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Owned by Pete

For Gen Xers living in an AI world

70 contributions to Gen X & AI
Building a Second Brain
A second brain typically means "an AI-augmented personal knowledge system where the AI doesn’t just store notes—it reads them, reasons over them, synthesizes insights, surfaces forgotten connections, and can help act on them." Basically a database of all your thoughts, ideas, communications, etc. I've broken them into different subsets of areas of focus. I'm also creating folders with information related to specific business practices or business experts. Then you point Claude to those areas and create a skill to review the information based on what you want out of it.. Using recommendations from people ahead of me and the Claude space, which are most those people :), I'm using the free download Obsidian to organize this information. Ideally, you'd put Obsidian into your standardized work flow and automatically export data to the appropriate folders through your workday so the second brain grows naturally with your experience. Right now this process is manual, so it's taking some time to get enough data in there to test out different skill markdown files,find out how best to store the information, organize the information, and access the information. I'll let you know how that goes.
0 likes • 4d
That's a good question. I haven't come across that scenario yet, but it has me thinking...
What deserves a place in the second brain?
Pete’s second-brain discussion has me thinking about the difference between saving something and being able to use it again. I’m learning practical AI alongside sales, and I want my notes to help me pick up the next session without starting over. We grew up learning plenty of new technology, but a bigger filing cabinet still needs a sensible label. How do you decide which notes become lasting reference material and which stay with a single project?
0 likes • 4d
At this point, I haven't figured out what is lasting. The good thing is that, after some time, you can ask your AI tool which mark down files has it not accessed in a long period of time. That could help :)
GEN Xers - Welcome Home!
Gen Xers are the most technologically adaptable generation in human history, from the dial-up modem to AI. Together we can overcome any challenge and AI is our next tech challenge. Let's learn it together. :) Share a picture of yourself and tell us what you want to learn about AI. I'll go first... I want to learn AI so I can be in control of my employment future.
GEN Xers - Welcome Home!
0 likes • 6d
@Glen Hutsell I've heard of different ways to do this. I think it depends on how well you are at keeping track of your information. I've heard one way in which you create very high level generalized folders to organize items under those large umbrellas, like work, Life, fun, etc. And then there is the way that most people I think would naturally gravitate to is using folders like a Windows explorer approach where you create specific folders for a very specific items. But if you do that, you may lose connectivity between ideas or concepts that you wouldn't think naturally overlap. I think if you're looking to silo areas to keep your AI focused on very specific things, you wanted to focus on, content that you've delivered or uploaded for those specific purposes, then I think creating specific folders is the right approach as long as you can maintain understanding of where all the information is. So far I've taken kind of a combination approach. I have separate folders for separate areas of interest in my life, like writing, employment, some entrepreneurial efforts I've been involved in, etc. But within those folders I have not made subfolders of information. So I kind of have a separation of high-level ideas while keeping the umbrella approach within those ideas, if that makes sense. The good thing is that the files are easy to move around or connect. For example, to get the most out of some of the values of a tool like obsidian is to connect markdown files together. And you do that through linking the documents within each document. There may be a faster way, but I just started that so I'm not really sure. But very good questions, Glen. I think at this point trial and air is the best approach 🙂
0 likes • 4d
@Glen Hutsell Not yet. Still learning. :)
A post on X
By V0xium I am done with this shit. It is over. The state of engineering right now is horrible. It has been half a month since I started a new role at a big company. Nobody knows anything here. The specs, code, tests, PRDs, tickets, resolution of those tickets, reports, etc., everything is made by Claude Code. Nobody on my team likes this. They are being forced to ship as much as they can. I have heard multiple times from higher management that pushing code is not a bottleneck, so why are we slow? People are working 12 to 13 hours a day just to press enter. Nobody is reading anything. Humans in corporate are doing nothing on their own. Everyone, literally everyone, from an L1 to an L7 engineer here is doing the same thing. Talk to Claude. There is no sense of victory. Nobody is resolving bugs. In reality, nobody is thinking anymore. Everything is done by LLMs. It is so soul-sucking. I would not mind it, to be honest, if we were at least given the time to check out the code and see what is going where. But no, the goal is to just ship. No matter what happens.
0 likes • 18d
Wow. That's not going to work long-term. It will catch up for them eventually.
What I find interesting
There’s a current way of thinking that we are moving from a creator economy to a knowledge/learner economy. That people simply creating content that entertain will become meaningless and those with relevant knowledge will tap into a mass of “learners” and that can be monetized. And that makes sense in the short term as people try and keep pace with advancements attributed to AI. But AI is also going to destroy the knowledge industry by “giving” access to knowledge to the masses. So are we then unemployed, on universal income, spending our time doomscrolling, watching cat videos and pretty girls lip syncing and trying to figure out if they are real or AI. I’ve been vibe coding some incredible apps. Am I wasting my time? Are we all just wasting our time?
0 likes • 25d
I don't think you're wasting your time at all. I think people will fall into two categories. Unfortunately, the majority of people will enjoy the AI junk food and live off of that and then feel empty and not know why. And then there will be those at use AI as a tool but reject the dependency and go back to what makes humans human, connection, in person activities, community, etc. We can't escape our human nature. We'll want to explore, challenge ourselves, achieve goals, provide, nurture, etc. If you're creating video apps using AI then you're going to allow people to explore the tech and explore their creativity, which will be very valuable to many people.
1-10 of 70
Pete Bauer
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78 points to level up
@pete-bauer-6114
A fellow 50+ seasoned employee fighting the onslaught of technological challenges impacting our employment futures.

Active 4d ago
Joined Aug 19, 2025