Yesterday evening, I watched a Zara Zhang presentation for Sublime about Code as a Medium. It FILLED ME with inspiration and ideas in a way I haven't experienced in a while. So I want to document why here.
I think my excitement has a lot to do about HOW the presentation was thought about. I'm a lover of the scrappy web, so I like when things are not too formal and when people are ready to share what's really on their screens (as opposed to lovely slides with more embelishment than value).
And that's kind of a weird statement to say because Zhang is showing and talking about slides. She's showing her front-design skills for Claude to make beautiful (and non AI sloppy) slides. And I sensed she was kinda nervous, following a script.
BUT it's the essence of how she shares. She's not trying to overpedagogize everything. Which is a skill I'm trying to learn and I've started to REALLY appreciate.
She's sharing what she does, how she does it, what it looks like and how she thinks when she does it all. Simple as that. I've noted that this is the type of content that I would be SUPER PROUD to share.
Also, what makes this extra relatable is that she's not a coder. Like me.
I've picked a few new tricks from this. Notably, the 'playground' trick of asking an AI to show you a menu of options. But mostly, it reenforced things I was already doing and that I now feel more empowered to use (there's something interesting about my own behaviour here but that's not the point of this post).
The one thing I had already started doing and that I feel more excited to explore is creating tiny tools for myself. Especially tiny tools to modify my experience of the internet. I've written about this before in French (how to take back control over your internet productivity without deleting youtube). I was already a fan of browser extensions that help me curb the addictive or toxic parts of the websites I love (the shorts on youtube, and the 'for you' timeline on twitter).
But now I don't need the tools to exist. I can just make them myself. Just this week, I have made myself a little extension that cuts off substack feed. If it's on, then I can see my notifications, write articles, send notes and everything - but I won't see the feed, where I can get lost and triggered too easily.
Zhang even brushed on a concept I had not considered : replace the stuff you don't want by the stuff you need. Ex : ads with quotes, or your 'new tab' by your to-do....
Also the idea of 'real estate' is not one I had considered this way before. The places you visit online. Where do you have real estate available to push you towards whatever you want (and this doesn't have to be a productivity thing either, just... make the experience fit you).
Anyway, this presentation really inspired me to record more videos of what I do.