Before / After: 10 days since joining...

It has been 10 days since I joined Clief Notes community and started Jake's coursework. It has been a massive step change in how I understand - and now use AI more effectively. A few days ago I joined into a paid subscription and the resources have proved to be very helpful in setting up my own folder structure.

Before joining this community my use of AI was prompting the web user interface and copying the artefacts / outputs for my work. I had projects setup with various context files and instructions.

I recently created my first website (in-progress) using Claude Code in VS Code and Jake's 'workflow-starter-code-project.md' template to create the folder structure. Most of the time has been spent in learning ICM, configuring the folder and file structure to route AI, and planning the geological database schema. Building the website was the easy bit!

What has changed / unlocked in my use of AI:

spending more time planning and less time managing prompts and outputs
output has significantly increased with less prompts required to get the same job done

I feel more "human" now and less like a "machine" in my use with AI since moving to the ICM method. The time being creative and planning is often away from the computer, where I'm spending time with family or doing the things I enjoy outdoors. I appreciate how Claude just "gets me" now without typing out an essay or giving me vague responses or hallucinations.

If you are new here my advice is:

take your time to work through the foundation content - no rush, it takes time to learn and understand how to implement this knowledge into your work
start small and build for something specific - don't spend time creating a folder structure on what you think you will use - build for what you will use today, in 30 minutes.
play around and fail fast it won't be perfect to start with and that is OK :)

Thank you to Jake - and everyone who has contributed to this community and built the resources that exist.

All the best,

James

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Before / After: 10 days since joining...