I’m quitting weekly reports and turning my thinking into a portfolio
For this post, I decided to make a big change to the way I do things.
Until now, I’d been posting the numbers from my regular reports on note, along with a little casual writing, every week. But it was starting to feel like a chore. What was the chore? The very act of updating it every week.
I’ve tried keeping a diary of my activities many times as an adult, and this time I’d made the workflow incredibly simple. Even so, there are days when I just don’t feel like doing it. I can casually keep leaving little notes in Google Calendar, but I probably shouldn’t ask more of myself than that.
Keeping it casual. That’s what makes it sustainable.
If I can’t keep it up, change the system
So, what should I do about my own lack of discipline?
Thinking about it, maintaining a portfolio site itself can feel like quite a waste of effort. But if I stop, people will keep wondering, “What does this person actually do?” When you run a business, that becomes a hassle later on. So I decided to make my portfolio chronological.
The things I used to write on note, the screenshots of work in progress I’ve recently been posting on X, whatever comes to mind—I’ll put them on my site too. In other words, a log of my thinking becomes my portfolio. I build and scrap things very frequently. Most of them end up scrapped, so I’ll count that as part of my track record.
For projects, I’m basically just recording when they start and when they end. I could add more detailed statuses, like paused or operating, but I’m not that meticulous. This is enough.
It’s all a hassle, so I’m keeping it simple.
What happens to the weekly updates?
For the weekly updates, I’m thinking of trying a YouTube format where I record my screen and chat while looking at my notes. It’s the ultimate lazy-person setup, though I’m not even sure I’ll keep that up, haha. Still, talking about what comes to mind while looking at the screen feels more natural to me than turning it all into an article. I’ll give it a try. If it doesn’t stick, I’ll change it again.
What do I show in the age of AI?
Why am I so focused on making the process visible in the first place? Because the process itself can have value—the “process economy.”
Learning how to make something isn’t that difficult anymore. But actually making it, releasing it, finding out whether anyone comes, whether it makes money, or whether it ultimately fails? There seems to be demand for that kind of information.
I’ve already started posting screenshots on X of what I’m working on. There’s no point in only showing what succeeds, so I’m recording the failures too.
Even with AI automation, making money isn’t easy
I started working on AI automation and autonomous operations quite early on.
Honestly, though, it hasn’t been easy to turn that into money. To be precise, some things do bring in revenue: Kindle books, LINE stickers, and so on. But they still feel like extensions of a side hustle. Many are around the point where they may or may not reach ¥10,000 a month.
Much of today’s use of AI is focused squarely on efficiency. Put simply, it’s replacing work humans already do.
About 15 years ago, all kinds of SaaS products appeared and made work people had been doing more efficient. I see this as an extension of that. Games, video, and creative work stand out early on, but easy-to-understand entertainment is a good way to introduce new technology. That applies to any business, not just AI. Office work is part of this too, and eventually physical labor will be as well. There are early adopters saying you can make money with a business that “uses AI to do work humans used to do.” That may work in the short term, but I suspect it gets difficult over the long term.
As with SaaS before it, something that starts out useful eventually faces more competition and becomes harder to differentiate. Of course, you could make money there and invest it in your next business. That’s a fair point.
But with limited time and money, I’m prioritizing things that can keep accumulating value for as long as possible. I even have a feeling that the concept of investment itself might disappear. Speculation will definitely remain, though.
That’s the thinking behind the businesses I’m building now, including Shoten.me and Study River.
Short-term money and things that last
Making money in the short term and creating long-term value aren’t necessarily the same thing.
To take an extreme example, if all you want is money quickly, deceiving people is a shortcut. The world is full of ways to make immediate financial gains look attractive, like treating the home you live in as an investment and saying, “Buy it and you can basically live there for free!” That sort of thing doesn’t interest me.
On the other hand, steadily building a service, finding users, and gradually earning revenue looks like a very long way around. Most people probably find it even less interesting. And most projects disappear along the way. So to make it through, I’m very deliberate about not doing all that accumulating work myself: I have AI do it for me. My own weak point is keeping a diary, haha. (Ideally, I’d just win the lottery.)
Now that AI makes it easy for anyone to build things, I think “I can make it” has already lost its value in itself. So where do I put my own accumulated experience? Here. In this chronological portfolio of my thinking.
This is where I express my feelings. If I hand that over to AI, I think the result will be uninteresting content.
Make something, release it, and stop if it doesn’t work. When another idea comes along, make something else. I’m not trying to line up impressive accomplishments, and I’m not planning to write a polished report every week. It will definitely get messy and hard to browse. Most of it will probably fail anyway, but those failures belong in the portfolio too.
For now, I’ve decided to keep going this way.