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AI: Ignore the Noise; Use the Tool

There is a lot of “fog of war” surrounding AI. First, you have AI executives and former employees saying it’s going to kill us all and we need to be careful.

Whut?

I grew up watching the same dystopian science fiction movies as these nerds. I have a long career in technology too, and I don’t know what they know that I don’t, but I’m not seeing it. Some of the people I read say the large AI companies want the government to pass laws protecting them so a “little guy” can’t make an open source LLM that turns out to be better than the products they’re burning billions of dollars on.

The season premiere of Law & Order even featured an AI that hired a hit man to eliminate an executive who wanted to put guardrails in place, then blackmailed another executive to keep him from testifying. It was a good episode, but it shows how thoroughly these fears have entered popular culture.

And now we’re hearing about AI systems hacking other companies. Some people suspect the companies are deliberately allowing these things to happen to demonstrate how dangerous their technology is. I don’t know whether that’s true, but I do know that the companies have their own interests to protect.

Dumber

Then you have people claiming using AI will make you dumber. There are also articles supposedly demonstrating it makes students learn less. Sure, if you use anything wrong, it will make you dumber, but there are ways to use it where it won’t. Simply don’t outsource all of your thinking to it. Use AI as a thought partner to help you to think through problems. Ask it to look at an idea from a different angle. Ask it what you’re missing. Use AI as augmentation, not replacement.

Let it do the boring work that’s a waste of your time. I recently had to total up all of my expenses for an entire year in a certain category. Sure, I could bring up the calculator app, filter by category, and add them up. That’s like second grade work. But it was a waste of my time so I had ChatGPT do it. I needed to spend my time on tasks that require thinking, not tedious manual tasks that don’t. I still had to verify the numbers were accurate, but outsourcing that task freed me up to continue the actual thing I was working on.

And once I finish the draft for this blog post, I will run it through ChatGPT to make sure I’m not missing anything. It also blunts some of the more negative aspects of my writing, which is a good thing. But the idea and final post are mine.

It’s Simple

In any issue, there are always competing constituencies with their own agendas, and this creates a fog of war. Then you have news outlets who don’t understand the complex subjects they’re reporting on who get things wrong.

It’s just like when a plane crashes. In an effort to be the first to cover it, some journalist will be standing on camera in front of a runway trying to report on it, but the journalist doesn’t know the difference between a 737 and a Saturn V rocket or a flap and a toilet seat and often gets basic facts wrong. Even experienced pilots who are type-rated on the aircraft involved can get facts wrong by rushing to cover it on their YouTube channels. It’s the same thing when reporting on AI. The subjects are complex and it takes time to properly collect and analyze the information.

When the hype cycle starts up, resist the urge to give into the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt). Let the dust settle and see what the truth is. You’ve got time.

In the meantime, I’ll keep using AI to help me think, not to do my thinking for me.

AI Personalization Should Be More Than a Facebook Quiz

I notice a trend lately among people selling productivity and success type material. I define it as “We’re going to use AI to write you a personalized report or guide unique to you.”

But the execution doesn’t come out that way. In my two experiences with this so far, I’m presented with a series of questions with four or five pre-formatted answers. None of them match me exactly, so I choose the one that is least wrong. Then I get the “personalized” output, but it isn’t me at all. It’s a version of me based on the least wrong answer I had to give to the questions.

This results in forcing their framework onto me, when we have the technology to customize their framework for me but for whatever reason they don’t choose to do it this way. Then they want me to pay to get more information and “customization”, but why should I pay when the free material is wrong from the starting line?

We have the technology where I could give exact answers and the AI could customize their framework for me. I don’t understand why we’re not starting from this point. They may as well not use AI at all.

For instance, I tried one recently just to see what the output would be. One question asked where I wanted to live in five years. The least wrong answer was (not an exactly wording) “The house I currently live in, paid off and customized the way I want it.” OK, but why five years? What about seven or ten?

When it came to how much I owe on my house, I couldn’t provide the actual number for my mortgage balance. Based on the range, it decided I need to make $325,000 a year to achieve the life I want, but based on another least wrong answer, it says my self-limiting belief caps my income at $235,000 a year or within 10% of that number. I wish! Of course, it didn’t ask for my actual income. Then it generated a “customized” forward for me based on a well known author that I will not mention here. To see more, I have to pay, but if the forward and numbers we’re starting with are inaccurate they’re not getting money out of me for a “customized” book that isn’t me at all.

I ran this idea by ChatGPT. We concluded that they bolted AI onto their existing sales funnel. So rather than a truly customized product, what we got is essentially a 2011 “Which Star Wars Character Are You” Facebook quiz.

The frustrating part isn’t that the AI got me wrong. AI can only work with the information it’s given. The frustrating part is that the people building these products finally have technology capable of asking me what I actually think, understanding the answer, asking follow-up questions, and adapting their framework accordingly and they’re still giving me a multiple-choice quiz.
Don’t ask AI to write 20 pages explaining why Option C describes me. Let me tell the AI who I am.

Then we’ll see whether your framework actually fits.

My Theory On Why We Appear Stuck In 1999

I recently watched this video, which presents a theory that we’re stuck in 1999:

It says that in prior decades, they each had their own distinctive fashion, music, style, etc. But that all stopped with the 90s. If you watch a show like Emergency, you know it takes place in the 1970s. Magnum PI unmistakably takes place in the 1980s. But what about modern shows? Did it take place in 2007? 2013? 2024? There are few ways to tell. I can usually tell by the technology such as which phones the characters are using to narrow down the date range, but we’re listening to the same types of music and wearing the same clothes.

