Today I read a blog post (see here) that had caught my eye. It was supposed to be about how to create a personal customer relationship management (CRM) system. Like a lot of people, I struggle to maintain relationships, so I gave it a read. The article turned out to be more than I expected. It’s a great read for anyone trying to understand how to use AI to help with manual tasks and how AI can connect with various tools you already use.

It presents a high-level overview of how you can use AI to talk to the tools you commonly use (Slack, Calendar, Gmail, Google Sheets, Notion, etc.) using the model context protocol (MCP). It describes how MCP works, who created it (Anthorpic), and how the average person can easily download and use it. MCP is powerful because most manual tasks involve shifting between systems. MCP connects all those systems to an AI assistant like Claude, empowering the AI to see the same data you do and execute on it just as you would. You can have an AI assistant complete tasks that would have taken you tons of time or energy, or you can have it do 90% of the work so you have to do only 10%.

The author then takes it a step further and shows you, pretty much step by step, how to use MCP to connect to Gmail and Calendar. It then provides example prompts for instructing AI to do tasks that you’d normally have to manage manually in a CRM. For instance, the author has AI prepare a list of names, using specified criteria, of people he needs to follow up with. He also has AI analyze his calendar for the past week and summarize all his meetings so he can report to his cofounder on Monday what he’d done that week.

I found this post helpful and will be sharing it. Not everyone needs a personal CRM, but the post does a great job of showing how anyone can use MCP and AI assistants to become more efficient and also explaining how to set it up.

Last week I was working on a data project. I needed to get information from a website and manually enter it into a spreadsheet. In the past, I’ve used Upwork to find data entry resources to help with this sort of thing, and I did that again this time. But as they worked (I have them do tests before I give them the full project), I soon realized that at the rate they were working, it would take someone weeks to build the spreadsheet and cost several times more than I wanted to pay.

I wanted to be frugal and get this task done faster, so I reached out to a developer friend for suggestions. He showed me how to extract the data using the website’s API instead of the user interface (i.e., webpage). All I had to do was figure out how to parse and store the data. Normally, I’d have a developer do this for me, too, but I turned to AI instead. I cracked open Google Gemini and explained the project. Within minutes, it had written a Google Apps script that I could run. It would take the data returned by the API, parse it, and store the data in Google Sheets. The script required one manual step, too, but I was happy to do that. It was very efficient and way less prone to error as compared to someone manually doing it over a few weeks. So, I spent the weekend using the script, Gemini, and the website’s API to build a large data set.

In the end, a project that was projected to take weeks, cost a significant amount, and require me to manage another resource was instead completed by me (with help from Gemini) in several hours over the weekend.

Once people realize they don’t need developers to write code and can build things on their own with AI tools, we’ll see an explosion of people building tools to solve their own problems (and do their jobs more efficiently).

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Last week, I shared (see here) that I was curious about how entrepreneurs learn to work. My thesis is that many don’t know how to work, and the ones who do are self-taught out of necessity. In the last few days, I’ve talked to a few entrepreneurs and asked these point-blank questions:

• How do you decide what to work on each day?
• What did your last workday look like?
• What did your last workweek look like?  
• How did you learn how to work as a founder?

The first three questions are to understand how they work. The last question is the most important one.

I’ve done only a handful of these sessions, but so far, the answer is that they learned over time by piecing together what people shared with them. Also, the forcing function was stress and anxiety, which made them realize that how they were working was a big problem.

It’s early days, and I’m curious. I’ll have more of these conversations with entrepreneurs. This might be an overlooked problem that many entrepreneurs face.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 98
• Total blog posts published: 651

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed in the week ending 1/18/26 (link to the previous week’s commitments):

• Read The PARA Method, a framework for implementing the PARA Method from Building a Second Brain

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Write a post sharing what I learned from synthesizing The Art of Execution

Asks:

• No ask this week

Week three hundred three was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

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Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• Same as last week: I had trouble getting started on synthesizing another book. I need to make more changes to my approach.

What I learned:

• No material learnings related to this project this week.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

Yesterday I shared (see here) that a friend who is an entrepreneur learned how to work—meaning how to work efficiently and consistently to meet goals—while employed by a large corporation known for its world-class training. That’s more the exception than the norm, in my opinion. Most people don’t get world-class training on how to work. That got me thinking about myself—how did I learn how to work?

Thinking back, this isn’t something I was ever taught. Not in college and not in corporate America. After I became an entrepreneur, I felt like I was drowning in a never-ending to-do list. I was stressed out. That pain helped me realize that how I was working wasn’t sustainable or effective. So, I sought out other entrepreneurs and asked them how they worked. Over time, I pieced together a system that worked to some extent. But it wasn’t until years later that I read books on the topic that helped me understand what a methodical approach to work looks like and how to implement one.

