Give me the chills

This is a place to share learnings, from technology to life everything can be interesting.

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  • Slop is Inevitable, Slop is Good

    Slop is Inevitable, Slop is Good

    More than 15 years ago, I decided I wanted to learn singing. Up until that point, I was the guy who didn’t sing. I didn’t sing in public, nor privately.
    We have this image of people singing in the shower. I didn’t sing in the shower.

    Singing was not part of my radar, it was invisible to me, it was a skill I never thought existed, although I could clearly see (and hear) singers. Admittedly, I didn’t listen to that many songs either, my musical culture was limited, but slowly improving as I was being contaminated by different genres.
    And yet, no singing.

    Until one day.
    I don’t know what prompted this need. It wasn’t because I aspired to be a singer, but one day I decided I’d learn how to sing.
    I searched for a teacher and found one in Florence and started taking lessons.

    It wasn’t cheap, and driving there required extra money, so for me this was also a considerable investment.
    But I made my choice, and I wanted to learn.

    I don’t remember how the first lesson was. I do remember some of them, but I know one thing: I was terrible.
    My voice was not precise, my rhythm was out of place.

    That was the beginning. I remember how learning to sing Landing in London (3 Doors Down) felt difficult, although the vocal line was straightforward compared to other genres and songs.

    Still, my voice felt cramped.
    And yet, I continued.

    Many years passed, and I kept slowly improving, but didn’t feel as though I was progressing. During that time, my taste for music changed, especially for voices. I would look for specific skills and abilities from singers because I was able to spot a good one from a bad one.

    I learned about the existence of vibrato. That kind of “bouncing” pulsation some singers were able to do either spontaneously or in a controlled way by moving their belly and their breath. (I didn’t like the singers who did the latter.)

    But I wasn’t good enough for that, and vibrato felt like something out of my reach.

    I continued studying and practicing. The vocal exercises meant that my entire condo would hear my voice practice, me singing various notes and trying to sing songs, often with a lot of passion (even with a lack of skill). I didn’t care, but I’m sure they might have preferred something else to that torture.

    I remember at one point I was about to drop out because I didn’t feel I was getting any good.
    Then two things happened.

    One night, I sang with some friends at a company party and some people actually did like my singing and honestly said they couldn’t believe I could improve that much (again, remember I was terrible in the beginning).

    That gave me confidence.
    But the true unlock was when, one day, I started producing vibrato. Spontaneously. I couldn’t control it initially, it was almost scary.
    And yet, from that day on, it became part of the skill set I had.

    My teacher said that it’s hard to know where we stand in our learning journey. We could be close to the next real unlock, but we’re not aware of it, and that unlock is not visible in front of us, plus we learn incrementally in small steps, so we don’t see this big shift from the inside.

    But from the outside, someone listening to me after years could spot a difference.

    Years later, I decided to learn improv.
    I remember some people were impatient because it was so hard to get good at it.
    The teacher said one thing that still stays with me today: “If you were good at it, you wouldn’t need to learn it.”

    Looking back at everything I’ve learned from scratch, I know that producing something that’s not good, or sloppy, is part of the process.
    Sloppy can be the way you learn. It doesn’t need to be that way forever, but it’s part of that continuous process of learning, self-correction, and evolution that every learning process contains.

    While I always wanted to be talented at singing, I wasn’t. I was determined, passionate, and intentional.
    Even though my results were messy, and my singing was torture in the beginning, that was enough. I was enough.

    That’s a reminder to me that, while it’s easy to be sloppy nowadays, as long as it’s part of a learning curve, as long as that sloppiness is an output of low quality and not an abdication of your work, all is good. You’re learning. You are enough. You will grow.

  • People Choose You, Not the Model

    People Choose You, Not the Model

    How easy it is to determine if an article has been written through an AI?

    I’m used to see the the type of wording that get out gets out from when you pass your content through an AI model, with titles that are clearly structured in a very specific way. It makes it pop when something is written by an AI or not.

    I cannot lie, sometimes this titles are a blocker for me. I have less interest in reading the content even if the original content was interesting. They may want to share a beautiful idea and use AI to leverage its power to amplify the concept, turning it into a longer form, but it won’t captivate me as a reader.

    I think this is perfectly fine (who am I, afterall) , but there is one thing we should personally keep in mind when doing this.

    Who are you talking to?

    AI models, if not trained, write with a very distinctive style, each model will have it’s own flavor.

    The problem is that most of the time what you see out there is people using AI models to extend or rewrite their content entirely.
    That gives you a very precise type of output that doesn’t take into consideration your voice, your style, and the beauty of who you are (which again is perfectly fine, to do).
    But that begs the question: is that type of content talking, speaking to the right people?