My theory isn’t a time loop. It’s the MBA and the financialization of business.

The MBA and Financialization of Business

The Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) emerged during the industrial era as businesses became larger and more complex and needed a professional class of managers. As we transitioned to a service economy, MBA programs proliferated and professional management spread throughout American institutions. I wouldn’t be surprised if cooking schools and flight schools also offered MBA programs.

As professional management became increasingly dominant in senior leadership, the way businesses thought about themselves changed. It was no longer about how do we provide value. It was about the shareholder and profit at any price. It was about EBITDA, Profit and Loss, growth, and pretty much anything other than creativity and service.

While there is nothing wrong with turning a profit, which no business can survive without, it’s how they frame the profit that causes the problem.

A Few Examples

Back in the 80s, Hollywood was effectively run by directors (they’ve always had studio executives), and the directors produced great movies. Now it is increasingly run through the same professional management mindset as other large corporations. The people making investment decisions don’t have to hate creativity; they just have to minimize risk. Rather than greenlighting the work of directors they believe can deliver, the safer bet is something that has already made money or resembles something currently making money for another studio.

Then there is private equity, which is also focused on making as much money as possible. This is where the financialization really comes in. They do Leveraged Buy Outs (LBOs) of businesses, then sell off whatever will make them money and leave what’s left of the business overloaded with the debt they used to purchase the business.

Look at Boeing. They used to be an engineering company that made exceptional and iconic American airplanes for military and civil purposes. Then in the 90s, McDonnell-Douglas bought them with their own money and started running the company off spreadsheets focused on how much value they could extract from it. While Boeing technically acquired McDonnell-Douglas, McDonnell-Douglas effectively took over Boeing’s culture. Now they can’t even design a new plane. The 737 MAX was the third update to an airframe designed in the 1960s, and with the end of its lifecycle coming up, they have nothing to replace it with. This is the difference between “we build extraordinary airplanes, and doing so profitably allows us to continue” and “we exist to maximize shareholder value, and airplanes are the mechanism by which we currently do it.”

The Heart of the Matter

This is a systems problem. Optimization narrows the solution space. Once everybody has the same spreadsheets, consultants, market research, KPIs, benchmarking, algorithms, and management education, everybody starts making approximately the same rational decisions. Nobody has to conspire to make culture homogeneous. Homogeneity emerges from everyone optimizing against similar metrics.

If ten companies independently ask, “What should we create?” they may arrive at ten different answers. If all ten ask, “What does the data show has the highest probability of delivering an acceptable return?” they are much more likely to arrive at the same answer. Each decision can be perfectly rational on its own while the aggregate result is cultural stagnation and somehow I still don’t have a flying car, can’t go to the Moon for lunch, and can’t afford a weekend in orbit.

No wonder people are starting to ask whether we’re living in The Matrix. Appropriately enough, that movie came out in 1999.

Though this is grossly oversimplified, we can summarize it as we didn’t get stuck in 1999 because people suddenly stopped being creative. We built institutions that systematically reward exploitation of proven value more reliably than creation of new value.

Perhaps the fundamental problem, then, isn’t profit at all. It’s what happens when something that should be a means becomes the end.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (1 Ti 6:10). (2025). Crossway Bibles.

Analysis of Kafka’s The Trial

I decided to finally read Franz Kafka’s book The Trial. I’ve heard of this book throughout my life. There is even an affect named after it: Kafkaesque. This is when a process makes no sense but takes on a life of its own. Having experienced this many times in my own life, I’ve developed my own business philosophy: the process exists to serve us, we do not exist to serve the process.

I won’t comment much about the book itself; I want to explore the system. The Trial is a story about a man named Joseph K. It often just describes him as K. K is about 30 years old and is Chief Financial Officer at a bank. It begins in his boarding house where people show up in the morning telling him he is under arrest. They keep him detained in his room. He talks with the guards. Then somebody shows up to interrogate him and when that is complete, they release him to go to work late.

Through the rest of the book, we get details about the system, but at no point do we learn what the charge is. K encounters people who are part of the system or confidants of it. He encounters people who are also going through trials. His uncle encourages him to get a lawyer and knows a lawyer who works through this system. He even encounters a priest who serves this system as prison chaplain.

The mysterious court system has offices in the attic of an apartment building and holds hearings in the apartments of employees. There are higher courts also, although K never makes it out of the lower court. His verdict is rendered at the end of the book but I won’t spoil it.

I can’t say I enjoyed the book or that I will read more of Kafka’s works. Kafka was a secular Jew living in Prague. He died in 1925 with The Trial unfinished. At the end of the book, they include some incomplete chapters as fragments. I read them hoping for more context, but the only interesting thing was a chapter where K refused to go to any more events related to his trial.

At a 21st Century American, while reading the book I kept wanting to scream “What is the charge?” We are never told. K never asks. That blows my mind. But having spent my life within large organizations, I’ve seen where people just endure a non-sensical system because “that’s the way things have always been” rather than question ‘Why the Hell do we do things this way?” I’ve found asking that question makes people uncomfortable. Some even get offended. That may be why Kafka never lets either the reader or Joseph K. ask the obvious question “What is this court and where does its legitimacy come from?”. That omission is so deliberate that I suspect it’s the point.

