools in Power BI, and Power Query, would’ve been so helpful. I’m looking forward to what I can do with these modern tools.
I’m making my way through the Google IT Support Professional Certificate. I appreciate the refresher of many of my courses from pursuing my ATA in Web Application and Cloud Development. It may seem counterintuitive that I took two classes in CISCO Networking and one (of two) classes for the A+ certificate. But I saw value in them and did my best to fit them in.
And I’m getting to learn some new stuff, too. For instance, even though I’ve been managing Active Directory, I’ve not had the chance to dive deeply into things like Group Policies. And having an overview of data backups and disaster recovery was very insightful.
So, I have two more courses to go to finish this Certificate. I have a few different directions I can go once I finish this. The most obvious is to leverage my existing work in IT Administration and start exploring network administration. Another option, which builds more on my ATA is data systems (data analytics, database administration, that sort of thing). I do a fair amount of that right now, too. Less so in my work at the Edmonds Waterfront Center, but there’s quite a bit of alignment with what I’m doing at Trinity. I’ve been feeding a lot of ideas, my backgound, etc, into ChatGPT, and it’s recommending the data path. That seems good as I’m seeing things like “The outlook for network administrator jobs is mixed, with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projecting a decline in employment by 3% from 2023 to 2033”. And then this “The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has projected substantial growth for occupations related to data analysis, with some categories seeing increases as high as 23% or more between 2023 and 2033.”
I’m trying to keep moving forward, to keep learning relevant skills. The world is changing so fast, one must work to keep up.
I’ve heard a LOT about the expected impacts of AI on developers. When I was laid off right at the beginning of the pandemic, I opted to make a career pivot into Web Development, so I’ve paid attention to this trend closely. Add in all the lay-offs within the whole developer community, and this career, so recently highly lucrative, has become rather bleak. So much so that I’ve been looking backwards at returning to admin work (which is one of my two jobs right now). Now I see that admin work will be getting hit pretty hard by AI, too.
Earlier this week, I was on a Google Meet. With that, we used the built-in tool to create meeting notes. And, my God, it worked nicely! I was quite impressed. Now, as a long-time admin, taking and distributing meeting notes has been a significant part of my work. I’m confident that this will be done by AI going forward. And I expect that transition to be pretty quick.
Another key part of being an admin is scheduling travel. I expected AI to be able to coordinate travel pretty well. So, I did an experiment where I gave ChatGPT a very rough itinerary for a multi-stop business trip, asked it to recommend flights and hotels. It did a nice job with a few extra prompts. I had a pretty solid itinerary within 2 minutes. Impressive.
After just these two considerations, I am confident that AI will revolutionize Admin work significantly. With the job outlook for this work bleak (BLS projects a loss of 12,400 admin jobs between 2024 and 2034), and AI eroding the work, I expect it to become harder to find roles. (Yet it’s the main type of work I’m recruiters reach out to me for…go figure). It makes my decision to pivot to web development during the pandemic, and now shifting to data analysis seem that much more prudent.
Anyway, onwards!
I face this challenge every time I’m learning something new, this sense of awkwardness. It’s hard for me to accept this interim period where I lack expertise. It’s rather insane to expect to start studying something new and instantaneously become an expert. It’s rather cruel, no?
I think its roots lie in insecurity. It seems to me the confident won’t be impacted at all. Therefore, I’m working at keeping this at bay and, eventually, purging this tendency from my habits.
How about you? Are you one of those folks who stare blankly at anyone who fights imposter syndrome or its variants? I’ve long wondered what that feels like. Let me know, if you know, you know?
A few days ago, I blogged about overthinking and launched into some thoughts on project management. Well, this quote came into my feed today, and I think it’s a good continuation of the theme (and it’s clearly from the same creator).
Something I’ve long believed: there’s great power in controlling your thoughts, in being conscious about what you put into your mind. My first awareness of this was simply thinking about how the music and lyrics I consumed played out in my attitude. But it’s slowly evolved into what Henry Ford said, “whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right”.
Letting your mind second-guess your hopes and dreams, your goals and ambitions, will drag you towards failure. By keeping a positive attitude, searching for possibilities, and moving towards them is much harder if you continuously undermine that.
I have decades of training on finding the negative, on looking for reasons for my efforts to fail. I keep seeking ways to keep that at bay. One key way: feed my mind quotes like this one, which reinforce the value of positivity. Another is to deliberately avoid doom-scrolling and seek out its opposite, what I call hope-scrolling. All ways to help my goals become real. What are you doing to ensure you don’t stand in the way of your own hopes and dreams?
I came across this quote on Pinterest. I’ve heard various variations on it, and each time it strikes hard. Mea culpa: I’m a chronic overthinker. I will hyperanalyze things, obsess about finding and mitigating every risk, and my mind will get overwhelmed with catastrophizing.
I’ve been working on mitigating this tendency for years and have met with quite a bit of success. However, it’s deeply ingrained, and I need to always stay vigilant. An additional challenge is that, as an analyst and project coordinator/manager, this behavior is a strength. Reminds me of the words of a mentor of mine: every weakness is a strength exaggerated.
Something my formal studies of project management have helped me with is understanding not just the nature of risk, but the importance of managing it well. I’m good at seeing every risk that I face. What I’ve long struggled with is evaluating them and understanding the possible impacts and how to manage them. Not every risk can be eliminated! Actually, very few can. So many are completely outside our ability to even influence. So, it’s critical to note not just that a risk exists, but how likely is it to happen, and what are the possible impacts of it happening. Then it’s relatively easy to manage. If the probability is low, and the impact low, well, let it be and monitor things. If probability is low, and impact high, you have options to explore. Same for the reverse: probability high with a low impact. Once these are mapped out (and, heck, put them into a risk assessment grid), you can evaluate how to manage them. I never thought of my project management studies (in the pursuit of my ATA and while studying for the Google PM Certificate) as therapy, but here we are.
So, I’m working on managing my overthinking by utilizing the tools I have available. I’ve found this pretty successful, but it’s challenged by the fact that I’ve been rewarded for diving deep into risks. Keeping the rabbit hole of calamity under control takes work, though.
Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have the same issue, or are you someone brimming with confidence? That’s a viewpoint I struggle to comprehend.
On my friend Bill’s most recent blog post, one of the comments made me think. In particular, the notion of handwritten notes being the antithesis of digital. When I first read it, I was reminded of plotters. So, I jumped headfirst into this rabbit hole. That’s how I came across this project:
I found this whole thing fascinating. However, I’m left to wonder where the lines are between what’s truly, exclusively human, and the robot. What do you think of this?
Anyway, this looks like a fun project. Maybe someday I’ll have time enough to explore it in more depth than just watching the video.