why the curious are compounding while others wait

the people at the very front of AI - the ones building with it every day, shipping products, automating entire workflows - feel like they're falling behind

they have FOMO. they're anxious about what they're missing. they stay up late experimenting because they know what's coming

meanwhile, large enterprises and the late majority are still debating whether to try ChatGPT or Copilot to write emails faster

the gap is already here. and in 2026, it will widen

AI has an exponential learning curve. every hour you spend with it makes the next hour more valuable. you learn what to ask. how to ask. what it can do. you start seeing applications everywhere

the tooling sounds fancy: "data ingestion," "agents," "agentic workflows." but strip away the jargon and it's just automation. you learn it the same way you learned Salesforce or PowerPoint: by using it

the curious compound. the waiters fall exponentially behind

you don't need to be technical. you just need to use the tools. that's the advantage

the curious learn something important: you can just do things

you don't need permission. you don't need to be an expert. you don't need to understand how transformers work. you just need to start, keep going, and learn by doing

that's the whole secret. the people at the front aren't smarter. they just started and never stopped

if you have AI content saved in your bookmarks that you haven't watched or read, that's a symptom. you're waiting when you should be doing

stop reading this. open Claude. open ChatGPT. open v0. build something you've been thinking about

it doesn't matter if it's small. it matters that you start

automate something you do every week. something you find boring. something that will make you more efficient

the best time to start was yesterday. the second best time to start is now

the curious are already compounding