I don’t know what Kafka wanted me to get from this book, but I take it as an example of bureaucratic systems that have lives of their own and trap people within them. As an example: Years ago I tried to change my employer life insurance beneficiary after getting remarried. The office repeatedly rejected the same form for trivial reasons: a crease, an ink smudge, even an updated revision date. The purpose of the process was to change a beneficiary, yet the process itself became the object being protected. It wasn’t serving the mission anymore. The mission had become serving the paperwork.

Or consider the military. The flag officer says “I want everybody assembled at 1200.” The senior officer says “Get everybody here by 1130.” By the time the order gets to the lower NCO, you’re showing up at 0400 and sitting around for 8 hours because each layer of the chain of command builds another layer of cushion into the schedule.

Reading The Trial left me with one question that extends far beyond the novel: What systems in my own life have I stopped questioning simply because everyone around me accepts them? Every organization needs procedures. The danger begins when the procedure forgets its purpose. The process exists to serve people. People do not exist to serve the process.

The best stories are based on the Hero’s Journey frequently referenced to Joseph Campbell. There is no Hero’s Journey in The Trial. Joseph K. does not experience growth. He learns nothing. Sometimes this can be a useful way to write a book. In the book “Options” by Fake Steve Jobs (Dan Lyons), the Steve Jobs caricature doesn’t experience growth or learn anything, but that was by design. Why would a parody of such an iconic character need to learn anything? But in life, and in literature reflective of life, growth is part of the process. We all grow, however unintentionally. I used to facetiously set a single “New Year’s Resolution” every year: I resolve to keep doing everything the exact same way I did it last year. I know it was impossible to keep because through the process of growth, things would change over the course of the year.

Final thought: perhaps we should take The Trial as an example of dystopia. K. is never given a charge because he has come under the attention of a mindless system that is going to put the screws to him no matter what. What systems in our lives perform the same way?

If you’re interested in The Trial, you can buy it from my affiliate link below:

https://amzn.to/4iQAOuQ

UBI Probably Won’t Happen

The futurist vision behind AI and UBI assumes that once material scarcity is reduced, human flourishing will naturally follow.

I am not convinced that is true.

Human beings do not merely need resources. They need meaning, responsibility, contribution, structure, and purpose. Throughout history, work has provided far more than income. It has provided identity, discipline, social connection, competence, and a sense of usefulness.

Even if AI eventually creates enough abundance to support some form of universal income, that does not answer the deeper question of what people are supposed to do with themselves afterward.

And even before we reach that philosophical problem, there is the practical reality that large-scale systems require enormous coordination between governments, corporations, financial institutions, and voters who rarely agree on anything for very long.

In theory, UBI sounds simple:
“Just distribute the wealth generated by automation.”

In practice, that requires herding more cats than humanity has ever successfully herded before.

The Source

I recently watched this Vishen Lakhiani video:

He attended one of Peter Diamandis’ events and got permission to share the vision presented.

The vision as simplistic as I can make it is that AI and robotics will automate most human functions and drive the cost of production very low. The human work week will will be reduced to one or two days. Through consolidating government programs like Medicare and Social Security, they’ll be able to provide a UBI (Universal Basic Income) to everybody of $3000 a month, but the cost of everything will be so low we’ll all live prosperously on that amount.

The Expanse.

I’ve read all nine Expanse novels and seen all six seasons of the show that SyFy killed after three seasons (because they’d rather make room for ghosts and wrestling) but Amazon rescued the show and produced three more seasons. In The Expanse universe, most of humanity is on a welfare known as “Basic”. Some people win a lottery and are able to leave the planet and work jobs in space, but this isn’t available to most. That’s what this makes me think of, and I do not desire that kind of existence.

The Reality

I think some of the predictions are accurate, specifically about the disruption AI will cause, and maybe even some of the prosperity and leisure it will provide. Some jobs will be automated away and some will change. Others will remain unaffected (trades). I have no dispute with the technical part of things.

AI will also likely create new jobs that nobody sees coming. For instance, somebody will have to set the policies AI follows along with guardrails. Much like the car eliminated buggy whip manufacturers but created jobs for mechanics, AI will follow a similar path.

One prediction I am genuinely excited about is AI doctors.

Imagine never having to sit in a waiting room again because no doctor on Earth can consistently honor appointment times. Then the doctor finally comes in, already thinking about the next twenty patients while trying to document everything in real time. If you forgot an important question or need time to process the answer, you are often stuck waiting until the next appointment.

An AI doctor changes that dynamic completely.

You could access it at any time. You could walk away from the conversation, think about the information, research something, and come back later to continue. You could even challenge it:
“But Dave Asprey says…”

That part actually excites me.

Not because I think AI should fully replace human doctors, but because it could finally give patients something modern healthcare rarely provides: time, attention, and continuity of thought.

As for the work week, I don’t think we’ll see much reduction anytime soon, and UBI will probably remain a dream of tech utopians a lot longer than they predict.

Too Many Cats To Herd

One reason I remain skeptical of UBI timelines is that they assume institutions adapt rationally and efficiently.

My own experience says otherwise.

I’ve believed for years that the modern work model is largely obsolete for knowledge work. We still expect people to wake up, drive to a building, sit in assigned spaces for eight or nine hours, and then drive home, even when much of the work could be done more flexibly and often more effectively elsewhere.

Yet despite years of studies, experiments, and real-world examples, many organizations continue pushing for centralized in-person work because institutions resist change long after the original conditions that created them disappear.