    I’m not sure if formatting things through AI this way is effective because it targets a very generic audience. While you might attract a specific kind of reader, you will likely alienate others who are more aware of these scenarios and less susceptible to such titles.

    I believe it is crucial not to skip the editorial process. You must check whether the output is truly reaching the right audience.

    It’s all about the audience

    • Am I writing for the right audience?
    • Is this voice, this tone and style, is it going to be listened or be read by the right audience, the one that I want to reach?
    • Is this talking to them the way I would like to talk to them or not?
    • Did I just skip a step in the process to make producing content faster?

    If you answered yes at least once, then I do think it is valuable to take some time and revisit that output. You should add your personal sauce, your style, and what makes you unique. This can be as easy as changing the titles and sometime will become a more structured editorial review of your content.

    Take a moment to think about your articles. Even if they are AI-generated, take your time to review them as an editor would.
    That human element is what connects you to your specific reader. You are not writing for a generic reader, which is what you often get from a model, but for the reader you want to reach or the one who chose you to begin with.

    At the end of the day, people choose you because you have a specific voice, don’t let them down.

  • Building Effective Mental Maps in Projects

    Building Effective Mental Maps in Projects

    Have you ever started a new project and felt like you were dropped into a dense fog, unable to see more than a step ahead?
    That’s how most journeys into the unknown begin, whether you’re learning a new skill, tackling a complex problem at work, or exploring a fresh domain. At first, everything is blurry and uncertain. But as you move forward, the fog lifts, revealing the landscape piece by piece.

    This is how I think about building expertise: not as a sudden leap, but as a gradual act of mapping out unfamiliar territory. I call these “mental maps.”
    Unlike mind maps, which are creative tools for brainstorming, mental maps are your internal compass, a living, evolving sense of where you’ve already been, what you understand, and what’s still hidden in the mist.

    In this piece, I’ll share how I build my mental maps, why they matter, and how they’ve helped me transform confusion into clarity, one step at a time.

    What is a mental map?

    Many years ago, I was playing the game StarCraft. Each match began with the entire map shrouded in darkness and in the fog. You had no clue where the enemies lurked, where resources were hidden, or what dangers awaited. Every move your units made revealed a little more of the terrain, but also exposed you to new threats. The thrill of discovery was matched by the constant risk of the unknown.

    That’s exactly what building expertise feels like to me. With every question asked and every problem solved, a bit more of the fog lifts, the map of your understanding becomes clearer and that inner compass you have about the project starts working.

    Whenever I work on something, I operate like a unit moving through the map. Initially, everything is blurry and the map is foggy, I might understand the overall domain of the project, but I would hardly be able to answer questions about it. I may be able to take educated guesses based on my experience and previous knowledge, but if this is a new domain, everything will be foggy.

    Whenever I encounter a problem, I dive in and start clearing away the fog. Whether I’m solving a technical challenge or trying to understand how a system works, each exploration reveals a new piece of the map.

    Over time, my knowledge becomes more refined, and I start to visualize the map in my mind.

    Note: I'm not good at "actual visualization" in my mind, but while I can't visualize something, I am somehow able to keep all this complexity in my mind, ready and easy to navigate as if I'm trying to remember how to get from point A to point B in my hometown.

    Once I have enough awareness of the project elements, I can make quicker decisions and spot potential problems or roadblocks if we go one route versus another.

    Why forming a mental map is important

    Why is forming a mental map so important?

    • It allows you to make faster, more confident decisions.
    • You can spot potential problems or opportunities before they arise.
    • It helps you communicate more clearly with your team.

    I believe that the ability to visualize a project as a map, to have an internal awareness of what the project entails, is crucial for tackling complex problems.

    For example, if I’m working on developing a new feature for an app, this skill gives me an intuitive understanding, within its limits, of the consequences and impacts of decisions, as well as new ways to proceed.
    This intuition is instinctual, so once the map is formed, I don’t need to think about it too much. If the map wasn’t formed, I would need to explore to discover first, to have an actual understanding of what a choice would imply.

    For instance, if someone asks me, “Can we have a feature that programmatically adds tasks to our board?” and I haven’t formed an opinion in my mental map, I wouldn’t be able to answer right away.
    But if I already have a mental map with enough information, the answer comes instantly.

    Obviously, there’s a downside: we’re not perfect, and I may be wrong (also, this kind of intuitive thinking might be reminded of System 1 thinking, from Thinking Fast and Slow, and you would be correct.).
    The main advantage is having an internal overview of the project’s status and making quicker decisions.

