Mashrur Hossain

Good evening.

Raise your hands if you made New Year's resolutions in 2023. Okay, keep them up if you're on track with at least half of them.

That's a steep drop. There are some of you, but a steep drop. And mine too.

Why is that?

See, a few years ago, I was listening to this talk by Stephen Duneier, and he was talking about how minor adjustments to the decisions that you make during the day can lead to major improvements. And one of the examples he cited was of Novak Djokovic.

See, Djokovic, early on in his career, he was winning 49% of the points that he would play, resulting in 49% of matches won. He made minor improvements, and he got that percentage up to 52% of points won. That resulted in 79% of matches won and a ranking of number three in the world. Got it up to 55%. Now he was winning 90% of matches and ranking number one, and making zillions of dollars.

So I had information that I needed. And with examples from Atomic Habits by James Clear, I knew what I had to do. I had to get daily on task and just keep coming back to things that I didn't want to do, and just do it daily.

And this is what I devised. I'd get a checkbox, a green check, and I'd be happy.

So after week one, this is what it looked like. I was onto something. It was working. So I was motivated. Getting every checkbox motivating, and I kept going.

But by week four, that's what it would look like.

What happened?

Well, every now and then, on a day, on a task, I would not take the first step. It's an email. I just wouldn't start writing. Too complicated. Or reading a paragraph, I just didn't want to do it. Or a chapter, I didn't want to summarize it. And then that had a ripple effect, and eventually leading to this.

So 2023, the year I have AI. No, not these guys. Not yet. It looks something like this, okay?

So I have a prompt. I can give it a prompt. I can say, "Write an email to calm my angry boss down," and it would come up with a response.

Now, if you don't like that response, you could give it another prompt. You could change it. "Won't work. Add some more feelings, some pizzazz," and it would come back with another response.

But at least that step was happening, right? That first step, right? On the days I didn't want to do it, something was doing it for me. And once it had it, once I was going, I could keep going. I could start editing. I could generate the code before I started editing, or I could have AI summarize an entire chapter for me in seconds.

So I made some resolutions this year, powered with AI in my pocket.

Daily work on tasks in the specified time. That would be one.

Public speaking, I'd never done it before, so I'd start with two engagements. That was the target.

And a personal goal: spend quality time with my son.

See, I was already spending a lot of time with my son, but not all of it was quality time. I wasn't present in every engagement. Sometimes my mind was somewhere else. It's like talking, or something else, or to-do lists, whatever.

So what is my tracker looking like this year? This has remained consistent all year, leading up to now.

So that first step, AI taking that first step for me, has led me to: I'm on top of my daily tasks. My confidence is up. I'm keeping promises I make to myself.

Public speaking, I've done over 10, including here. And AI didn't really help much with number two. Or did it? I mean, do you think it had anything to do with the script for this talk? We'll never know.

But the most important one right there, quality time with my son, interestingly, that started happening automatically because I was on top of my daily tasks. I was working towards my goals. When I was with my son, I was able to just be with him. I didn't have to think about anything else. I was present in the moment, and we got to have a lot of amazing experiences.

We both love Lego. And this was in Legoland in Billund, Denmark, end of summer. Just plain magical.

Thank you.