A 71-year old taxi driver gets a millionaire vacation, Stanford teaches AI-powered creativity, and being at peace with my journey (weekly wrap #20)
Wholesome community, working with AI like a human collaborator, and thinking about the most important foundation for everything else in life
Welcome to Under My Turban. Part cultural commentary, part personal deep-dive, part no-nonsense guide to leading, communicating and working like a real human. At least once a week I share reflections and stories with soul, and tools you can actually use both at work and at home.
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Something that made me smile for humanity
“I surprised my taxi driver with a millionaire’s vacation” by Yes Theory
I watched this last night and had a warm smile on my face, and I know a lot of people that watched it were in tears. I deliberately didn’t want to embed this super wholesome video in here because if you don’t have context then go watch the first video that this is essentially a sequel to.
THEN, particularly for the latest video, go have a read of the comments. There were so many things about this story/video that inspired and touched me, but there was one thing that really stood out to me:
The wholesome power of a community that comes together not based on workplace, geographical location, ethnicity, religion, or political ideology, but based on a shared vibe/energy/intent, catalysed by entertainment, is really inspiring.
This will make more sense when you go watch this video (or if you’re already familiar with who Yes Theory are and what they do).
Something I added to my AI toolkit
What I took away from this a little aside from what’s obviously in this 13 minute video is that if you have good collaboration skills, learn how to ask good questions pointed at yourself, have a healthy attitude towards self-enquiry and continuous improvement, you’ll be much better at using AI. These skills are not actually about getting better at using a tool but about working better with other humans. And those skills will translate better to working with AI. If you’re just trying to work with AI as a tech tool, without improving your own self-awareness and interpersonal communication (not just prompt engineering) skills, you’ll end up getting mediocre results, and possibly just assume it’s the tool’s limitation when it isn’t.
Something I’ve been pondering
Someone asked me the other day, “what do you want from your life?”, and I said that at the end of my day, week, month, year, decade, lifetime, I want to look back and feel that I was generally at peace with my journey.
It was an intuitive answer but when I asked the question back, that someone proceeded to show me their 6 step plan to becoming a billionaire and saving the planet. Well, I’m exaggerating and simplifying what essentially happened in 3 different conversations.
I won’t make a judgement as to whether any of them were/are at peace with their journey, but it did make me ponder that I’ve been at peace with my journey at points in my life when I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going, and I’ve also been very much NOT at peace with my journey when I did.
At other times I’ve been at peace with my journey when I DID have clarity and determination about where I was trying to get to and what I was doing, and yet at other times I’ve NOT felt at peace with my journey even when I was seeming to be adrift in life.
Point is, I haven’t been able to map any reasonable correlation (and certainly no causal link) between having my shit together and being at peace with my journey.
Happiness, satisfaction, enthusiasm - those are different variables.
I’m just talking about this sense that whatever my journey is, regardless of how clearly I can see where I am on the ephemeral cosmic map and what the road ahead may look like, I am at peace with it.
I think that’s the most valuable foundation for… well… everything else.
What do you think?
Until next time, have a nice weekend.
Dev