    This is why I think mental maps are extremely important for everyone. I don’t know if everyone thinks this way, but I believe it’s a valuable skill in the toolset. There will be times when you’re asked to understand where you are in your work. It might be easy to say what you’re doing now, but having a good understanding of all the things and ramifications of a project might not that quick.
    In fact, sometimes you discover the gaps in your analysis only afterward because you didn’t explore or form the map properly.

    Building a useful map

    One approach I take to build a meaningful map is to avoid focusing on the same work repeatedly, therefore expanding my scope.

    For example, if our goal, as I mentioned, was to find ways of programmatically adding tasks to the board (let’s assume we’re doing a task manager), I would move across different codebases or project areas to understand the project’s limits, boundaries, and potential issues.
    Only after “navigating” the scenario, not just by skimming topics but by going into it, would I then start forming the brain connections needed to have “the map”.

    Similarly, you might want to do some discovery on what approaches you could take to the scheduling of the tasks. That, again, will form a piece of the map, letting you know beforehand some of its limits or the challenges you’ll face.

    Take a moment to think about your current project or role.
    Where is your own mental map crystal clear, and where is it still foggy?
    What’s one unexplored area you could investigate this week to expand your understanding?

    Two more things

    Getting the full map might not be worth your time.

    We only have a limited amount of time; therefore it’s important to stay focused and prioritize properly. Whenever I try to form the map, I will focus my attention on my goal while also trying to find ways to expand my knowledge of the project, prioritizing work I’m not familiar with but that I can accomplish within the time I have.

    I do this naturally because I’m curious, not because I was planning to proceed this way.
    But while I was looking back at this approach I realised it was one of the principles behind how I form my mental maps.

    The map is not the territory

    This concept of mental maps might give you the idea that you know everything because the intuition feels instantaneous, but that doesn’t mean you’re right.

    You might have not navigated all the problems, you might lack skills in some areas, or there may still be small areas of the map that are foggy.
    The problem with foggy areas is that you sometimes don’t know they’re there. That’s why, when overseeing a project, it’s important to push yourself into different areas of the work. This way, you can identify possible foggy areas and recognize that there’s something you don’t know about topic X, Y, or Z, which you need to explore.

    The next time you feel lost in a new project, remember: you’re not lost, you’re just mapping. The fog will clear, one step at a time.
    Keep exploring.

  • Letting go of perfection: Just write

    Letting go of perfection: Just write

    One of the things I realized while trying to publish more is that things often get in the way, and every time, there is a new obstacle. This is true for many goals we set in life. But why is that?
    In this post, I want to make the case for why you should try to publish more, and why you should pay less attention to your own doubts.

    For example, when I start writing something, I notice that there’s a new design I could use, or there are some theme improvements I could make to my blog. Sometimes, I realize that a specific topic might be outdated in a couple of months, and I keep asking myself: Is it still worth writing?
    Should I write about this? Then, there’s the judgment—wondering if it’s even worth it, or if people already know about it.

    In a world increasingly filled with AI-generated content, I believe it makes more sense than ever to publish and share what only a human can.
    What can we do to express our thoughts and ideas?
    Remember: our perspectives are truly unique. These are the qualities that make humanity so fascinating.

    For example, if you think again about “Should I write this?” you see that there will always—or at least often—be someone who wanted to hear what you had to say but never could, or someone who agreed with your thoughts or could learn from you.
    I’ve seen this happen repeatedly, both in my own experience and with friends. We take our thoughts and ideas for granted, but we should share them more because the world needs ideas, connection, and human voices.

    In an ever-more-connected world, this is what makes us unique and irreplaceable: that connection and shared understanding, those ideas we try to spread, and the way we see the world.
    Those are the reasons that make you, well, you.

    One thing that improved my writing was consistency.
    Lately, I’ve been enjoying the process of using dictation, and some tools with extra features that help me write as I speak.
    You may find you have plenty of ideas but aren’t good on writing.
    Dictation tools like MacWhisper or WisprFlow have come a long way. If you connect them to AI tools, they can clean up the words and further refine your contents, without losing your voice..

    So, whenever you find yourself wondering, “Should I write about this?” I would argue: yes, please do.
    Just focus on the writing; don’t worry about the rest.

    Distracted? Go back to writing or consider dictation as I mentioned.
    Want to change your blog design? Write instead.
    Yes, eventually you might want to improve the design, but writing is the thing you want to eventually do, so do that. Don’t work around it, don’t procrastinate. Just write.

    And in case you feel you have yet to learn how to write well or you are scared about how people will judge your writing then have a separate blog, no comments, where you write daily or very frequently.
    Small phrases, long stories, whatever works for you.
    As with many of our skills, writing takes time, and the only person that can put that time in is you.