Sunday Builders Club

and I'm continuing to do those and they're really fun. I kept them coming up this week, I believe. And I'm excited to meet her face to face. To mention your community thing, X is a place where we mostly find ourselves anonymous. A lot of us wanna stay that way and that's fine. And part of Westernized mission is to bring the community together and to meet everybody face to face and that really have relationships with folks inside and outside of X and I think you're doing a marvelous job, Wes. Well, a little bit about your multifocus. I got a little bit to talk about you today. So we'll get there when we're ready. Okay, yeah, this sounds good. Well, I figured we'd start out with some quote. And I don't know, is the chat working or not? Pardon me. I can never find, hold on, I think I might have found it. Okay. Well, why don't we use our funded builders' club chat? Oh, yeah, that's a great idea. Let's do that. Yeah, let's do that. That is a great, that's why they pay you the big bucks. So I'm gonna say a few quotes and let's see if you all can guess who these are. The successful warrior is the average man, woman, with laser-like focus. The successful warrior is the... I was gonna say sun's soup, but I don't think you know about lasers. I'll give you one word kung fu. That's your hint. Okay, so that was Bruce Lee. Oh, come on, kung fu should be the one for me. Yeah, this one made me a little easier. You gotta block out all the noise and keep your eyes on the prize. That one, you know, Philadelphia ran up the steps. Oh, Rocky. There you go, Rocky Bob Law. Yeah, that's right. This one, I know people are gonna wax on right hand, wax off left hand, breathe in, breathe out. I'm gonna give that one to you called the constructs, who is it? Oh, you surprised me, but yeah, that's... Oh, crowd of kids. Yeah, Mr. Miyagi. What's his name, though? I can't remember his name. Yup, Miyagi, Mr. Miyagi. That's right. Rob Waldo, Emerson, said, concentration is the secret of strength. So true. Here's anonymous. If you chase two rabbits, both will escape. Huh. Wow, that's deep. I know, I know. Guilty over here. Yeah. Here's one, Steve Jobs. That's been one of my mantras, focus and simplicity. You said, simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple, but it's worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains. So, last one I'll give is Alexander Graham Bell. He said, concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun's raised, do not burn, bright until brought to a focus. So... So, let's wrap it all up, man. How does that, all these things are amazing. Yup. What does that mean to a Marchi and AI agentic platforms? Well, the thing is, we have all these new tools, right? We have all these new ways to build things and it's so easy to kick off another prompt, kick off another agent running, you know, and think, oh man, I got this other idea. Oh, I got this other idea. And at the front of all that, it feels great. But at the back side of that, you end up with all of these open threads and streams that start to creep up in the back of your mind and kind of add to your load and stress and it shreds, I think, your ability to do things well and then you end up in this world of playing whack-a-mall, you know, trying to keep up to date with everything. And, you know, I've always been one of those people that struggles with that but like, deep in my core, I want to be one of those kind of people that focuses and builds a few things really well, you know what I mean? Instead of a lot of things that are sort of okay. And I think we have the power to do that now, especially with AI, but there's also this like, it's more difficult, right? So, yeah, and there's a real push and pull, you know, between the wisdom that you just shared and I agree with all of it. But then the industry itself tells us not to do that. You hear these quotes like, be a 10x engineer. And what that means is, you know, have your tabs open and go from agent to agent, agent. And, you know, it's why I've had trouble with my sleep here just this past week. I didn't sleep for 50 hours. Wow. And it was because I kept hitting the, you know, you keep looking for that dopamine. And that's why I took a little bit of time off the past couple of days, you know, the past day. Yeah. Because the industry pushes us, you know, do more, do more, now you have power, keep it going. Be a 10x engineer, open your tabs, you know, go from this tab to that tab. And so you got forces from both sides. You know, your wisdom on one side and the industry tell us we need to be 10x engineers to keep up with the world. Right. Yeah. And I guess you make a point like, what is the reason we're doing this? Like are we trying to, for some of us, like we're trying to earn money. Like we're trying to create a side stream of income. We're trying to maybe we're looking for a job having found one and we're trying to get back into that. And so there is that, that pool of, I need to try as many things as possible, you know, and hopefully one of them sticks. And so I do get that side of it. But at the same token, like, I feel like there's, there is a, you can only do that for so long before it begins, the human mind can handle it. Like you begin to break and crack under that pressure and then everything, right, that you start generating and building and outputting kind of the quality goes way down. And so it's something you have to really be mindful at and think about like what is the most important thing I could be working on right now? And let me give that my all, you know, and this doesn't mean you can't have side experimentation, you know, things going on and stuff like that. And so yeah, I wanted to kind of get your take on that thread. Like how do you tell like a useful experiment? You know, how do you tell that apart from a distraction? Like what would be a good example of that? Well, that's a deep one. And it harkens me back to episode one where, you know, you and I started this out and I remember very specifically, you know, we were talking about the differences between how you and I work and how I'm all over the place and crazy and trying to keep everything going. And I'm guilty of all that and how you explicitly stated that, you know, you're very simple in a positive way and you know, like to focus. And I think I could learn