Day 1️⃣: Planning What’s Next

It has been nine weeks since I decided to step back after a decade of building tech and teams at full intensity. I wrapped up my last day at Atlan on September 5th, 2025. Looking back, these last nine weeks have allowed me time alone, free from urgency, to recharge and reevaluate my perspectives before gearing up for another intense chapter.

Some suggested looking for roles that don’t demand such intensity, but after ten years, I know that’s just not me. High-intensity work is my natural rhythm. So, taking a deliberate “mini-retirement” felt like the only way to truly reset and prepare for my next intense ride.

I have already written about my tussle with self-accountability. So I decided to take a 3 day break after my last day at work aiming to set the tone for this break and rethink how I approach accountability.

In the last 3 days I did reflect and realise again something which I have always known about myself. I struggle to re-do things I’ve learned before unless there’s a clear, high-impact outcome attached. That’s why I couldn’t muster excitement to return to my usual stack, even if re-learning would make me efficient again. It simply wasn’t as much fun. So I decided to go for completely different languages that I have never worked with to have more genuine fun.

Day 1, September 9th, 2025: I’m diving into Ruby, with plans for Ruby on Rails later. I kicked off with Kevin Skoglund’s Complete Guide to Ruby on LinkedIn Learning. An hour in; so far, so good for beginners.

Why Ruby? The language has always intrigued me as I have come across many companies building with Ruby and Ruby on Rails for years without abandoning it. Although I’d considered picking it up before, this is the first time I’ve had a compelling reason to actually do it. I don’t know how far I’ll go, but the start feels promising.

What about AI? This break is, above all, about AI. I’ve always believed the best way to understand a technology shift is through direct, hands-on use rather than reading others’ viewpoint and theorising basis that. I have been thinking of SO MANY applications of AI in different industries, and recently “vibe-coded”, within a day, a utility that can read code commits and associated diffs to update Kanban tickets or PR descriptions for developers (so they can only focus on writing clean code while collaboration can be auto-pilot to some extent). That said, I’m waiting to gain more confidence in these vibe-coded repos before making them public.

For now, I’m using AI-native tools for personal productivity and continuing to build private utilities, whether vibe- or human-coded, that help me work smarter.

AI tools I’m using right now:

• Perplexity for AI search, research, and ad-hoc productivity. Pro tier’s $5/month API credits are a bonus.
• Comet browser from Perplexity for an AI-native browsing experience. Also dabbling with Dia and Nimo Infinity but haven’t been able to be as productive with them.
• Gemini (Google Workspace) for Google Nano Banana and free API usage
• Cursor for coding
• Warp for agentic CLI experience
• Planning to explore n8n, Agent DB, and other AI-native tools as I clear my current learning backlog or as needs arise.

I’ll be sharing daily learnings in this series. Not as formal blog posts, but more as a personal journal documenting the journey. I hope this detour transforms me even more than I anticipated when I first chose this path. 🤞