Now I’m curious. How do most entrepreneurs learn how to work? I don’t know the answer, so I’m going to ask a few and see. My gut tells me that many don’t know how to work and are stressed out—and that those who do know are self-taught out of necessity. Let’s see if I’m right.  

This week, I caught up with a friend who’s an entrepreneur. During our chat, I inquired about how he works. How does he determine what he’s working on each day? How does he know what needs to be done for each objective or project he’s working on? You get the idea. He said that he learned how to work—meaning he learned the process of working efficiently and consistently—while employed by a large corporation known for its world-class training. But that was a few decades into his career.

What I took away from this conversation is that most people are never taught how to work. They’re taught skills, and they gain expertise. But they’re never taught how to effectively execute their skills from day to day to accomplish goals or objectives. Instead, they try to remember and manage everything in their head and end up stressed or burnt out as their responsibilities at work and home increase.

To take this a step further, entrepreneurs experience many times more pain than the average person because of not knowing how to work. They often start out by doing literally everything in the business—much of which they have zero skills or experience in. Over time, many of them experience high levels of stress and anxiety because of this, which causes other problems.

My big takeaway is that the costs of never being taught how to work are high, especially for entrepreneurs.

Yesterday, I shared an interview featuring Howard Marks and his four steps to dealing with change (see here). Toward the end of the interview, Marks talked about his partnership with one of his Oaktree Capital cofounders, Bruce Karsh. He described partnership as an important part of a healthy work environment, which he has with Karsh and other Oaktree Capital founders.

So what’s the key to healthy partnership? Marks has a simple framework. Here’s the key to a healthy partnership (in all aspects of life):

• Shared values – You have to believe the same things about how you want to operate in the world. Marks gave the example that he and Karsh shared the view that they should invest by seeking moderate gains and avoiding losses. Said differently, they would aim for consistent returns rather than grand slams. Neither believed in shooting for the stars. Their values regarding their investment strategy were the same.
• Complementary skills – The key to success is having a well-rounded team that covers all the important areas—the team is strong in all key areas although each individual is not. If you have a team of really smart people who all specialize in the same thing, the team has a skill set hole that will likely cause execution and other issues. A better approach is to work with people who are strong where you’re weak, so you complement each other. This enhances the team’s ability to execute, and people won’t be stepping on each other’s toes.

I agree with Marks. I think partnerships that have both these things can do well. My gut tells me that many people understand the second point and seek complementary skills—opposites attract. But I don’t think as many people understand how important shared values are in a partnership. If you have complementary skill sets but polar-opposite views on how to go about things, you’re bound to have a day of reckoning and maybe even a huge blowup between partners.

If you’re interested in Mark’s full thoughts on partnership, take a listen here.

Last week, I listened to an interview in which Howard Marks, cofounder of Oaktree Capital, shared his views on dealing with change. He referred to his 2006 “It Is What It Is” memo (see here). In that memo, he said that “mujo means cycles will rise and fall, things will come and go, and our environment will change in ways beyond our control. Thus we must recognize, accept, cope and respond. Isn’t that the essence of investing?”

What jumped out to me was his four steps for dealing with change:

• Recognize
• Accept
• Cope
• Respond

Change is inevitable and beyond our control. We can’t change our reality. As Marks said in the interview, “what we can’t do as investors—we can’t say ‘Please sir, I'd like a different environment.’ The environment is what it is, and it’s this one we have to cope with . . . .”

Change is the only constant in life. That being true, having a rational process for dealing with change is key (fighting it usually doesn’t end well). That’s why I like Marks’s four-step process. It’s simple, easy, and something anyone can follow. If something is happening that creates uneasiness, it’s not difficult to go through each of these steps to deal with the change and hopefully become at ease with it.

Marks elaborated more on this topic in the interview. To listen to his comments, go to that section of the interview here.

The entire interview contains other great nuggets of wisdom. If you want to watch it from the beginning, take a look here.

This weekend, I was catching up with a friend who mentioned they’ve been swamped at work. It’s starting to have a negative impact on their life more broadly, which they don’t like. They work in a high-visibility, very demanding role at a well-known company. I shared that I’m refreshing my own productivity system and had just reread Getting Things Done and Building a Second Brain.

I told them about the books and offered to share what I’d relearned if they wanted the help. They accepted. I was thinking about this today, and I believe it will be a mutually beneficial arrangement. It reminded me of starting this blog because of an accountability challenge with my buddy Ethan. There’s something about doing something new with other people that requires new habits. Knowing that you have to regularly report to someone else who’s going through the same thing forces you to step up your game.

I don’t think I’ve been involved in an accountability challenge, or anything similar, since I started this blog in March 2020. The more I think about it, the more I’m looking forward to it, and think it’ll be fun and competitive (in a nerdy kind of way).

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