AI in Education
All Three of My Kids Told Me They Don't Need to Write
I asked each of my three teenagers on tape whether they'll need to write well long-term. Three no's. They're half right, and the wrong half is on us.
Kirk’s Blog
DISRUPTION with a side of humor.
AI in Education
The Open Secret
Every school has an AI policy. Every kid has an AI workflow. I asked my three what the rule is, then what the actual rule is. Two different answers.
AI in Education
My Daughter Had to Prove She Wrote Her Own Homework
My seventh grader got a zero for using AI on a lab report. She hadn't. What saved her was a week of version history and an uncle who knew to ask.
AI in Education
Artificial Summer School
I turned my three teenagers into a poorly controlled AI experiment one summer. No control group, and the subjects were related to the researcher.
AI for Entrepreneurs
The Org Chart of the Future Is You + a Lot of AI
May Day 1975 killed fixed trading commissions overnight. AI is doing the same to your business - and you won't get the decade the brokers had.
AI for Entrepreneurs
Authentic and Consistent: Brand Voice Across a Company, a Sub-Brand, and a Human
Two fears show up when you let AI write for your business: beige corporate mush, or a dozen feuding voices. Brand voice in three layers.
Productivity
Deeper Focus & Priority Frameworks: You Can't Multitask (Sorry)
You can't multitask. Two prioritization frameworks that create instant clarity, including the 1-vs-1 method that exposes what secretly doesn't matter.
Productivity
Mindset & Lifestyle Upgrade: Escaping the Hustle (and the Slot Machine in Your Pocket)
Escape the hustle — the brain-dump that clears your head, the No Manifesto that protects your life, and the slot-machine test for your phone.
AI for Entrepreneurs
The Productization Trap: You Built a Great Tool. That Doesn't Make It a Product.
AI made building so easy that founders are walking into a flattering new trap: confusing a tool that runs your business with an actual business.
AI for Entrepreneurs
You Can't Buy Hustle — or AI Capability
\"You can't buy AI capability any more than a $4,000 espresso machine makes you a barista — it's a muscle you build through reps, not a platform you purchase.\"
Productivity
Inbox Jedi: Make Your Email and Folders Actually Work for You
Make email and folders work for you — a folder-and-rule system, an AI sorter, a file-naming trick, and the password system that ends reused passwords.
AI for Entrepreneurs
The Receipts: What This Actually Produced
After five posts of promises, here are the receipts: what AI actually produced across my companies, with the honest caveats included.
Productivity
Automate, Delegate, Eliminate: The Tom Sawyer Guide to Doing Less
Focus isn't about what you do — it's what you refuse to do. How to audit your time and delegate almost anything with a quick screen recording.
AI for Entrepreneurs
The Year I Redrew My Own Org Chart (Year 3)
Year three of building with AI wasn't about saving time. It was about redrawing the org chart as freed-up capacity aimed at bigger things.
Productivity
Flow Like a Pro: How to Get Three Weeks of Work Done in Three Hours
Get three weeks of work done in three hours. Kirk Drake's flow-state triggers, batching system, and favorite Outlook hack for taming your inbox.
AI for Entrepreneurs
From an Hour to Four: Build Tools, Not Just Prompts (Year 2)
By year two, the free hour was banked — the real unlock was going from AI as a handy sidekick to purpose-built tools that do the work.
Productivity
Own Your AM, Win Your PM: Why I Don't Touch Email Before 8:30
I get a full week's work done in the first three hours of the day. The morning rules that make it possible, starting with no email before 8:30.
AI for Entrepreneurs
The Hour-a-Day Revolution (Our AI Journey, Year 1)
The origin story of an AI-first company isn't dramatic: year one was simply everyone on the team saving an hour a day — and making AI a reflex.
AI for Entrepreneurs
Ship Ugly: The Four-Fingered Portrait That Taught Me AI
Everybody's busy \"evaluating\" AI while a quieter group just uses it badly and gets better fast — here's why shipping ugly beats studying.
Productivity
Stop Grinding, Start Winning: 5 Micro-Fixes You Can Deploy Tomorrow
Five dead-simple productivity fixes you can set up tomorrow — the five-sentence email, the unsubscribe rule, and three more that hand back hours.
Productivity
Foundations of Productivity: How a Guy With Severe ADHD Learned to Run 10 Companies Without His Hair on Fire
How a serial entrepreneur with severe ADHD runs 10 companies without burning out — the Productivity Planner and the mindset shifts that make it work.
AI for Entrepreneurs
You're Running Your Business on Vibes (And You Can't Afford to Anymore)
For years I priced on gut instinct and called it instinct. It was vibes. AI made analyst-grade math cheap enough that guessing is a choice.
Measuring and Celebrating the Mission
The final stretch of the secret mission playbook: how to measure whether eight weeks of work actually landed, and celebrate it without hollow praise.
GWC: the Job vs. the Mission
Get it, Want it, Capacity—Kirk Drake on using the GWC test to tell a person's job apart from the bigger mission, so the right people own the right goals.
How to Recognize You Have a Secret Mission (Before It's Too Late)
The 2 a.m. napkin roadmap you never told your team about is a secret mission. Kirk Drake on spotting one before it quietly derails your company.
Secret Mission Transparency: The 30-60-90 Plan
Turn a vague 'secret mission' into a plan your team can actually run with. Kirk Drake breaks down the 30-60-90 framework for founders who want real buy-in.
Building Something without Instructions
Hire a team but never share the blueprint? Kirk Drake on building a company without instructions—and how to stop expecting your staff to read your mind.
My First Company's Product Was a Miscommunication
Kirk Drake's first startup sold a product nobody—including him—fully understood. A funny look at the communication lessons every founder learns the hard way.
The Danger of Telling Your Whole Vision… (Yes, That's Also a Thing)
Sharing your vision is good; oversharing can backfire. Kirk Drake on the surprising danger of dumping your entire vision on your team all at once.
The Day I Realized I Was a Founder… Kind Of
In 2006, aged 26, Kirk Drake raised money from seven credit unions on a 100-page business plan — and learned what founding a company actually means.