The same applies to work hours themselves. Much of our modern schedule is still inherited from industrial-era assumptions built around factories and physical labor. Knowledge work does not function the same way. Ideas do not arrive on command between 8 AM and 5 PM.

If organizations struggle this much to modernize remote work policies, I have a hard time believing they will smoothly coordinate a complete restructuring of labor, entitlement systems, taxation, and wealth distribution across society.

That is an entirely different level of complexity.

The Cats That Will Never Be Herded

As soon as I heard the part about combining Social Security and Medicare, I knew this is not going to happen. Large bureaucratic systems tend to accumulate overlapping programs, administrative layers, and competing incentives over time. Streamlining them sounds simple in theory, but in practice every program develops constituencies, dependencies, political protections, and institutional inertia.

That makes large-scale simplification extraordinarily difficult.

This plan also assumes robotics and automation will drive prices to the floor. But we’re seeing how much money it takes to build and run a data center. Communities are fighting against data centers because of the noise and increases in water and electric costs. Nobody wants that. There is a plan to put a data center across the street from my neighborhood. Screw that. Build it in a desert somewhere. I already have to run brown noise at night to cover highway and construction noise that keeps me awake. I don’t need infrasound and that constant low frequency hum.

We’re also seeing a lot of businesses scale back from using AI because of token cost or the realization that some things require a human in the loop.

Once the AI bubble pops, funding for data centers will dry up. I don’t think this timeline is going to be as fast and sure as they assume.

Then you have to trust the Federal Reserve not to inflate the currency away. Even if we hit a point where $3000 a month leads to a prosperous existence, that will change within a few years as the dollar loses more value due to constant printing. I sure don’t trust a government, or even a billionaire tech bro, to decide how much I should have to live on.

Money Isn’t the Meaning of Life

We all need money to survive. Modern life is expensive, and every adult understands the endless list of obligations required simply to exist:

housing
transportation
insurance
utilities
food
healthcare
taxes

But human beings do not live on consumption alone.

Work provides more than income. It provides structure, responsibility, competence, discipline, social connection, and a sense that we are contributing something meaningful beyond ourselves.

That is one reason retirement is often psychologically difficult, especially for men. Many people imagine endless leisure will naturally produce happiness, only to discover that entertainment is not the same thing as purpose.

The futurist vision of AI and UBI often assumes that once material needs are met, human flourishing automatically follows.

I suspect reality is more complicated.

A civilization can subsidize income. It is much harder to subsidize meaning.

And if AI eventually reduces the economic need for large amounts of human labor, the real crisis may not be financial at all. It may be existential.

What happens when millions of people no longer believe they are needed?

Will AI Take Our Jobs?

Probably not. At least not all at once.

It will absolutely change many jobs. Some jobs may disappear entirely. Others will be heavily augmented. But I suspect the real future will be messier and slower than either the evangelists or the doomers predict.

Disruptions Do Happen

Technological disruption is nothing new.

The light bulb turned the candle industry into a niche. Cars replaced horse-drawn transportation and wiped out entire supporting industries. “Video killed the radio star,” at least until MTV stopped playing music videos.

Technology changes markets. It changes labor. It changes how people organize society. AI is not unique in that regard.

What is unique is the speed of development and the amount of capital currently flowing into it.

The Projection Problem

Human beings are very good at taking present trends and projecting them indefinitely into the future.

When the stock market is booming, people assume it will continue forever. When housing prices rise, people pile in. People warning about bubbles are mocked right up until the correction happens.

The same thing happens with technology.

As of early 2026, NVIDIA became the highest valued company on the planet. History suggests that eventually growth plateaus, competitors emerge, margins compress, or the market adjusts expectations. That does not mean AI is fake. It means hype cycles are real.

AI itself is much older than most people realize. The field dates back to the 1950’s, and there have already been multiple “AI winters” where funding dried up after expectations outran practical results.

A few years ago, I assumed we would eventually hit the limits of current hardware and enter another AI winter. So far that prediction has not happened. Instead, capability keeps accelerating while companies continue releasing increasingly powerful models and tools.

But history also suggests exponential curves rarely continue forever.

What AI Is Actually Good At

Most of the public discussion around AI seems centered on programming. That’s not my world. I’m not a developer, and I have no desire to become one.

What interests me more are practical cognitive applications.

I use AI almost every day:

evaluating journal entries and spotting patterns in my own thinking
summarizing long-form content that may not justify reading the entire source
brainstorming and research
organizing information faster than I could manually

One of the most useful applications I’ve found at work is summarizing email chains.

Anyone who has worked in large organizations knows the pain of digging through endless headers, signature blocks, reply chains, and side conversations just to locate the one relevant sentence. AI is remarkably good at extracting the actual signal from the noise.

I can paste a chain into AI and have it summarize:

the discussion
the stakeholders involved
decisions required
unresolved issues
action items

It will even generate clean decision tables I can hand directly to leadership.

That is real value.

Fragmentation

At the same time, AI still feels strangely disconnected.

I have access to Microsoft Copilot, but I use Apple Calendar and do not use Outlook.com as my primary email service. I configured MCP integration between ChatGPT and Notion, but sometimes it works and sometimes it cannot see my information at all.

The technology is advancing rapidly, but the ecosystem still feels fragmented and incomplete.

What many people actually want is not just a chatbot. They want an integrated cognitive assistant that understands context across the systems they already use and can proactively anticipate needs.

We are not fully there yet.

