motivation

From consumer to producer

I stopped making New Year resolutions a while ago. My philosophy has been simple: if something is actually important, waiting for a specific date on the calendar doesn’t make sense. You should just start doing it, like the Nike ad says.

But for 2026, I’m making an exception.

I have never considered myself a prolific writer, but lately, I’ve noticed a growing friction when trying to express my ideas in written form. I suspect I’ve fallen into the trap of becoming a habitual consumer. When you spend all your time consuming and less time creating, the “writing muscle” starts to atrophy.

In the past, I felt a certain pressure when publishing here. I wanted every post to be thoughtful, insightful, and universally helpful. That high bar often became a barrier to actually hitting “publish.”

I think it’s time to listen to Kevin Kelly and focus on the audience of one – me.

The goal for this year isn’t to write for the world, but to write to think, to clarify my own ideas, and to move back from being a consumer to a producer.

Here’s to 2026 being the year I start writing again 😊.

Overheard : On constant increase in expectations

Sam Altman’s June 10, 2025 post on achieving singularity captured something I’ve been thinking about lately. There’s a particular passage that perfectly describes how we’re constantly ratcheting up our expectations:

Already we live with incredible digital intelligence, and after some initial shock, most of us are pretty used to it. Very quickly we go from being amazed that AI can generate a beautifully-written paragraph to wondering when it can generate a beautifully-written novel; or from being amazed that it can make live-saving medical diagnoses to wondering when it can develop the cures; or from being amazed it can create a small computer program to wondering when it can create an entire new company. This is how the singularity goes: wonders become routine, and then table stakes.

This hits at something fundamental about human psychology. We have this remarkable ability to normalize the extraordinary, almost immediately.

I see this everywhere now. My kids casually ask AI to help with homework in ways that would have seemed like science fiction just three years ago. We’ve gone from “can AI write coherent sentences?” to “why can’t it write a perfect screenplay?” in what feels like months.

The progression Altman describes—paragraph to novel, diagnosis to cure, program to company—isn’t just about AI capabilities scaling up. It’s about how our mental models adjust. Each breakthrough becomes the new baseline, not the ceiling.

What struck me most is his phrase: “wonders become routine, and then table stakes.” That’s exactly it. The wonder doesn’t disappear because the technology got worse—it disappears because we got used to it. And then we need something even more impressive to feel that same sense of possibility.

30 day challenge : create software with AI

I like to do 30 day challenges to explore new areas, or to form habits. Some of my previous ones were

I am starting a new challenge today, to create software by leveraging AI. The recent boom in AI and GenAI specifically has made it very easy and quick to bring your ideas to fruition. It is time to start coding and developing software for ideas that have been swirling in my head for sometime.

I will be publishing them at https://kudithipudi.org/lab . I will expand and write up about some ideas and the experience in bringing them to life.

Inspired by https://tools.simonwillison.net/.

Overheard : Leadership

Leadership isn’t about being the hero. It’s about empowering your team to become heroes themselves.

Google Gemini

For folks that are driven, wired to see an issue and tackle it head-on, it is difficult to not jump in and “try” to help your team whenever they run into an issue. But the reality is that most folks are capable, creative individuals. They just need the space to flex their own problem-solving muscles.

If you team has the skills and experience, let them handle it :-).