THE FUTURE OF WORK WITH AI

You can start before you know how

I wanted to see how far I could get making something for 15 Days of AI using basically zero motion-design knowledge. So I gave Claude Code our brand, some illustrations, examples of motion I liked, the actual product context and a fairly loose brief. This is where I ended up.

I still would not describe myself as someone who “knows motion design” lol but I know considerably more about it than I did the day before. And I didn’t learn any of it before making something. I learned it because I was making something.

We used to learn before we could make. Now we can make in order to learn.

Before generative AI, I built a whole community around a very basic loop:

show up → make something → share what worked → come back tomorrow

Back then, the annoying bit was often that you had to learn enough of the tool before you could get anywhere near the thing you wanted to make.

Want to animate something? learn After Effects.
Want to build an app? learn to code.
Want to do proper analysis? time to develop a concerning relationship with Excel.

There was usually this big pile of learning the tool sitting between curiosity and doing anything useful with it. AI is starting to mess with that order.

You can start slightly above your current ability.

Now you can decide “I want to animate this” and start. And the project itself starts exposing what you need to learn next.

• You don't know why the animation feels wrong until you see it moving.

• You don't care what easing is until the transition annoys you.

• You don't know what information Claude is missing until it makes the wrong thing.

The questions arrive after you begin. Not because chapter four of a course says it’s time. Because the thing sitting in front of you sucks and you want to fix it.

That is a VERY different learning loop.

And motion design is just a particularly obvious example. YouTube announced conversational editing this week too. Describe the edit you want, see what comes back, then jump into the timeline and keep working from there.

You don’t always have to learn your way toward the project anymore. Sometimes the project teaches you what you need to learn.

You do not need to learn all of AI. You need to get comfortable starting things before you feel ready.

There’s a weird pressure around AI right now to know everything. It makes learning feel like a giant backlog you’re permanently failing to clear.

Every week there’s another model, tool, workflow, agent, benchmark and person claiming they’ve already replaced half their company with it.

You will lose that game. I will lose that game. Everyone loses that game because somebody ships something new while you're asleep.

But curiosity is much easier to maintain than completeness.

When something crosses your feed and makes you think wait…could I use that for my work?

1. Spend 15 mins on it.

2. Get annoyed.

3. Ask AI why it looks wrong.

4. Share it with someone.

5. Try again tomorrow.

That’s learning too.

And the best learning cultures I've seen aren't full of people who know everything. They're full of people constantly bringing little discoveries back.

That loop is also a big reason we built 15 Days of AI around short daily practice and people sharing what they're making with each other.

Not because everybody needs more AI content. God knows there’s enough of that. But because the habit of trying things compounds much better than the habit of keeping up.

How to AI

This week: Opus 5.5 edition 🎬

• How to create studio-quality motion from one prompt

• How to prompt Opus 5.5 (Anthropic’s Guide)

• How NOT to prompt Opus 5.5

+ a few things people are already making 👇

BEFORE YOU GO

See you next Sunday! ✌️