Someone told me they could probably find an hour a week for AI, but that an hour a week wasn't really worth it.
I've been sitting with that since Thursday.
About two years ago, on what I'm pretty sure was a Thursday, I was trying to decide whether to text someone I had a standing lunch routine with — pizza, a Liquid Death, a drive downtown, small talk. Good enough person. But every time I tried to bring up AI stuff, I got pushback. She'd built an agency, made everyone a VP, and a lot of those jobs were the kind that could be automated away. So the topic was a wall.
I sat there and thought: I could use this hour to actually build something.
So I just didn't text. Decided I'd skip being the one to reach out and see what happened.
That was the last time we spoke. Two years ago. Never heard from her again.
I genuinely liked those lunches. But it was the first real moment where I traded something I had for something I was trying to get. One hour. One Thursday. No announcement, no plan — just a decision about what the hour was for.
What followed that hour
That wasn't the only thing I let go.
I stopped taking old freelance work. Told a former client I didn't have capacity — which was true, because I was choosing not to have capacity for it. I sold all my video equipment. I sold basically everything from the old business. I shut down the original Daring Creative brand entirely.
"I completely embraced and pivoted and just said fuck it. This is the future. I'm gonna learn it."
That's actually what happened. And none of it started with some big strategic moment. It started with not sending a text.
I had a theory at the time that I may as well learn this while I'm not being forced to. Eventually everyone will have to know it. There'll be no advantage to it, it'll just be a requirement. So learning it now, while there's still a window where it means something — that felt like the move.
The hour is a trade, not a search
I have friends who want to learn this stuff. A friend studying for the bar. A few others in the "I want to but I'm so busy" camp. I hear some version of the same thing from basically everyone I talk to.
And I get it — I do.
But I also know that I used to sit on TikTok for long stretches and feel fine about it. The hour existed. It just had a different name.
When someone says an hour a week isn't worth it, what they're usually describing is that they're not willing to stop doing something else with that hour. Which is a completely legitimate position. But it should be named that way, because "not worth it" suggests the hour can't do anything — and that part I disagree with.
An hour a week is how it started for me.
What I was really deciding wasn't whether I had the time. I was deciding what I was willing to give up to have it.
The lunch. The old clients. The equipment. The brand I'd been building. None of that happened all at once, but it all started from one Thursday when I chose to use the time differently.
I'm not saying everyone has to do what I did
Some of those things I gave up, I miss. Some I don't. I sold video equipment I was genuinely proud of. I closed a brand I'd put years into. I lost a friendship through simple neglect — no fight, no conversation, just a text I never sent.
I also know I get angry sometimes that I can only put a third of my time into this stuff. There are other demands. I wish I could put 99% of it into actually learning and getting ahead. I can't. So I'm making the same tradeoff calculations everyone else is — just with different line items.
The hour exists for most people. I really do believe that.
The question is just what's sitting in it right now, and whether you want that thing more than you want this one.