It's been a week since we ditched our suburban beach life and moved to Tokyo. We're still alive, functioning (and married). Some early observations 1. I'm stressing myself out by trying to recreate my US life. I'm spending too much time looking for a gym, figuring out where to get my hair cut, trying to listen to as many AI podcasts as I did back in LA. The goal shouldn't be to replicate my old life, but instead see what emerges. 2. Jet lag in a tiny apartment with young kids is brutal. We're at a pricey Airbnb in a nice part of town. It's probably 800 square feet, the hosts suggest adding a cot in the (tiny kitchen) if you want to sleep 5. Since we got here, every night someone has woken up at 2 am. (Oh and coffee shops don't open until 8 am!) Depending on that person's age, it's can be a matter of minutes before the next person wakes up. We've been walking around zonked. 3. The craftsmanship is incredible. The Japanese's attention to detail and care is unreal. Even the disposable packaging for your 7-11 fried chicken is neatly taped for you. We've had "the world's best soft serve ice cream" and croque monsieurs (in addition to countless Yakitori). 4. Safety (especially for women). Everything feels (and is) so safe. The subway, the parks at night, the massive Shibuya neighborhood. Seeing 7 year olds on the subway during rush hour is a trip too. 5. Homeschooling, oh boy. Maybe we were too eager on this? Singapore Math is no joke to administer, but more importantly, we might have misjudged the lack of excitement of "mom and dad" as teacher. 6. Every day is an adventure. I've been working from 5:30-9:30 am and then from 7:30-10pm. Not ideal, but it leaves the entire day free of email and calls so we can wander, eat, go to parks, shop, and just discover stuff. On the agenda are the Ghibli Museum, a baseball game, soccer match, flea markets. 7. Kids are good. Sure there's been a bit of angst with the disruption, but man they are resilient. But more importantly excited. Everyone has an activity they want to try, a place they want to visit, a food they want to eat. I wonder if it will get old to wake up and turn to eachother and say "what should we do today?" As my friend @p_millerd wisely said: "make sure you allow the first week for frustrations, chaos and things going wrong and many emotions!"

Tons of quality-of-life improvements this week. And the launch of Grok Bot, Instinct mark another "Claude Code" moment.

Skills are becoming a problem. Not because they don't work. But because they're so effective. I'm now seeing teams (on the buyside) where individuals have a 5-20 skills. They work and they're used often. But here's the problem. Skills are still stuck in single-player mode. How do you share a skill? Email me the .md file. (And piss off, if it's a zip file.) Then the models change and Claude recommends shrinking skills by 80%. The power users do it. No one else received the memo. (Duh, they're not on X all day.) Some skills are centralized. Do we really need 20 review-nda skills? One person should own this, make sure it's always dialed-in. But who is that person? How do you ensure that everyone has the most up-to-date skill? (And what happens if that person leaves?) Other necessary items: Version control, ownership, search-ability and discovery, descriptions. Pretty easy stuff, but not available in the current harness. And don't get me started on testing. Right now it's all based on vibes. (I'm guilty of this too.) It's hard to run evals on qualitative knowledge work. Don't tell me git. That proves you've not understood how the average knowledge worker operates. They will NEVER use git. EVER. Who's building the solution?

One of our contractors raised our prices. I asked why (to see if it was inflation related). Her answer: "Listening to your podcast made gave me the confidence to set better boundaries and value myself." I now pay a higher price - but I'll take the W.