Why Try AI 2.0: What It Means for You
I'm trying new things that I hope will be better for both free and paid subscribers.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back from the Easter break.
I hope you had a blast!
I’ve done a bit of soul-searching recently, which is glorified influencer-speak for “I figured I’d try some new stuff.”
As a result of that searching of the soul, I’ll be making two adjustments to the newsletter.
Let me tell you what I’m up to and how it CHANGES EVERYTHING might slightly affect your inbox on Thursdays and Sundays.
1. “Sunday Bonus” → After-post bonuses
The first change is all about regular paid perks.
What I’ve been doing so far:
It’s hard to believe, but the very first Sunday Bonus1 went out over two years ago, on March 3, 2024.
Today, we’re at exactly 95 Sunday Bonuses in total. If my math checks out, that’s almost 100 bonuses!
I love throwing extra perks at paid subscribers.
But in retrospect, having to come up with a bonus every Sunday was a bit of an own-goal situation.
First, on some weeks, these bonuses honestly felt somewhat forced and rushed, which didn’t do wonders for their quality.
Second, Sunday Bonuses were often related to topics I explored earlier on Thursdays. Running them separately created an unnecessary disconnect between the stories.
Finally, the self-enforced obligation to deliver a Sunday Bonus every week meant I didn’t always dedicate enough time to a Thursday post to do it justice. There are only so many hours in a day.2
What I’ll start doing instead:
From now on, whenever I have genuinely useful add-ons for paid subscribers—tools, templates, Claude Code skills, etc.—I’ll share these in a paywalled section of the corresponding Thursday post.
This gives me the flexibility to keep certain Thursday posts free for everyone while also having more time to work on actually valuable paid add-ons for the rest of them.
Sunday Rundowns with AI news will continue, and all existing Sunday Bonuses will stay as they are.
2. New “Live & Learn” sessions
And now for something a little different…
What I’ve been doing so far:
I’ve held several live workshops over the years, but it’s mostly been an ad hoc kind of thing.
Also, if I’m brutally honest, painstakingly preparing properly polished presentations3 is not really my jam.
What got me into writing about AI in the first place was the joy of discovery, not holding “scale your business and 10x your productivity with the power of automated agentic workflows” seminars.
Luckily, I have a plan to bring back that spirit of open-ended exploration and take you along for the ride.
What I’ll start doing instead:
Since late February, I’ve been having weekly unscripted Substack Live chats with Leor of Exploring ChatGPT. They’re lots of fun, and I am especially enjoying their open-ended, off-the-cuff nature.
On top of that, Substack recently launched a native screensharing feature, so I can now show you my desktop in realtime without hacky third-party streaming platform shenanigans.
So every week (starting tomorrow), I’ll be going live on Substack to check out random AI tools, poke at their rough edges, take audience requests, and just have fun testing what’s out there.
If that’s your cup of tea, join me:
Paid subscribers who aren’t able to join live will get session recordings afterwards.
🫵 Over to you…
What do you think of these upcoming changes? Good? Bad? Neutral?
Do you have other suggestions to make Why Try AI more relevant and useful to you?
I’m all ears!
Thanks for reading!
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Why Try AI is a passion project, and I’m grateful to those who help keep it going. If you’d like to support me and unlock cool perks, consider a paid subscription:
It was briefly called “Sunday Showdown.”
Nobody knows exactly how many, but my sources tell me it’s probably more than 10.
I know, right?