In my last post, I wrote that there is currently an emergence of AI tools that can create new content, called generative AI. These tools can generate emails, poems, images, and more based on your input (known as prompts). This is a recent development because the tools emerged only in 2022. The underlying technologies have been developed for several years, but they seemed to reach a tipping point last year with the launch of tools like DALL-E, Midjourney, and ChatGPT. We are only at the beginning of this new era. When someone at Reddit asked Bill Gates about his views on ChatGPT, his response w ..read more

Have you noticed a recent trend? More and better AI tools are becoming available. While AI (artificial intelligence) has been around for some time, the tools that came out recently are smarter than ever. DALL-E and Stable Diffusion, for instance, can generate relevant images based on your text prompts. And ChatGPT is surprisingly good at answering your questions on a wide range of topics. This blog, Life Optimizer, is about personal effectiveness. So, I’d like to share with you my thoughts on how to maximize your personal effectiveness with AI tools. But before we get into that, there is a que ..read more

Here we are near the end of 2022. Soon we will enter the year 2023. I think it’s a good time to reflect on what we have learned this year so that we can start the new year strong. For me, a lesson I learned is the importance of taking risks to make progress in life. I already learned about this years ago, but this year I have a heightened awareness of its importance. What about you? What lessons did you learn in 2022? Please share your answer in the comments so that everyone can read it. Thanks ..read more

What do you think is a key trait for thriving in this age? A good answer, I believe, is a passion for learning. Let me explain. I recently read Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein. It’s an insightful book about the history of finance. It covers topics such as the origin of paper money, the stock market, and banks. I learned a lot from the book. One thing stated in the book is that for many centuries, people’s occupations barely changed. They mostly just did what their parents and grandparents did. The way people lived was also similar from generation to generation. But ..read more

Leonhard Euler is one of the greatest mathematicians who have ever lived. Living in the 18th century, he contributed to many fields of mathematics. He was very prolific; when he passed away at the age of 76, he had more than 850 publications! Many of the mathematical notations that we use today were first introduced by Euler. But I found something even more interesting when I read his story in Fermat’s Enigma: despite being completely blind in the last seventeen years of his life, those were his most productive years! How could that be? How could he produce more when the situation was worse? A ..read more

We are now in 2022! To be honest, I’m excited about this year. I believe it’s a year of possibilities. There could be many challenges ahead, but I’m sure there are also many opportunities. It’s up to you and me to make the most of those opportunities. To help you make the most of 2022, here are three simple things that you might want to do this year. 1. Read Books More Notice that I didn’t say “read more books” but instead “read books more”. What’s the difference? Well, what I’m suggesting is not to increase the number of books you read but to spend more time on reading books. If you simply ai ..read more

Here we are near the end of 2021. We will soon enter 2022. I believe it’s a good time to reflect on the lessons that we have learned this year. The lessons we learned this year will help us start the new year strong. So here is my question to you: What life lessons have you learned in 2021? Please share your answer in the comments so that everyone can read it. Thanks for being with me in 2021 and I wish you a great 2022 ..read more

A book that I recently read is The First Tycoon by T.J. Stiles. It’s about the life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Inspired by the book, I wrote Appreciating Our Modern World a while back. Now, I’d like to discuss the courage to reinvent yourself. Vanderbilt was born in 1794. Transportation was a big problem back then (as described in my previous post). In the early 19th century, the main solution was steamboats. With their steam engines, steamboats were far superior to schooners that came before them. Vanderbilt quickly switched from schooners to steamboats when the technology became available. Ove ..read more

Quick link: click here to get 50% off Blinkist Knowledge is power. Benjamin Franklin once said that “An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” I’m a big believer in self-education myself. Related to that, there is a Blinkist Black Friday deal for you: for a limited time, you can get 50% off a Blinkist subscription. Blinkist is the app for you if you want to learn from many nonfiction books but lack the time to read them. It solves the problem of having to spend a lot of time finishing a book. With Blinkist, you can get the key ideas from a book in just 15 minutes. You can even ..read more

I’m currently reading The First Tycoon by T. J. Stiles. It’s a Pulitzer-prize winning book that tells the story of Cornelius Vanderbilt. From a humble beginning, Vanderbilt became the first tycoon in America. He was the precedent to other tycoons like Rockefeller and Carnegie. It’s an eye-opening book for me. I didn’t know much about the world of the early 19th century so I learned a lot. A big lesson for me is not to take our modern world for granted.  You see, we have so much convenience these days compared to those days. Transportation is a clear example. Here is an excerpt from the bo ..read more