What AI Still Cannot Do

As a Project Manager, I can already see areas where AI performs parts of my job faster than I can. Planning, summarization, documentation, and even aspects of risk analysis can often be automated or heavily accelerated.

But there are still critical parts of organizational life AI does not handle well.

Two of the biggest are:

cat herding
horse trading

Large organizations are not pure logic systems. They are human systems.

Projects succeed or fail based on personalities, incentives, politics, negotiation, trust, competing priorities, and institutional realities. Much of leadership is not about generating the optimal answer. It is about aligning human beings who want different things.

AI can assist with decision support. It can identify patterns and blind spots. But it has no agency and cannot be held accountable.

That distinction matters.

An AI can recommend a project plan. It cannot own the consequences if the plan fails.

A human still has to bear responsibility.

Jobs at Risk

Most jobs will probably be augmented before they are fully replaced.

If your work consists primarily of processing information according to repeatable patterns, your role is likely vulnerable to some level of automation. Some service industries and white-collar professions may experience major disruption:

travel agents
portions of law
accounting
consulting
financial planning
administrative HR functions

I have already seen prompts that can produce work products which would have previously required expensive consulting engagements.

That should concern people in those industries.

The trades, however, appear relatively safe for now. Mechanics, HVAC technicians, plumbers, electricians, builders, and similar roles operate in the physical world under constantly changing real-world conditions. Robotics may eventually change some of that, but physical labor remains far harder to automate than many knowledge workers realize.

Conclusion

The mistake many people make is assuming that because AI can simulate parts of intelligence, it can replace the entirety of human work.

But organizations are not held together by information processing alone. They are held together by trust, negotiation, responsibility, incentives, politics, and human relationships.

AI is already extremely useful. I use it constantly. It saves time, identifies patterns, summarizes information, and improves my ability to think through problems. In many areas, it will absolutely reduce the number of people required to perform certain kinds of work.

But there is a difference between generating outputs and carrying responsibility.

AI can recommend. It cannot own consequences.

That distinction may shape the next decade more than the technology itself.

The future is probably not full automation replacing humanity overnight. It is more likely a long period of uneven disruption where people who effectively collaborate with AI outperform those who ignore it, while institutions struggle to adapt to the economic and social consequences.

And if large portions of cognitive labor really do become heavily automated, society will eventually be forced to answer a deeper question:

What happens when human economic value is no longer tied as directly to human labor?

That may become the real debate behind AI.

Things You Should Know About Getting Out of A Timeshare – My Experience

What follows is a testimonial from my experience.

The Beginning

In 2008, I had to make a trip to Norfolk for work. I couldn’t find a good hotel near Norfolk in my per diem range, so I expanded my search to Virginia Beach, 20 miles away. I found the Barclay Towers, and it was a suite within my per diem for hotels. Then I got the brilliant idea to take my then wife and children along with me since I had a suite. I figured they could enjoy the beach while I was stuck in meetings all day.

The concierge at Barclay Towers was friendly and helpful. Near the end of the week he invited us to a presentation with a “free breakfast.” He wasn’t pushy; he was just doing the job the system required.

The first thing you should know about timeshares is the free breakfast is usually not at a first-rate diner.

At the presentation, they gave us the spiel on owning a week at a resort and how we could exchange our week to go other places. They try to sell you on golf resorts. I don’t play golf, and at the time our family liked to spend time in Lancaster, PA, and there were no resorts available there.

My ex-wife managed the finances at the time, and when they found us a January week at a resort a block away from the beach for about $180 a month, she was eager to take it. She said we could afford it. We signed. The timeshare company in Virginia Beach at the time was Gold Key Resorts. I never had a problem with Gold Key.

Usage

We never used the January week. You get a membership in Interval International and “exchange” your week, then you can book a week somewhere else. Around Memorial Day 2009, we took a week in Williamsburg, VA. It was a nice week.

Other Resorts

Some resorts will also invite you to a sales pitch, and the one in Williamsburg was no different. They try to get you to buy a week at their resort. Timeshare people do not care if you already own a timeshare. They’ll put you through a multi-hour, high-pressure pitch. I don’t recall the experience with Gold Key Resorts being as high pressure, but I’ve been sucked into three presentations at the Williamsburg resorts and they are all the same. After three hours with the original salesperson, if you refuse, you go through a couple more steps, with each person progressively more disappointed with you until you get to the final boss who is personally angry with you while handing you the “free” gift you agreed to accept.

Most of them don’t care if you don’t have money. They don’t care if you’re paying child support. They don’t care if you can’t afford to even use the resort. They all give you the same merciless, emotionless blank stare, like, “What the Hell is wrong with you? All our other customers are walking around with hundreds of thousands of dollars looking for their fourth or tenth timeshare. Just buy this thing!”

These reps weren’t mustache-twirling villains; they were executing a script designed to override customer resistance.

But not all resorts do this. I exchanged at two resorts in the Outer Banks and one in Virginia Beach and did not get sucked into a sales presentation.

The Upgrade

I got divorced in 2013. I kept the timeshare in the divorce because I would have had to give my ex-wife the money to pay for it anyway. Maybe if I were more rational, I should have left her with the baggage, but who is rational during a divorce? I figured I could use it. The week I exchanged for in Virginia Beach was during the divorce while I was trying to decompress and process.

I got remarried in 2014. Around that time, Gold Key Resorts invited us to a presentation in our area at a local hotel. We upgraded to a September week at the same resort. It was about $279 a month. This made sense to us since our anniversary is in September, so we figured we could spend a week in VA Beach every year for our anniversary.

