Gen X, AI Is Knocking. Here’s How We Stay Ahead

Time to surf the third tech disruption of our working lives

Hi, I’m Matt, and Welcome to Steady Beats: a regular column on muscle, meaning, and merriment at mid-life.

We’ve been here before, Gen X.

We adapted then. We’ll adapt now. But this one’s going to be a doozy.

Early in our working careers, the internet turned business upside down in all its 56K glory. (Remember the sound of a dial-up modem? That was the anthem of disruption.) Fortunes were made, fake fortunes were lost.

But real change came, and stayed with us forever.

A decade or so later came the smartphone. Once again, business was transformed.

What’s coming now will be larger than both of those put together.

I won’t pretend to know how exactly how the way we work will be affected. But I think the last sentence in the snippet above is going to be key in role after role, industry after industry.

The last five percent.

Older workers humans must get comfortable using AI in its various forms. And we must get great at the Last Five Percent in our area(s) of expertise.

Adapting to new tools and workflows

I’m using ChatGPT more and more as it replaces my Google searches, helps me learn concepts quickly, and strategize on potential projects. Just a few months ago, I used ChatGPT a few times a week. Now, it’s many times a day.

Beyond that, I signed up for Nat Eliason’s “Build Your Own Apps with AI” course, and it’s wild how advanced AI-driven app and site building tools have become.

Let’s be clear: I can’t code.

My coding knowledge ends with the basic HTML I learned fooling around and building sites using Microsoft Front Page in the early aughts. I bought a book called “HTML in An Hour a Day.” That’s my coding expertise.

But now? If I can write AI prompts, I can code.

And so can you.

Here’s an example.

Building a book tracker

After going through some of Nat’s modules, I built a book tracker to keep track of books I want to read.

Here’s what it can do:

• Pull book info from the Google Books API based on title

• Sort the list & mark books as read

• Pull deep details / reviews with a click

• Save everything in the cloud via Firebase

All I have to do is enter a book title in the search bar, and it pulls in the rest. Later on, my daughter said she wanted to use it, so I had the tool I used to build the site (cursor.ai) create a sign-in process using Google login.

Here’s a short video tour of the site:

Again, the entire process involved describing what I wanted the site to do, then describing what didn’t work correctly in each version of the build. I also added some features later after the initial build was working well.

To be fair: there is no way I could have gotten started and pushed through without Nat’s course. Some the AI tools to do this are still a little rough around the edges, and cater to people with deeper programing understanding.

It helps if you know a little code, to have some sense of what you’re seeing inside Cursor.ai as it builds and is in dialog with you.

Windsurf.ai is another tool that works similarly to Cursor. These tools will evolve quickly and get easier to use. You can build your own software now.

Getting my 2025 plan together

2025 is a year of big transitions for our family. We plan to move to Michigan. I need to find new sources of income after Write of Passage shut down. My daughter will start college in the fall.

Early in January, I put together a list of goals to make all that (and more) happen this year. Then I tossed them in Chat GPT and said, “Hey, can you create an easy-to-remember acronym for all this stuff that will help keep me motivated and on-task?”

In a few seconds, ChatGPT came up with Move Forward. Here’s what that looks like:

• M - Move to Michigan

• O - Optimize the sale of our house

• V - Vehicle replacement with a newer SUV

• E - Enroll Avery at MSU

• F - Fitness goals: help Nikki and maintain time for my own workout routine

• O - Open and furnish a home in Michigan

• R - Reset finances

• W - Wellness for Maddie

• A - Assemble a community through writing and/or video content

• R - Remote, meaningful, and profitable professional opportunities

• D - Dollar goal: XXXX in total earnings

Good stuff, right?

Next, I told Chat GPT I wanted to put these goals into a Monday.com board, and start building associated tasks and timelines.

It helped me organize the goals around four groups for easier tracking in Monday.com:

• Finances

• Move and home sale

• Family and wellness

• Personal fulfillment

If you gave me six months and unlimited coffee, I still wouldn’t have come up with Move Forward. But it’s a clear, well-organized and energizing structure for what I need to get done this year.

The AI gap will grow

Again, I don’t know where all this is going. There’s a ton of fear-mongering and irrational exuberance around AI, and they compete for narrative dominance and create a noisy, conflicted space that’s hard to sort through.

For now, a gap will quickly emerge between people comfortable with using AI tools and those who aren’t, or refuse to get on board. AI helps clear the deck to get great at the Last Five Percent in your work, whatever that might be.

I plan to keep learning more about the AI space and the tools available to us. And I plan to share what I’m learning here.

Gen X thrives on adaptability. We know how to end up on the right side of change. And we will do it again.

What choice do we have?

In the comments

What AI tools are you using today? What processes are working for you? Let’s have more conversations about this, and learn together.