I saw a tweet the other day where someone was clowning on a person for using their AI setup to check the weather and make a grocery list. The punchline was something like "you spent $20 in tokens for that?"
And I get it. On the surface it sounds funny. You have this powerful system and you are using it to remember to buy eggs.
But here is the thing. That person set it up. They figured out the install. They connected the tools. They got it working. And now their week runs a little smoother because of it. How is that not a win?
I have been running my own AI agent via OpenClaw for about three weeks now. When I started, I had literally never opened Terminal before. I barely knew what API keys were. I copy pasted commands from ChatGPT into a black screen and prayed nothing broke. Half the time it did break and I had to figure out why.
The first thing I automated was my grocery list. The second thing was a morning news briefing that showed up four minutes late and missed the one story I actually cared about. The third thing was a bunch of house deadline reminders that looked like they were working but were never actually sending.
None of that is impressive. All of it was necessary.
Because now, three weeks later, my meeting notes automatically post to my project boards. My client communication gets monitored so nobody slips through the cracks. My calendar, my tasks, my email triage, all connected and running. I did not get here by starting with the complicated stuff. I got here because I started with a grocery list and kept going.
There is this weird thing happening in the AI space right now where people feel the need to gatekeep what counts as a legitimate use case. If you are not building autonomous coding pipelines or multi agent workflows, you are doing it wrong apparently. And I think that attitude sucks.
It is the same energy as making fun of someone at the gym who does not know how to use the equipment. They showed up. They are trying. That takes more guts than the guy in the corner who has been going for ten years and thinks everyone should already know what a superset is.
When someone sets up AI to remind them to drink water and call their mom, that is a win. When someone uses it to sort their groceries by aisle, that is a win. When someone has it read their calendar out loud in the morning so they do not miss a meeting, that is a win.
Not everything needs to be a startup pitch. Not every use case needs to justify the cost per token. Sometimes the point is just having your life feel a little less chaotic. And if that starts with a grocery list, cool. That is where it started for me too.
The people who are going to build the most interesting stuff with AI are not the ones who already know everything. They are the ones who are willing to feel stupid for a few days and keep going anyway. The best thing you can do for that process is get out of the way or lend a hand. Not make a joke about it for engagement.
Start boring. Boring compounds.