How I Used AI to Unf*ck My Life
What I learned from 100 days of "Grinding"
It was June in Los Angeles, and I was pissed off.
I had just come back from Thailand, and it felt like my last big bet had just exploded in my face.
People come to business school for all sorts of reasons.
Life long dream
Break from a work
I came to business school, because I was fucked
My “career” had fallen apart
I didn’t like where I was living
It seemed every year was me trying everything under the sun to find something I was good at
And every year not only would I end up with 0, that would have been managable
I ended up with a negative number that kept going up
Business school was my chance to change that, more on that here.
I had hoped to go to an MBA to find a role in AI, maybe in sales or as a product manager, ideally somewhere in the LA entertainment industry.
But by June, it was obvious I had failed.
I spent my first year and a half working on my own projects, and trying to max on classes to free up time at the end.
I didn’t have time to network.
When I did try, I just got ghosted.
The only “normal” job I landed was a supply chain internship I knew I couldn’t do that again.
So I made a gamble.
I decided to spend my entire last quarter of business school in Thailand, a place I’ve known for a decade, doing an independent study on its real estate market.
I thought with the White Lotus buzz and political changes, I could find a real opportunity.
For a while, it felt like it was working.
I met new contact.
I thought I had local partners lined up to put a deal together.
And then, it all went sideways.
I realized the partners weren’t going to work, and the deal quality was low.
I had to walk away.
So I flew back to LA having sacrificed my last chance to network... for nothing.
I had no deal
No LA job
More debt
And…this crushing feeling of being completely and totally stuck.
Two years later
I was now more fucked
That’s when I decided on the 100-day experiment.
It wasn’t a “fun project.”
It was a desperate attempt to change.
The Fantasy vs. The Reality
My Day 1 plan was ambitious.
Launch multiple apps.
Start a real estate business.
Get Jacked!
That fantasy lasted about a week.
The first thing to break was the “AI educational content” plan.
I thought I could make YouTube videos or write tutorials.
But when I sat down to do it, I was miserable.
I realized I just don’t like teaching.
It feels like a struggle.
The second thing to break was my plan for social media. I had this idea that if I just posted every day, things would get easier.
I was wrong.
I don’t like social media very much, and forcing myself to come up with a “post” every single day was torture. In fact, many of you that doom scroll and feel worse after being on social media, should also spend less time on social media.
My biggest problem has always been turning ideas into reality.
Aka I’m terrible at doing the things.
I have a learning disability, and the best way I can describe it is thinking through quicksand.
I’ll have an idea, “Point A,” and I can see “Point D” in the distance, but I get stuck.
I just can’t figure out how to get from A to D.
A teacher in China once told me, “You have all the blocks, but you don’t know how to build the house.”
That’s exactly it.
I know what I should do, but I cognitively can’t assemble the pieces.
This has been AI’s biggest help to me, I can describe “the house”, and it could help me stack “the blocks”.
Many of you that doom scroll and feel worse after being on social media, should also spend less time on social media.
I realized that even with AI, I was forcing myself into a box that didn’t fit.
I was trying to be a “YouTuber” and a “Social Media Influencer,” and I am neither of those things.
So I cut them.
It was the first big win of the experiment.
I wasn’t just shipping code; I was shipping baggage.
The Tempting Trap
Halfway through the 100 days, I hit a wall.
I was back in Dallas for the summer, and it was brutally hot.
It felt like the wheels were falling off.
Nothing was working.
Building my app was taking forever.
And right then, a job invite appeared.
It was a remote role with a very tempting salary.
It was enough money to solve a lot of my problems.
A past version of me would have chased it.
But I thought about what the job would mean. My issue with regular jobs isn’t just the work; it’s the feeling of constantly having to justify my existence to a boss, something I’m just not good at.
I had already tried the “normal” B-school path with the supply chain internship. This remote job was just a nicer, more comfortable-looking trap.
Me getting promoted and having a career was about as likely as one of my crazy ideas working. I would rather bet on myself, even if it’s harder.
Finding a Real Workflow
The decision gave me new clarity, but the actual work was still a struggle.
I was building my fitness app, Crimson, by leaning on AI to help me write the code. And it was a mess.
The AI would get stuck in these loops.
It would solve one problem by breaking something else.
Sometimes my own brain works like that.
I’ll jump from Step A straight to Step D, forgetting B and C entirely.
Then I arrive at Step D on a shaky foundation, the whole thing collapses, and I’m left confused. The AI was doing the same thing when I asked it to build multiple features at once.
So I made a new rule: One feature at a time.
Want a new workout type?
We will only work on the login button until it’s works. This helped a lot.
Forcing myself and the AI to slow down and work step-by-step wasn’t just a coding trick; it was a way to manage my own cognitive blind spots.
Progress, which had been stalled for weeks, started to inch forward.
Another key change I realized was myself and the AI seemed to work better earlier in the morning.
Previously I would go to the Gym or go workout in the morning and then try to start my day. The problem was I would usually be so tired afterwards I wouldn’t properly start working till lunch time or later. What I would try to communicate or accomplish was much lower.
So I made a change.
I started working from 8:30 AM to 2:00 PM.
That was my protected time.
Then I would go to the gym.
It was a system that finally stuck.
What I Actually Shipped (And What I Didn’t)
The 100 days ended on October 15th.
I looked back at what I had actually done.
My plan to launch “multiple apps” failed.
My plan to become a YouTuber failed.
But here’s what I did ship:
Crimson, my fitness app. It’s built. It’s not finished, but it’s real and in beta testing. This app does not exist without AI. AI didn’t make me faster. It made me able.
Rogue Codex, a massive repo of AI Tips and Tricks. A website where I dumped everything I learned during this process and before it.
A finished research paper on Thailand. My final conclusion was “don’t invest right now.” The risk was way higher than the reward.
A new skill I didn’t expect. I realized I love writing. I don’t even care if people read it. Just being able to share my thoughts and put them out there is a great feeling.
The End of 100 Days
Day 100 wasn’t a grand finale.
It was a Wednesday.
It just felt like another day of working. And that was probably the best possible outcome.
The experiment was never about the 100 days. It was about finding a process I could live with on Day 101. I started in June as a guy trapped by his own ideas. I ended in October as a person who builds and writes.
And that brings me to Crimson.
This app is my answer to the state of the world.
I look around and see most people are broken.
We’ve gone from the “heroin chic” of the ‘90s, where we celebrated starvation, to now pretending that being morbidly obese is somehow beautiful or okay.
And top it all off, we have decided the new “fix” is just as extreme injecting GLP-1s to lose weight. Because magic cures worked out so well with Opioids…
I don’t judge anyone for doing that, but I feel like there has to be another way.
Being healthy and fit should be fun.
It should be something you look forward to.
Fitness, to me, is not showing up at the gym to walk on a treadmill for 45 minutes. I
t’s not being at the bouldering gym, climbing the same route over and over.
Fitness is about what you do with it.
And who you do it with.
It’s about going on a hike in the Western U.S. with your crash pad and bouldering on random routes.
It’s about looking at a map of a city, coming up with a quirky route, and thinking “I could ruck that” especially if an AI tells you its difficult / impossible, because why not.
It’s about having the energy and the capability to be creative and have fun.
It’s about knowing you’re able to do those things because you did the little things along the way that made them possible.
That’s what I hope Crimson helps people accomplish.
It’s an all-in-one tool to help you get eat right, get fit, and have fun doing it.
I’m looking for a small group of people who are ready to find that other way.
If that’s you, let me know and I will share the beta.
The hundred days may be over
But the journey to improve my own
And those around me
Has only just begun.