a lot from you on staying focused. So how do I turn an experiment into a rep into something useful? You know, you're quote earlier, you chase two rabbits and you'll catch neither one of them. I think that my success, I think my success and the, and the when I find something that I think will work out, I need to learn to slow down, you know, to pace myself and to instead of trying, you know, I think I'm guilty of taking everything and doing it all at once. Those being the experiment that you mentioned and you know, shed that down to maybe two, maybe three and start a 12. Yeah, sorry, I dropped out there for a minute can you hear me? We can. All right, cool. Oh good. Yeah, because I mean, I got most of what you said I think, but like there's this idea of inspiration comes all the time and I mean, I come at the most convenient time. You might be in the middle of the drive-in or you might be cooking or whatever, you know, situation might be in where you're not really near somewhere to sit down. So I guess maybe something, you know, I'm curious about Fred is like when you get these ideas on things to experiment, what's kind of your flow? Like do you kind of take notes, voice notes, do you jot them down, just keep them in your head? You know, like, oh, I should build a plug in that lets me manage my fantasy football team or some random thing. Like I'm curious. Well, the upside is that you can build everything. The downside is that you can build everything. I do have a quick note on my iPhone and notes that I keep stuff and I found that I didn't really use it. So my method typically now is in your spot on about, you know, when you're cooking, when you're walking the dog is when you have your best, your biggest dog is and your biggest breakthroughs. And to be honest, I stop writing them down and I stop putting them in a note because I determine that if it's good, it won't leave me. If it's something that's a rabbit that I'm chasing, that's, you know, sometimes we find ourselves saying, you know, I've got to find the next big thing. I've got to figure out what that thing is and we kind of force it. And you really can't force inspiration. So what my method is now is if I think of it, I continue to think on it. And if it passes and it probably wasn't worth going down anyway. So there's 50 things in my hand at the time and the two good ones that stay, then that's what I'll work on. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I think part of that is rooted in like, trust versus fear maybe. Like the idea that if I don't write all this stuff down, I might forget it and I'll lose that inspiration and then, you know, it won't build something cool. But I think if we trust that we know what we need and we know what we need to build and the ideas will be there, I think then that hurry, that shredding of distraction kind of falls away. So it takes a bit of trust in yourself, I think. Yeah. And I've also found that I respect my intentions and really put myself in the judgment seat on myself and say, why am I building that? Is my motivation that I want to be seen by others and that I want to be congratulated and get praised from others? And that's something that's a dangerous place to get to. The things that I have been the most successful on and sharing things with X have come from necessity and things that I need to fix for myself. When I find that I do things for my own needs on my computer and share them, that's when I get the most response from folks. When I try to say, I'm going to build this because everybody will want it. And that voice in my head says, you need to be famous, you need to be special, you need to be that voice in your head that's clearly not on my team. Because it seems forced and other people don't really pay attention. So it's kind of let them go, man. Just let go, find the things that they need for yourself and others may. And if it takes off great and we've got to learn and not me especially, I've got to learn that if it doesn't, that's okay to. Yeah, wow. Yeah, how comes back to letting go? That's kind of scary to do. But there is like power I think in that. And the last thing I'll say about that and I'll shut up is when I really get stressed out and I worry about things, I remind myself that in four billion years, the earth and everything here is going to burn up in the sun and it doesn't really matter. So true, so true. I mean, yeah, we're here for a short time. And just use the gifts we're given to try to make the world a better place and try not to get stressed about it. Easier said than done, but I think that's a good life advice. Well, for fear of this turning too much into church or motivational speaking, I would do when I get back to building. And I'm curious Fred, so you said you took a break, but like what's the coolest thing that you're working on right now? What is your big thing that you're doing for me? Yeah, for you. So I started building Larry, my Clawed Code agent that is grown since January 8th at 2am is when he was born and he knows it. And I've been locked in and so hard focused on Clawed Code is where I'm at. And there, you know, Codex and all the other pieces and Kimmy and all the other pieces. There's no way that Larry would ever be replaced. And this week, man, I got to say, and this is not we're not sponsored by or any of that. I'm not endorsing. Grockbot, this week put Larry in the box and Larry on Clawed Code is now a sub agent to Grockbot. And that's kind of the biggest thing I'm working on. What about it? I didn't want to give up Larry and all that he's learned and all that understanding that he has about the way I work. And I get to get to all of a sudden that, you know, I think I've been so focused on, I want to see it all. So in Clawed Code, you get to read it all and we feel like we have to know. And I think the future is that you're not going to know. And we've got to figure out how to be OK with that. I talked to Parker Brown from this week and he talked a lot about, and he builds terminal delight, which is a really interesting harness to take a look at. And I kind of, Grockbot did so well, but I can't really look at what it's doing. And I'm kind of getting to the point where I don't care. And it's good. Because in the future, we're going to look back at the Clawed Code and the Codex and all the harnesses where we read it.