An update to my October 13, 2025 blog post about the Claude AI system summarizing the transcript of a video I really liked.

I’ve been thinking about the 30 Habits video I shared earlier this month a lot. Maybe too much.

First of all, I really do like the 30 “habits” listed in the video. Maybe not all of them, but most of them. I really think they are good things to make part of your life. (If you haven’t watched the video and are looking for little things to make your life better, please take less than 20 minutes of your day and watch it.)

I decided that in order to make them part of my life I needed to be reminded of them. The idea was to make myself a little cheat sheet that I could put in my daily planner and look at once in a while. No one can expect me (or anyone else) to remember all 30 things on the list.

So I went back to the Claude summary and used it as the basis for my cheat sheet. The initial design would be bullet points. But I quickly realized that for some of the items, a bullet point would not be enough. For example, what does “small trust deposits” mean? Clearly, I needed more info on my cheat sheet.

I changed the design to a folding insert with the bullet list on the cover and the details inside and finishing up on the back. And rather than rewrite the summary myself, I just copied and pasted the Claude AI summary. I edited it a bit for length and clarity — honestly, it didn’t need much in the way of changes — and applied a font size that would make it fit while retaining legibility. After a little formatting, it was finished. I printed it, laminated it, and inserted it into my Traveler’s Notebook style planner. (The planner, by the way, has gotten yet another upgrade since Part 3 of that series and I may blog about it briefly.)

This is exactly what I needed to keep these 30 Habits front and center — or at least within arm’s reach — in my life.

This has changed my view of AI — at least a little. Clearly MDY’s use of Claude has a lot of merit — maybe even more than I originally admitted. (I have since messaged her on Mastodon and told her this.) While she used it to summarize the video’s transcript and used the summary as a decision-making tool for watching it, I can see it as a way to summarize something I’ve already watched that means a lot to me. Yes, I’m talking about letting it take notes for me.

I’m wondering if it always does such a good job or if this was a fluke. I’m also wondering whether Claude is better at it than its competitors.

But I’m not wondering enough to actually try it for myself. At least not yet. I don’t want to support AI and I believe that using it is supporting it. I really do want to think for myself, to keep my own summarization skills. And I sincerely hope that folks who have not built those skills yet try to do so without leaning on AI.

And there’s another 500 words for you. ;-)