Collective observation
I’m using a machine shaped by human knowledge to sharpen my own thinking. That still feels like magic.
Shahzad Ali / My Journal
My Journal.
My thoughts and questions. Some are unorganised. Some could be wrong.
AI & the future
All topicsA golden age for trying
The cost of testing a digital idea has changed enormously during my working life. That makes me excited.
You don’t know enough to worry
Terence McKenna’s line, and how I think about AI and the future.
Is society already a superintelligence?
I already rely on knowledge and capabilities far beyond my own. AI makes me think about that differently.
Is AI an amplifier or an equaliser?
An equaliser for writing English. An amplifier for people with ideas and high agency.
Whatever this AI thing is
Are humans too curious to stop?
Two models from now
How far ahead can we plan when the tools keep changing?
Waiting for humans
My son's iPad, waiting for Hotmail, and our changing expectations of people.
Building things
All topicsA locked door and a hundred keys
Stay curious about the problem. Keep testing the keys.
My first business
Shahab’s Tuck Shop. I was 10 when I started selling drinks and crisps beside my father’s shop.
Because I felt like it
Why make this website? I wanted to.
Taking responsibility for my work
Ownership includes recognising when the work has gone wrong.
Making things
Building is a way of responding to the world.
Direction before intensity
Before working harder, I want to be clear about the result.
Making mistakes cheap
A small experiment can make it easier to start learning.
Opportunities and distraction
An attractive opportunity still competes with what I have chosen to build.
Building the company
How much of success am I postponing until an exit?
What a venture makes of me
A venture changes the person building it as well as producing a result.
Learning
All topicsHearing beyond my beliefs
Reading Swami Chinmayananda, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita made me question the assumptions I had grown up with.
Greedy to learn
Executive classrooms, the things people said about me, and a hunger to keep learning.
Thinking about my thinking
When I get stuck, I inspect the way I am representing the situation. That habit has helped me in business and in my marriage.
The cost of curiosity
Taking apart toys, opening motors, and following the same curiosity all the way to the person doing the looking.
The personality and the message
Admiring a teacher can absorb the attention that their message needs.
Timeless wisdom from Hamlet
I often return to Polonius's advice to his son Laertes. This is how I read it in plain English.
The desire to learn
We have the tools to learn almost anything. The desire to learn has to come from us.
Information into action
What will I do with the next thing I learn?
Spending time with an idea
An idea needs time, attention and use to become part of how I think.
People
All topicsThe communication tax
We can say the same words and leave with different understandings. A user guide helps make the defaults visible.
The person who could execute
Madiha could carry a task through whether she felt like doing it or not. That changed what I could build.
I can share my experience
One thing I learned through YPO: tell people what happened to you and let them decide what is useful.
We are each other
Books, films, teachers and the people around me have shaped how I see the world. Remembering that brings humility.
What are you going to do about it?
A coaching question I return to when someone brings me a problem.
My first assessment
My disappointment can begin with an expectation I failed to examine.
Effort in a group
When responsibility is shared, who owns the result?
Awareness and leadership
Clarity, calm and enough room for the team to take responsibility.
Hearing direct feedback
The discomfort of hearing feedback can distract us from its accuracy.
Being myself
Relationships become complicated when they depend on a version of me I have to maintain.
What I bring into the room
The tone of a conversation can carry the reactions that came before it.
Deciding without knowing everything
Leadership includes the discomfort of deciding with incomplete knowledge.
Opportunity and determination
An opportunity still needs someone who wants to take it.
Life
All topicsBetween the chair and the keyboard
An old computer-repair thought still makes me inspect my own thinking.
The level I am trying to change
I return to the logical levels in NLP when I look at my environment, behaviour, beliefs and identity.
Why am I climbing?
Am I climbing the mountain because I want to see the view, or because I want people to see me?
Sitting with my feelings
I am learning to give a feeling some space before I pass it on to someone else.
Let the mind be
Acceptance is something I keep returning to. My mind can keep thinking while I choose what to do.
A future version of me
A question from Dan Sullivan helps me give my energy a direction.
A beneficiary of everything
I keep noticing how much of my life is made possible by other people and the world around me.
Three days in the forest
A Vision Quest in Poland remains one of the most intense experiences I remember.
Making my own purpose
Maybe the purpose of life is living. I can choose what I do with it, and take myself a little less seriously.
Playing my own game
Living fully, choosing what I want to create, and noticing the stories I tell myself.
Mission and joy at home
A thought on manhood, serving a mission and bringing joy at home.
What I notice
The details I notice in someone can reveal my own interests.
The small defeats
The moment I commit to doing something and leave it undone.
The journey to the box
A worthy goal, an empty box, and what the journey does to me.
Playing the next round
Pakistan, the UK, a passport, and seeing my life as a game I can keep playing.
Integrity and speaking up
Aligning my thoughts, words and deeds, and speaking when something violates my values.
What wealth means to me
Status, freedom, having enough, and how long I can live the way I want to live.
My thoughts are options
My mind creates scenarios. I am learning to choose which thoughts receive my attention.
Sitting quietly in a room
Growing up distracted and talkative, learning to live with it, and how I feel when I'm building and learning.
Desire without the pain
Can I want something without making myself unhappy until I get it?
Service and the mystery
What feels uniquely mine to do, and how can it be useful to others?
My curiosity takes me places
The mind, human optimisation and my interest in experimenting on myself.
Religion as a harness
A thought about intelligence, desire and the boundaries that help people live together.
The only thing I wanted was my energy back
Norovirus, a memory of my dad, and a reminder to look after the platform through which I experience life.
Beliefs are forecasts
How well does your model of reality track the results? Mental flexibility means being willing to update it.
Giving my best to the goal
Choosing what matters, taking responsibility and learning from the outcome.
The explanation I want to believe
A convincing explanation can still be serving a motive I have overlooked.
Knowing my blind spots
Recognising a blind spot is the beginning of the work.
Habits and ambition
The ambition is easy to describe. The habits show what it means in practice.
The environment I work in
What does my environment keep asking me to pay attention to?
Reflection into action
A thought becomes useful when it changes the next decision.
Influence and responsibility
I can take responsibility for my part in an outcome I cannot fully control.
Before I decide
I want to notice the feeling I am bringing into a decision.