I’ve been looking at my AI usage and something doesn’t add up.

Cost per token is down. Businesses paying $10 per million tokens a year ago are now paying $2.50. Some models have dropped 1,000x cheaper over the past couple of years.

So I should be saving money. Except I’m not. My total spend is up. And apparently that’s pretty common.

I pride myself on spotting phishing emails. Genuinely. Nine times out of ten, I clock them immediately.

It also helps that I’ve basically stopped reading emails altogether.

Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment ruined.

That’s Harrisberger’s Fourth Law of the Lab. I stumbled across it recently and genuinely laughed out loud. Not because it’s clever (though it is), but because it’s the most honest description of how learning actually works.

We don’t talk about this enough.

There’s this weird expectation that professional development means attending courses, getting certifications, reading the right books. All very neat. Very tidy. Very… theoretical.

I’ve learned more from breaking things than I ever did from tutorials.

The approval process isn’t protecting you. It’s training people to work around you.

I get approvals. I do. Security needs a say. Legal needs a say. Compliance needs a say. Fair enough.

But somewhere along the line, we’ve added the farmer, the bloke on the corner, someone’s nan, and a guy who left the company in 2019 but still has his name on a sign-off form.

And now it takes six months to get a tool approved.

Six months.