Conversations with AI are not for improving skills, but for recognizing your own arrogance
I, Shossan, have a certain pride in having automated my environment reasonably well and controlling it efficiently. However, through analyzing my own shell history while conversing with the trending Claude Cowork, what was thrust before me was an image of myself—utterly unplanned and full of biases. How embarrassing.
Being prompted by AI to improve is a shock close to defeat as an engineer. However, I am convinced that this very defeat is the only gateway to the next stage of growth. Gemini's words are too harsh.
People mistake unconscious repetition for effort
Why couldn't I notice my own inefficiencies? It's because a bias called familiarity had crept into my daily work.
This time, when I had Claude cowork analyze my past command history, the following three blind spots were exposed:
Collapse of time management: Activity peaked at 21:00, a time when I should have been resting. This wasn't diligence—it was merely repaying debt caused by lack of planning during the day.
Hollow automation: I manually executed ansible-playbook 31 times. While thinking I was using automation tools, the execution process itself was extremely analog and dependent on manual work.
Tool dependency: By using convenient tools (Keyboard Maestro, Stream Deck, Claude Code, etc.), I had arbitrarily decided that there was no more room for improvement.
The cold data-driven insights and the automation functions I immediately implemented
According to Claude's analysis, my activity is concentrated at 8:00 and 21:00. The fact that I was hammering away at commands at 21:00 after my bath is evidence of a bad habit that degrades sleep quality and diminishes the next day's performance. I truly never expected such results. I was genuinely surprised.
You should sleep after your bath. If you have to execute commands at that time, it means your planning has failed. Accepting this fact, I immediately adopted the improvement proposals that Claude suggested.
For example, here is a function for managing my custom LaunchAgents that start with com.oshiire.. Until now, I had been typing commands while trying to remember paths or searching through history, but now this svc function takes over that cognitive load.
# ~/.config/fish/functions/svc.fish
function svc --description "LaunchAgent service control"
set -l action $argv[1]
set -l name $argv[2]
set -l plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.oshiire.$name.plist
switch $action
case start
launchctl load -w $plist
case stop
launchctl unload -w $plist
case restart
launchctl unload -w $plist; and launchctl load -w $plist
case status
launchctl list | grep $name
case '*'
echo "Usage: svc [start|stop|restart|status] [service_name]"
end
end
Additionally, Claude proposed a short function called ap for ansible-playbook. This eliminates small decisions like argument specification mistakes and forgotten options. Such thoughtful consideration.
Looking into the mirror called AI, strategically updating yourself continuously
If you just end up praising AI's improvement suggestions as amazing, you are merely a consumer. For me, the learning from this experience lies in how to convert the negative of having AI point things out to me into the positive of solving through systems.
Abandon the assumption that you are doing well, and set aside time to regularly dissect yourself with objective data. Use AI not just as a code generator but as a behavioral analysis partner.
From here, I will continue to cut away waste, one step at a time. Why don't you also try exposing your terminal history and behavioral history—your embarrassing parts—to AI?
Top comments (0)