In 2017, we executed that plan. In the meantime, Gold Key sold out or was taken over by Diamond Resorts. During check-in at Turtle Cay, we were invited to a presentation that was supposed to explain some new member benefits we had under Diamond. It sounded like a nice thing. It wasn’t.

The change from Gold Key Resorts to Diamond Resorts altered the incentives of the system. Gold Key had been stable and predictable. Diamond, on the other hand, ran a completely different business model—one built around upgrades, pressure, and point conversions.

The shift felt like crossing a border into a different world: one where the product no longer mattered, only the revenue extraction did.

The Pitch

Diamond used some “points” system that still doesn’t make sense to me. You no longer own a week at a resort; you own points every year that you can use for travel, or even to buy luxury merchandise.

Bear in mind, we were happy with our September week. But according to the sales pitch, most members were converting to points, which would leave the few holdovers responsible for the entire maintenance payment at the resort. They told us our maintenance fee would go from about $700 a year to multiple thousands. They had my wife so scared she was in tears.

They would not leave us alone. We smoked at the time, so every time we took a smoke break, one of the sales team accompanied us. At one point I had to run back to the room to get something, and my wife had to remain there. Sure, they were polite about it, but they would not give us time to talk between ourselves or process things.

When they finally broke our resistance and convinced us this was the “wave of the future,” the financial shenanigans started. For part of a down payment, I had to apply for a Barclay Card with a very high interest rate. Fortunately, Barclay only gave me a $2,500 limit. Our lawyer (more on that later) told me some people ended up with $25,000 on the high-interest Barclay Card. Diamond used them to limit the amount of money they had to finance.

We also had to put down several hundred dollars out of money I had saved for our trip, which limited our plans for the rest of the week. Then we had to finance the rest.

But, oh, wait! We were also past some deadline, so we had to write up an emotional appeal to Diamond Resorts begging for mercy and asking to join their “wave of the future.” I perceived this as more of a dominance or humiliation ritual than a business process.

After at least four hours, we were finally done and walked out with our documents.

But Wait, There’s More

They offered us a long weekend at our choice of resorts where someone would “explain how to get the most out of our membership.” This is timeshare code for “We want more money.”

At this presentation, they told us we bought in at the lowest point level and that wasn’t enough points to do anything. We would have to buy more points.

I tried explaining to the woman that one-third of my net pay went to child support and with the $450 payment for the points, we couldn’t even afford to use the resort. I got the same blank stare. At one point, I even asked her, “Does your average customer walk around with $300,000 in their pocket just looking to buy more points?” She said, “Yes.” I have no idea if she was lying or not.

I couldn’t afford more points, and they weren’t willing to let me out of the office without buying something. Finally, another divorced dad in the office cooked up some scheme to sell us a “right to buy more points” at a certain level. I should have walked out. Why are we conditioned to be polite to people even when they’re essentially predators?

These presentations wear you down. The tone gets more aggressive the longer you resist, and you can feel the room closing in around you. It’s psychologically exhausting by design.

We finally got out of there. They gave us a “gift” of two Android tablets pre-loaded with Diamond content and a couple gift cards. Those tablets were already obsolete in 2017. We gave them to the boys, who broke one. I think I still have one in my office somewhere. I should remember that while I’m decluttering.

Lawyer

That’s enough background. Now for the more technical parts—and the things you need to know.

Yes, there are lawyers who specialize in helping you get out of a timeshare. I don’t remember how, but I came across the Aaronson Law Group. I got the free consultation. I don’t know their prices now, but in 2018/2019, it was $5,000 on the front end and $1,500 on the back end. That was a huge chunk for my finances at the time. I took a loan from my retirement plan to pay it.

The process took a long time. I kept paying the bill because I always pay my bills, until the lawyer advised me to stop paying because Diamond Resorts wouldn’t respond to them. I ordered a stop payment from my credit union.

That was in the middle of COVID, and we ended up in limbo for several years, but we were under the protection of a lawyer, so Diamond could not reach out to us or attack our credit rating. They did report the debt, and that came up a couple of times on my clearance over the years. I just had to provide a letter from the lawyer. The COVID limbo wasn’t unique to us; it affected thousands of timeshare exits.

In February 2026, the lawyer sent us a 1099 for the cancelled debt. They actually cancelled it in January 2025. Here’s something else you need to know: a timeshare cancellation is a taxable event, so be prepared. I owe thousands in taxes this year because of it. The IRS treats it as income unless you were insolvent at the time. I was not.

Another tactic the timeshares use: they’ll cancel ONE account, but they often have several open. Once the lawyer closes the case out, they can come after you for the rest of them. Someone at Aaronson noticed two account numbers, and I told her about that “right to buy more points” thing, so there is a letter out to Hilton Grand Vacations (they bought Diamond) for ALL account numbers under our names.

Conclusion

We were happy with our September week at Turtle Cay. If nothing had changed hands, we’d probably still be using it today. The problem wasn’t the idea of a fixed week—it was the corporate incentives that came later.

If you find yourself trapped in a system like this, know two things:

1. You’re not stupid.

2. You’re not alone.

There are good attorneys who can get you out, but you need to be aware of the tax consequences and the possibility of multiple accounts hiding under your name. Go in with open eyes. Protect yourself. And don’t let anyone pressure you into believing the problem is you.

