From Daily Writing to Daily Building

Harshal
12 minutes ago
3 min read

Why AI changed what I want to do after work and my ways of working

For six years I wrote every day. I shaped messy thinking into clear prose on the page.

Lately a different instinct has been showing up first. I look for problems I can solve by building, often with AI assistance.

a change in direction between writing and building.

My Writing Habit

For six years I set aside 30 minutes after work to write. I wrote over 450 articles. I looked forward to those evenings. Some evenings I made audio or video instead. I tracked the habit with HabitNow and held a 100% streak for 800+ calendar days.

I wrote about lessons from work and side projects. I tried new products and wrote about them. I applied product thinking outside work to everyday problems and ran analyses when the data mattered. The output stayed in words and analysis.

AI-Assisted Building Habit

About five months ago my instincts changed. I stopped waiting for writing time. I wanted to build with AI. I learned through writing for years. I have been learning the same way through building. I track daily builds as a second habit.

I built before AI too, especially a smart home with over 200 connected devices. AI raised the ceiling on how complex a project I can take on and how fast I can move. Coding agents lowered the cost of building. My evening energy went to that output.

Much of my old product writing time now goes to prioritization, user needs, and QA. Those tasks attach to the build.

I built side projects like:

web apps
n8n workflows
smart home automations
small utilities
browser extensions
prompt tools
AutoHotkey scripts
prototypes
websites

I see why engineers build so many side projects now.

Tracking My Time In Build vs Write

When I open my time tracking software and review the last several months, I see two clear moves. Time in Google Docs and Notion falls. Time in AI coding tools rises. My time in AI chat tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity was fairly constant over the months but now has steeply dropped.

Two things explain the shift:

I spend more time building now.
I still write, but I run that writing through AI coding tools instead of Google Docs and Notion.

My time tracking shows I went from docs-first to build-heavy

The tracker also shows a spike for a few months in the middle. That window matched an intense stretch at work. I worked a lot more hours each week. Every category moved up with them. The main pattern is still the same: Google Docs and Notion down, AI coding tools up.

Build or Blog?

I still write. Building competes for the same curiosity and the same evening window. For now I can do both. I am not sure how the mix shifts over the next few months. Time is limited. I need to choose.

I also write about what I learn as I build. That turns the work into deliberate practice: focused reps with a clear read on what shipped.