AI: The Machine Is Only as Good as the Operator

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Planning Week

I work in data. A big part of my job involves tracing data pipelines, reading SQL, debugging problems, and figuring out where things break. I’ve been doing it for almost twenty years.

Recently I’ve been using AI — specifically Claude — as a working partner in that process. And it’s changed my productivity in ways I didn’t expect.

Here’s what AI does well. I can hand it a SQL statement and it will walk through it step by step, telling me exactly what it’s doing. For someone who already reads and writes SQL, this is incredible — I can cut through code at speed and get instant answers on things that used to take research and thinking time. Questions that would have meant twenty minutes of digging through documentation, I get answered in seconds. As I trace a pipeline from start to finish, I can see how each step is built and how real data moves through it.

It is, without question, the most powerful tool I’ve ever used at work.

Here’s what it can’t do.

It doesn’t know what the business meant.

I was debugging a problem recently. The AI looked at the data and told me everything was correct. It wasn’t. I had to go back and define what the data fields actually meant — what they represented in the real business process, not just what the code said they were called. Once I did, the AI admitted it had made a logic jump. It had assumed it understood the data because it could read the code. But reading the code and understanding the business are two different things.

That’s the gap. SQL is a language, just like English. AI can process the language. It cannot supply the intent. It doesn’t know what a data point is supposed to represent. It doesn’t know the standards. It doesn’t know the stage gates. It doesn’t know the rules that exist because a human made a decision five years ago that still matters today.

So I have to define everything — every data point, every standard, every rule — for the AI to have any framework for how it’s supposed to operate.

Without that, it’s just a machine sitting by itself, not knowing what it’s doing.

Data exists because people made decisions. Pipelines exist because someone had an intent. The code is just the execution of something a human needed to happen. Without the person who understands why the data is there, the tool has nothing to work with.

AI processes the language. It does not supply the intent.

Humans don’t like to follow rules. Computers do. We innovate outside the rules.

The tool isn’t replacing me. It’s making me faster at the work that still requires me to show up — the definitions, the context, the judgment calls. That’s not going away. If anything, it matters more now than it did before I had a tool this powerful sitting next to me.

Three Days Out

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Planning Week, Day 8

Round 4 starts Monday.

I’ve spent the last ten days doing something I don’t do well: stopping. Not stopping completely — I’ve still been writing, walking, going to the gym, keeping the habits that needed keeping. But I pulled back from the pace that carried me through three rounds, and I let myself look at what I’ve actually built.

It’s more than I thought. A lot more. I wrote about that earlier this week — how twenty minutes of talking into my phone at a bus stop was enough to show me I’d been measuring myself against what I hadn’t done instead of what I had.

That realization changes what Round 4 is about.

Rounds 1 through 3 were about proving I could do this. Build the habits. Ship the work. Show up every day. I did. The output is real and it’s documented.

Round 4 is about something different. The question isn’t “can I keep going?” I can. The question is “how do I get what I’ve built in front of the people who need to see it?”

That’s a distribution problem, not a production problem. And it requires a different kind of discipline.

The daily structure is changing too. Not the seven habits — those stay. But where they live in the day is getting a redesign.

Bible study and BiblePictures365 go first thing in the morning. Walking happens before lunch. Reading rides with the walk. Gratitude goes early, because starting the day grateful changes the shape of everything after it.

Creative work moves to the afternoon and evening in shorter, cleaner windows. I’m still in the gym with my son three nights a week. And after that, I’m done. No heavy thinking after the gym. No grinding out a blog post at 11 PM when I’ve got nothing left.

The goal isn’t to do less. It’s to stop pretending I can do everything at any hour and have it all come out at the same level.

Three days. Then we go again.

What Twenty Minutes Will Tell You

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Planning Week

It’s 80 degrees. I’m in jeans and a black shirt, walking downtown in full sunlight with a balding head, talking into my phone passing a bus stop at 12:45 in the afternoon. I’ve got about 14 things on my to-do list and I’m trying to unload my brain before it gets any fuller.

I’m equal parts grateful and overwhelmed, and I can’t figure out how both of those things are true at the same time.

I’ve been feeling behind. Not in a dramatic, everything-is-falling-apart way. More like a low hum in the background — the sense that I should be further along, that I haven’t done enough, that time is slipping and I’m not keeping up.

So I started talking. Just listing things. What have I actually done this year?