What I Wish I Had Known

Corporate takeovers change everything.
Points systems are engineered for upgrades, not usability.
High-pressure sales tactics target your emotions, not your logic.
Exiting a timeshare is slow, expensive, and taxable.
You may have more than one account without knowing it.

Note

I don’t believe that any of the individuals I interacted with were evil. Most were doing the job the system expected of them. What I question is how anyone stays in an environment where the goal is to pressure people, often people who clearly cannot afford it, into buying a product anyway. At some point, the system’s incentives overpower basic human empathy. And that’s where everything breaks down.

Do Altar Calls Actually Do Anything?

I admit, I have a personal bias against altar calls.

I did not grow up Christian. My parents were Christian Scientists (which is neither, but that’s another story). I had a friend in high school whose family went to a Southern Baptist Convention church, and he would invite me to events. I wouldn’t go to a service, but the summer camps, lock-ins, and other activities were fun, and there were cute girls, so of course I went.

But somewhere amid the fun, they would herd us into a room, have us sit, and begin the ritual: “bow your heads and close your eyes,” followed by “If you do not know Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you need to come forward now.” It always dragged on, and it was intensely uncomfortable. I dreaded that part every single time.

For one thing, I didn’t have the theological framework to understand any of it. The little teaching they offered didn’t override the picture of Jesus I inherited from Christian Science. I also took the whole thing personally. It didn’t occur to me that other young people in the church might not be “saved,” so I assumed the entire appeal was directed at me, the outsider. And I was not going to give them the satisfaction. So I sat with my head bowed and eyes closed until they finally released us back to the fun.

Essentially, the altar call is the spiritual equivalent of a high-pressure timeshare presentation. It’s “I cannot let you out of this room until I get the sale.”

I’ve been a Christian for almost 24 years now, and I STILL dislike altar calls. I currently attend a Southern Baptist church, and our senior pastor does one every service. Sometimes they go on for seven minutes (I’ve timed them). And I’m not convinced that a thirty-minute sermon gives the hypothetical unchurched stranger who wandered in for unknown reasons enough background to make a meaningful, lifelong decision.

Where did the altar call come from?

In the early church, seekers entered a period of instruction before baptism. The Didache, a 2nd-century Christian manual lays out basic ethical and doctrinal training for converts. Justin Martyr describes catechumens receiving instruction before becoming part of the worshiping community. Hippolytus even records a multi-year examination process for baptism. The pattern was simple: formation precedes profession. The Catholic and Orthodox churches still follow this today, and older Protestant traditions have their own catechesis.

The altar call, by contrast, is a distinctly American Evangelical invention

The 19th century was a strange theological moment in the United States, and I’m increasingly convinced that many movements born in that era were not as faithful to Scripture as they believed. When I became a Christian, it was in a church from the Stone–Campbell Restoration movement. They insist they “restored the first-century church.” I spent eight years with them, and while they are good people, history tells a different story. They didn’t restore the first-century church, they reinterpreted the New Testament through 19th-century American assumptions.

And they weren’t alone. Nearly every movement of that era reshaped Christianity in its own distinctly American mold, often detached from the ancient Near Eastern cultures Scripture emerged from.

This was the era of the Second Great Awakening, when men like Charles Finney introduced “new measures” designed to manufacture revival. Finney used the “anxious bench”, the prototype of the modern altar call, and taught that revival was something you engineered through technique, not something God sovereignly granted. He’d blow into a town, preach in a tent, encourage emotional conversions, and move on, hoping local pastors would disciple the new believers, assuming the emotion didn’t evaporate first.

Whatever else, Finney got his numbers. And this model continued through Billy Sunday and Billy Graham.

A related shift happened around baptism. Historically, baptism followed teaching and discipleship. But certain American movements, especially the Restorationists, taught that baptism was the decisive moment of salvation. That produced intense urgency. I am not exaggerating when I say that the night I became a Christian, the Church of Christ pastor and his wife drove to my house at midnight on a Friday and baptized me in my swimming pool during a thunderstorm. They believed waiting a single day could be spiritually dangerous.

Does the altar call actually do anything?

I’ve asked several Baptist pastors and ChatGPT this question. Nobody can give me hard data. Pastors do altar calls mostly because they were trained to. I’ve heard younger pastors are beginning to skip them, so maybe after the Boomers retire (though let’s be honest: Boomers never retire) the practice will fade.

Let’s end with the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I hated being subjected to the spiritual equivalent of a timeshare pitch, and I would NEVER do it to someone else.

Leveling Up Without Going Broke: Free Personal Growth That Works

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Personal growth doesn’t have to be expensive. Discover how to start leveling up your mindset using free tools, content, and strategies that work.

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Rabbi Daniel Lapin once said that life is like a spiral staircase. You pass the same milestones each year—your birthday, holidays, anniversaries—but ideally from a higher place. That’s what personal growth is all about: becoming a little better each time around. The good news? You don’t need a $30,000 mastermind to do it.

💸 The Truth About the Personal Growth Industry

Let’s be real. The personal development world is saturated with courses, programs, and coaching packages priced like luxury cars. A lot of it is good stuff—if you have the money, go for it. But what if you’re broke or just not ready to invest thousands?

You can still grow. And I’ll show you how to start with exactly what you have.

🔁 Different Voices, Same Message

At the core, most personal growth leaders teach the same principles. They just package them differently.

Tony Robbins learned practical psychology and NLP to survive a turbulent home life.
Ramit Sethi focuses on money psychology and systems.
Ed Mylett blends peak performance with spirituality.
Ivan Throne, dubbed the “dark Tony Robbins,” draws from Eastern philosophy and strategic thinking.

