AI for Adults

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I expanded my use of AI both personally and professionally and I’ve come to realize how valuable it is, particularly for adults. Before I dive into the details let me define what I mean by adult. There are two definitions for adult.

relating to or typical of adults; displaying proper maturity
dealing in or with explicitly sexual material

I’m not referring to the sexual definition of adult, even if some people see AI as the latest “sexy” thing in the technology space. I’m referring to the first definition, specifically that an adult is a mature, independent person with responsibilities that compete for their time irrespective of their age. With that in mind, the following personas qualify as adults in my book.

An 18-year-old teenager paying their way through college.
A mother or father working and studying for a career pivot.
An established professional with or without dependants.

The commonality between these personas, and the primary reason why I believe AI is valuable to them, is all of these personas have real responsibilities that are competing for their time. Responsibilities that they cannot ignore. Responsibilities that place tension between personal growth and career growth. They are no longer a dependent that can stay up late playing video games on their parents’ dime. They no longer have after-hours free time to study or work on a side project.

I believe such adults should embrace AI in their personal and professional lives.

My Decision to Embrace AI #

Much like you, dear reader, I have a limited amount of time to spend doing the various things I both need to do and want to do. Time is a scarce resource which intrinsically makes it a valuable resource. I’m not someone that believes one person’s time is more valuable than another person’s time. I personally believe that mindset is elitist and selfish but that’s a topic for another day. What I do believe though, is everyone should reflect on the value of their own time and use that to make changes in their life. That’s what I did when I decided to embrace AI.

I looked at my life and where I was spending time. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things I was spending time on. My responsibilities, if you will.

Attend church on Sunday.
Be a loving husband to my beautiful wife.
Work at my full-time job.
Help my wife with her chocolate business, Lily & Sparrow.
Strengthen physical, mental, and spiritual health.
Build and maintain relationships with others.
Keep up with routine chores and activities.
Grow personally and professionally.

That’s… a lot - and I don’t even have children! I looked at everything I was doing and immediately cut out what I could. I ended relationships, stepped down from organizing meetups, adjusted my exercise schedule, and transferred chocolate shop responsibilities to my wife. That helped but there were still some issues. I wasn’t as fast as I could be when completing tasks. I wasn’t context switching efficiently. I saw the benefits people were experiencing with AI and I decided to try it for myself.

How I Use AI #

Here’s the content you came for. I embraced AI and use it in the following ways. By no means are these the only ways to use AI, but I found value in them and they worked for me.

To Complete Tasks Faster #

I’m a competent person both personally and professionally. I can complete pretty much any project you assign me, given time. However, I’m only one person with limited capacity. I use AI agents to complete tasks faster and significantly increase my output.

What does this look like in practice? I have my Helix editor open in one terminal and one or more AI agents (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode) open in other terminals. I’m not against GUI editors (e.g., Zed, Cursor) but I’ve always favored the terminal so I like AI agents that allow me to stay in the terminal. I then edit the code, the plan, and the agent rules and ask an AI agent to complete tasks for me. Review a change. Implement a feature. Write tests. Whatever, really. In between prompts I use jj to describe and commit the work so that I have the ability to easily undo it.

Here’s some work that I completed using an AI agent.

I spend less time typing, which is great since we all have a finite number of keystrokes left in our lives and can eventually suffer pain in our hands and wrists. Instead, I have AI agents make as many keystrokes as needed to solve the task I’ve assigned it to do. Far more keystrokes than I would have ever been able to make in my lifetime.

I can better compete with myself and others. I don’t have the luxury of time where I can be on my computer 24/7 brute forcing my way through work. I do, however, have the luxury of experience, and with AI agents I can assign them work and get done in minutes what would have taken me hours.

I love learning, particularly understanding how things work through experience and by talking with experts. With AI agents I can discuss resources to broaden and deepen my experience much like I would with a human, without the constraints of interest and stamina. I then use that experience to adjust how I work with AI agents.

I can do more. Type more. Compete more. Learn more. All using AI.

