I recently checked my OpenRouter stats and discovered something surprising: I'm in the top 2% of users by token usage. Not because I run an AI company or manage a team of engineers. Just me, using AI to augment my daily life.

Over the year, I've accumulated hundreds of millions of tokens across different models as I upgraded and experimented. That puts me in rare company—and it's made me think deeply about how AI models work together, what they're each good at, and what responsibility comes with that level of usage.

I used to subscribe to way too many newsletters. Each one had good insights, but reading through them every morning felt like wading through the same ideas dressed up in different words. I was spending an hour each day on information I could have absorbed in ten minutes.

Something had to change.

I used to think I was a productive person. I loved spending time alone reading psychology books and thinking about my life. That all felt very manageable when it was just me.

When it really hit me that my son was coming, I panicked. How could I keep growing as a person while being there for my child? How could I balance my own goals with being the father I wanted to be?

The first month was rough. There was so much to do, so little sleep, and I felt like I was failing at everything. But slowly, we found a rhythm. I had to let go of my old approach and figure out what actually worked in this new reality.