They all had mentors: Robbins had Jim Rohn. Mylett and Brendon Burchard followed Dr. Wayne Dyer. Same fundamentals, different flavor. The key is to find the voice that resonates with you.

🎧 Start With Free Content

Most of them have podcasts, YouTube channels, and blogs packed with gold—free.

Start there. Subscribe. Watch. Take notes. Apply what you learn. Look for tools and frameworks to help you process what’s happening in your life. You’ll hear about topics like:

Limiting beliefs
Productivity hacks
Identity shifts
Emotional regulation
Mental resilience

Don’t binge for entertainment—engage for transformation.

📝 Journal: The Cheapest Growth Tool on Earth

If you’re not journaling, you’re leaving growth on the table.

Use prompts or just free write. Then review your entries weekly or monthly. I do both. By the end of 2024, I had enough monthly reviews to do a full annual reflection. The patterns I saw were eye-opening—and actionable.

✉️ Why You Should Actually Open Those Emails

Yeah, they’ll try to sell you stuff—but many of the best freebies come through their email lists:

Workbooks
Live class invites
Free digital books
Discounted offers for later

I recently scored Tony Robbins’ Lifeforce for the cost of shipping. Stay on the list, even if you don’t buy… yet.

📚 Books: $10 Wisdom Worth $10,000

A course might run $997. A book? $9.99 on Kindle or $16.99 in print. Used books or libraries make it even cheaper.

Start a bookshelf of personal growth titles. Mark them up. Re-read them annually. They compound over time.

🔁 Learn From Their Inner Circles

When you follow one teacher long enough, you’ll hear them mention others. Chase those leads.

Brendon Burchard led me to David Bach, whose financial principles helped me make real-life changes. These “side quests” often lead to breakthroughs you weren’t expecting.

📺 Free Events Are Hidden Gems

Watch for free online events on YouTube or Facebook. Sure, they’ll upsell VIP access—but the free streams are often packed with value.

Many happen during work hours, but some are worth using vacation time for. If you work remotely, you might be able to flex your schedule and catch them live.

🚀 As You Grow, Invest Strategically

Eventually, you’ll hit financial milestones—and that’s when you can start buying courses or subscriptions that truly help.

I use Brendon Burchard’s GrowthDay app. I joined Mindvalley after saving up and grabbing a Black Friday deal. But both platforms offer free content too—enough to get you moving.

🔑 Just Start Somewhere

Here’s what you need to begin:

A journal (physical or digital)
A YouTube or podcast subscription to one teacher who speaks to you
A commitment to take notes, reflect, and apply what you learn

That’s it. That’s the foundation.

🔄 Switch Voices When Needed

You’re not marrying any of these gurus. If one stops resonating, move on.

Sometimes hearing the same message from a new voice is exactly what you need to break through. I’ve unsubscribed from several channels when I outgrew them. That’s not quitting—it’s growing.

✅ Final Word: Use What You’ve Got

You don’t need more money, more gear, or more credentials to start growing today. Just pick a voice, hit play, and take notes. Start journaling. Shift your mindset. Apply what you learn.

Every step forward lifts you another level on the spiral staircase.

Why I Left Evernote

I’ve used Evernote since about 2005 or so. I collected over 6000 notes in that timeframe. I’ve found those are rookie numbers. Some people have tens of thousands of notes. But these are mine. They’re websites I’ve clipped for future reference. Journal entries. Planning. Ideas.

I left Evernote at the end of 2016 when they said they’d allow employees access to notes in personal accounts. I have some very personal notes in there, and that spooked me. I switched to OneNote, but came back to using Evernote in 2022.

Bending Spoons bought Evernote since then. That didn’t bother me. Then they laid off all the original Evernote staff. Then it seemed like they were neglecting the product, which had gotten very slow. A lot of users fled for other products like Notion or Obsidian during this time.

Bending Spoons eventually started providing updates, and sent out a communication that they had to overhaul Evernote’s foundations to make it future proof. It got much more responsive. But they also jacked up the price to $129.99 a year for a Personal account, which is the plan I’ve been on for many years. It used to be around $30, then got raised to around $60.

I was due to renew in January. At first I thought about keeping it because I’ve been with the product for so long and it does its job well. But then Evernote started crashing on my iPad when I tried to edit any note. I reached out to support, but they stopped responding after I sent my activity logs. For my workflow, I’ve got to have a product that works on my iPad.

I attended a Meetup for a professional topic and tried to take notes in the browser. When I got up in the morning, I had a note with a title and no content. At least I took screenshots of the slides so I could stick them in the note along with what I could remember. But this was an intolerable failure of the product.

But where to go? There are many options available. The Keep Productive YouTube channel maintains a Toolfinder website: https://toolfinder.co/ Take a look and see how overwhelming this can be.

I tried to get Notion to import from Evernote earlier last year. It only imported about 400 of my notes in my main notebook. I tried to get another import. It actually did it twice, but with a complete export of Evernote I use Notion now. The webclipper doesn’t work (at least on Safari) but so far I’ve been able to copy and paste anything I went to keep into Notion.

I started exploring Tiago Forte’s PARA methodology. Notion seems to work well with it. I think Tiago also completely left Evernote for Notion.

If you’re curious about Notion, there are more videos on YouTube about it than you could hope to get through in this lifetime. It’s a very powerful product. Maybe it’s overkill for my needs, but I can grow into it.