To Facilitate Context Switching #

I was the first hire for a new role at Oxide Computer Company, which I discussed at length in the Solutions Software Engineering with Matthew Sanabria episode of the Oxide & Friends podcast. The nature of being the first hire in a role meant I was often working alone and had to context switch between tasks. I use AI agents to facilitate context switching and shorten the time it takes to start and stop work.

What does this look like in practice? I configure AI agents to automatically perform tasks without confirmation and kick off deep research for things I need more information on. There’s nothing particularly novel with what I’m doing here, but I did want to focus on when I’m doing these things.

I found that I wasn’t using my time as efficiently as I wanted to when context switching. This manifested itself in a few ways, but usually occurred when starting or stopping work. Throughout the day there are events that occur that pull you away from work. Meetings. Lunch. Walking the dog. Whatever. In order to action these events you have to stop your current work and context switch to the event. When the event is finished you have to context switch back to the work. That context switching can be difficult and a time sink if not careful.

Many people tackle this by restructuring their schedule to allow blocks of focus time and meeting time. However, that’s not always practical nor does it help with events that happen on short notice. It also doesn’t help if you’re like me and have a difficult time putting something down when you’re already in the zone.

I’ve started using AI as a demarcation point for starting and stopping work and it’s helped me immensely. Before I action an event I task an AI agent with continuing the work that I was doing so that I can check in on it afterwards. In the time between events I review the work from an AI agent, ask it to adjust its approach, and kick off another task. Rinse and repeat. All those 30-minute blocks of time between events just became far more productive and less exhausting. At the end of the day I’ve done the same or more work than I usually do but my brain is not exhausted like it once was. I have mental capacity left over to tackle my other responsibilities.

I also use AI to balance multiple projects. I leave AI agent sessions open so I can pick right up where I left off rather than spending time loading context. If I’m still unsure I can just ask an AI agent. This allows me to balance multiple projects and make concurrent progress on those projects. Instead of me doing 100% of the work across multiple projects serially I can have AI agents do 80% of the work concurrently and I’ll do the remaining 20% of work myself. Now for the same 100% of work I can ship multiple projects instead of one. Amazing!

I liken this efficiency in context switching and balancing of multiple projects to the game of keeping balloons in the air. Each project is a balloon and you need to context switch in order to hit a balloon higher to keep it off the floor. By myself I can only keep a certain number of balloons in the air at a time. With AI I can keep a higher number of balloons in the air or focus on a smaller number of balloons that I hit extremely high and don’t have to come back to for a while. Either way, I’m not overexerting myself and I’m still completing all the work I needed to and wanted to.

I can context switch faster. Start faster. Stop faster. Balance more concurrent projects. All using AI.

What Does This Mean for Adults? #

If you’re an adult reading this you’ll have to answer this question for yourself. I’ll tell you what it means to me though to hopefully inspire you.

I have significantly reduced the risk that AI will take my job. I never feared this personally but I did acknowledge that I don’t have the time I once did when I was younger and that does affect how much I can do in a day. My use of AI allows me to stay competitive even as my responsibilities increase in life. I’m not a parent but I know this will benefit me when I am one.

I have a better work/life balance. I can step away to go to the gym, cook food, walk my dogs, and even just take a break to recharge. All without losing much productivity. All without feeling pressure to stay in my chair and code. This is such a freeing feeling. It allows me to do my best work while living my best life.

I have more capacity and energy to things that require my human skills and experience. I can write documentation and blog posts for a human audience. I can create content that helps people. I can build rapport with customers and users to better understand their use cases. I can set the strategy and vision for my team. I’m not too busy to talk to a human because I’m keeping AI agents busy to free me to be human. That’s a wonderful feeling. After all, what good is the work we do if it doesn’t positively impact others?

Hopefully this inspired you to reflect on how you can embrace AI as an adult. Like most things in technology, AI is constantly changing. There’s no right or wrong time to embrace AI. There’s no right or wrong AI tool to use. There’s no right or wrong amount of AI to use. Try the popular AI tools. Try different AI tools. Try them long enough to form an opinion for yourself. Sure, the way you’ve been working will change because of it, but I’m willing to bet it’ll change for the better.