If you understand your patterns, you understand your life—and your productivity.
A little secret I’ve learned: life is about patterns. Patterns tell us what we’re eating today and how we’ll react to a family member’s commentary. They tell us where our market will be based on trends we see. Disrupted patterns alert us when a significant other strays or when an employee is planning an exit. Life is all about patterns.
And you know what else is all about patterns? AI.
Logging My Creative Work
Almost a year ago, I started keeping a very informal log of my creative work in a notes app. Simple stuff. Nothing proprietary or sensitive. Just the hours I worked, general tasks and which projects, any particular frustration that caused an inefficiency, and my energy levels.
For example:
13 July 2025 –
- 2–5PM – (low energy/headache) — updated 4 covers, resized for uploads to multiple platforms; watched 2-hour webinar on ____
- 9 PM – 5 AM – (moderate to high energy) — dictated chapter of ____ on walk; edited 5 whole chapters of ______; fixed website problem, down a rabbit hole for 2 hours with ___ plugin – UGH!
What the Models Found
Initially, I ran my work log through ChatGPT, and it pointed out some major patterns in how I work and where I was most productive, like low-cognitive afternoons or when I’m low energy and intensely productive writing stints between midnight and dawn. Not blocks dedicated to specific tasks but tasks that align to my health and energy, so what I choose to work on gets a tailwind of my energy and even on sick days, I’m still extremely productive.
After a few weeks, I fed more work log data into multiple LLMs and each gave me overlapping but slightly different takes on my workflows; spotted patterns at every level; and gave me suggestions for improvements, including automations.
Now here I am, almost a year later, with all that data and better models than a year ago to spot my patterns and walk me through improvements. Last night, I had one of the most advanced new models assess my worklog. It pointed out all the major patterns I already know and where my time is best spent (not surprisingly, on writing itself) and where my energy is most inefficient (going down rabbit holes for an entire creative writing shift, trying to fix or create an automation that isn’t working right). It also gave me guidelines to fix my inefficiencies so I don’t get frustrated with wasted time.
I’ve been regularly asking models to assess my patterns for the last year and suggest workflow improvements, and I have been on a path of continuous improvement. Some of these tasks have gotten super fast since I’ve been experimenting with Anti-Gravity and Claude Cowork. Last night, I asked for an assessment of which tasks in my workflows that I can hand off to AI agents. Starting with a list of 20 workflows, a lot of my mundane, boring, time-consuming tasks are going from literal days to about 15 minutes, and that means more time for writing. Now, I’m an English major, Jim, not a coder, but so many of the frustrating automations fell away immediately when I started using agents, and that means long-standing tasks that I’ve been slowly working on for YEARS are done. Just poof! Of the 20 suggested workflows that I can shift to agents, I had already done 2–3 of them, but hey, lots of great ideas specific to how I work and what I work on, and ideas I can implement with agents TODAY.
The suggested efficiencies aren’t always efficiencies for the project’s purpose. Some of my tasks that I do for quality control could be much more efficient and could speed to an end result much faster if I didn’t care about quality. I’m still going to run a project through a more time-consuming gauntlet to make sure my readers are happy with it.
Building a System That Adapts to You
I’m still not going to time-block my creative projects and try to force my energy levels to comply. Why? Because it may be a leading practice for people doing similar work, but it’s not a best practice for me. If I force-fit how I work into someone else’s template, it takes so much longer to get to the same point as when I let my energy and interest dictate the timing.
Most people try to force themselves into a system.
You’re building a system that adapts to you.
Instead, I’m letting AI spot my natural patterns and help me adapt my tasks to fit me instead of the other way around.
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