I wrote a novel. Edited it from 105,000 words down to 60,000. Published it through Kindle Direct in March. Five months from manuscript to published book.

While I was editing that one, I wrote another one. 45,000 words. It’s in revision right now.

I’ve blogged every single day this year. Over 130 posts.

I’ve read 13 books and I’m working on my 14th.

I’ve written new songs and produced a companion album for my first novel.

I started a Bible illustration project on January 1 with zero followers. Instagram is at 6,300. One video hit 300,000 views.

I’ve maintained seven daily habits across three 40-day rounds. I’ve walked so much I’m on my third pair of shoes. I’ve lost over 23 pounds and gained 10 pounds of lean muscle. My metabolic age dropped 20 years.

I’ve worked with my wife to put together her garden, and she likes it. I’ve been in the gym with my son three nights a week. And I’ve done all of this while working a full-time job.

Somewhere around minute fifteen of this walk, I heard myself say it out loud: I think I’ve been seriously deluding myself that I haven’t been doing enough.

That stopped me.

Because the problem was never output. The problem was that I was so deep inside the work that I couldn’t see the shape of it. I was measuring myself against what I hadn’t done yet instead of what I’d already built.

Twenty minutes of talking into my phone at a bus stop fixed that.

So now the question changes. It’s not “am I doing enough?” I am. It’s “how do I get what I’ve built in front of the people who need to see it?”

That’s a different problem. A better one. But it’s still a problem. I don’t have the answer yet. I’m one person producing more than I can promote, and the gap between what I’ve made and who’s seen it is real. The overwhelm doesn’t go away just because I’ve named it — it just shifts from “I’m not doing enough” to “I don’t know what comes next.”

But I know where to start. And I know I’m not doing it alone.

Thank you, God. I am so grateful.

The Skill That Felt Like Thinking

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Planning Week

Chris Guillebeau wrote something today that stopped me mid-scroll. He said the skill that built his career was something he hadn’t labeled for a decade. It came so easily he didn’t count it as a skill. It felt like thinking.

I know that feeling.

Years ago, I’d come home from work frustrated. I had explained something to a room full of people — a workflow, a process, why certain data points mattered — and nobody got it. They didn’t see the connections. They didn’t understand why it was important.

Then I’d explain the same thing to my wife over dinner. She wasn’t in data. She was a stay-at-home mom. And she’d say, “Well, that makes sense, because this connects to this connects to this.”

She got it. Why didn’t they?

It took me years to realize the answer: the knowledge wasn’t the skill. The translation was.

I’ve worked in data for almost twenty years. A few years in, I started noticing I could see how workflows fit together — what connected to what, where things broke down, what was missing. I could look at a process and tell you not just what was wrong, but whether the problem was something that was there and shouldn’t be, or something that wasn’t there and should be.

And I could explain it two ways. I could talk about it in plain terms — this disconnects from this, this connects to this. Or I could go technical — this is why we do this part first, this is why we do this part second. The ability to move between those two languages is what made the difference. Not one or the other. Both.

I didn’t have a name for that for a long time. I just thought I was doing my job.

Here’s the part Guillebeau nailed: the things you’re best at often feel like nothing, because you’re not aware of doing them.

For a long time, I thought I was going to be a performer — singing, competitive speaking, the kind of work where people see you. What I actually became was the man in the chair. The one who helps everybody else do what they’re supposed to do. I don’t need the spotlight. I need the work to make sense to the people doing it.

My wife was the first person to name it. “You’re a communicator,” she told me. “This is what you do.”

I may not have felt that way at first. I do now.

I want complex things to be accessible. I want to break down how things work so that people can do for themselves what they couldn’t do before.

I spent five years doing it before I noticed, and another five before I took it seriously. Now, it is what I do.

Where I Wanna Be

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Planning Week

At the end of a stressful day, I wanna be right here at home with my family.

When I’m not doing anything else — when the laptop is closed and the phone is down and there’s nothing left on the list — I wanna be right here at home with my family.

When I’m tired. When the tank is empty and I’ve given everything I’ve got to the day. I wanna be right here at home with my family.

When I’m sad. When things didn’t go the way I wanted. When the world feels heavier than it should. I wanna be right here at home with my family.

Not somewhere else. Not chasing something better. Right here.

They are the whole point of everything I do. I am extremely grateful.