Find your niche

I randomly remembered a line from a Tamil song, and I kept thinking about it for a few minutes. I wanted to make a drawing out of that line. I opened Google Gemini, entered an elaborate prompt, and got a pretty good image as the result.

The line from the song says, “Travelling on a cart, why are you carrying your things on your head? Put them on the cart, and the cart will carry them for you.”

I have had zero training in drawing. When I was a school student, drawing basic flowcharts using rulers and pencils would take me hours. I do not consider myself inclined or experienced in any way when it comes to drawing as an art.

Despite my lack of exposure and training, I was able to make this image fairly easily.

That’s the kind of enablement, or lowering the bar, generative AI has been doing. It has not made an artist overnight out of me. But it has enabled me to express myself in ways that were impossible before.

Technology increases quality of life

Back in the days, when electricity was not available everywhere, if someone had to listen to a song, there was no way other than to ask someone nearby to sing for them. Once electricity, cassette players, recorded songs (such as from movies) became prevalent, no one asked their friends or family to sing for them. Most people were able to listen to recorded performances of singers like TM Soundararajan or Lata Mangeshkar.

We can imagine that mediocre singers whose songs were accepted as “good enough” suddenly had to compete with Lata Mangeshkar and became “not” good enough. The advent of technology changed the world so that the quality of acceptable singing went way up.

Technology lowers the bar to entry

Technology benefited the experts by making them more accessible. But technology also lowered the bar to entry. (Not the same technology, but technology nonetheless.)

I am a good example for that. Without the internet and free publishing platforms, I may not have written as much as I have written in the past 20 years. As a writer I am not exactly good, but I have the platform I need to communicate, to share my ideas with others.

Generative AI agents are now lowering the entry bar even further: I was able to make an image just by describing it in words.

The importance of niches in the modern life

On the one side, the entry bar keeps getting lower—anyone can participate. On the other side, good stuff (such as content) keeps getting more accessible. The vast majority of content—blog posts, videos, podcasts, etc—will likely not find any audience at all. If you were an emerging creator, this can make you feel powerless. You can create, but most people may not find your work compelling.They would rather enjoy the works of the experts in your field.

There is a way to opt out of these impossible conditions: deliberately stop trying to compete with global (or even regional) superstars on their turf. Instead, find a niche where they are not even present.

Niches are, by definition, less crowded. It becomes relatively easier to find someone who likes what you create. Niches also tend to have less competition. A crude example: Richard Lindsay probably didn’t have to snatch Dido’s or Taylor Swift’s listeners for his Recorder in the Corner song. Dido listeners are not very likely to be present in Richard Lindsay’s niche.

If you are wondering what to do in life, maybe start by finding your niche. Unfortunately, finding your niche will also feel like an impossible task. Keep doing what you love and study the kinds of engagement you get. Your niche will likely be visible from the patterns you see in the engagement you get. You’ll often discover your niche only in hindsight, so keep creating and sharing what you create. Once you find your niche it can become easier.

Are niches only for artists?

Though I only mentioned singing and writing, finding a niche can help people in other professions too. Everyone, including the likes of plumbers, engineers, and tour operators, can—and should—focus on finding a niche where they can excel.

A software engineer’s fear of AI systems taking their job away

In a private Facebook group, a software developer expressed fear about losing their job to AI systems that can write code. As a software engineer who has been thinking about this for a while, I posted a reply to that post. I am so proud of that reply that I am persisting a copy of it here (with some minor edits). 🙂

Go back a few decades. When people moved from assembly language to high level languages, there could have been a similar fear. (I don’t know if there really was, but I think we can draw a parallel.)

You suddenly didn’t have to painstakingly write optimised assembly code and manually link different assembly modules. Compilers and linkers were “good enough.” Tasks that needed three human programmers now only needed one. Experts in different machine architectures were not needed anymore; any high-level-language code can be compiled to run on any architecture.

If you were an assembly programmer, you were right to be terrified of losing your job to compilers. But then, if you just learnt how to code in a high level language, you became a lot more productive. You just had to look beyond machine architectures and see where you could add real value.

I don’t pretend to know how many software engineers will lose their jobs to the new AI systems. But I am fairly confident that today’s programmers will have an easier time adapting to the new world than a non-programmer learning to vibe-code today.

It’s entirely in your control whether you stick to the “old ways” or adapt to the new paradigm. Are you doing something to stay relevant? Ask yourself that, and keep adapting and improving until you have a satisfactory answer.

Random thought: Learning is thinking

Learning is thinking.

Many consider reading, writing, listening to lectures, participating in discussions, etc. as learning. However, they remain only as tools that enable the actual learning, which is thinking.

Surrender: responding to life without a bias

My life coach recommended The Surrender Experiment to me. I have been reading the book ever so slowly.

My primary takeaway from the book so far is to accept life as it happens without the influence of my own personal preferences. The following quote captures the core of the advice:

From now on if life was unfolding in a certain way, and the only reason I was resisting it was because of personal preference, I would let go of my preference and let life be in charge.

For a couple of days, it seemed obvious what I had to do. But slowly it started to be confusing. If on a Sunday I feel like eating at a fancy restaurant, is that my own personal preference, or is that life offering me a fancy meal (in the form of a spontaneous thought)? I didn’t have an answer.

Then it occurred to me. Accepting life means living spontaneously; pausing to question every single choice is anything but.

If always acting by one’s personal preferences is the south pole of the earth, purposely acting against one’s preferences is the north pole. The direction may be different, but they are qualitatively the same; you are still on the same plane; you are still anchored to the earth. What we really need is to rise above the earth. Rather than basing your actions on your preferences, you should ignore the preferences.

Respond to the situation that life presents. If the response aligns with your preferences, so be it. If the response is against your preferences, so be it.

Dream big to realise your potential

I am a credit card enthusiast. I often browse through credit card offerings to see if there are better cards than what I currently have.

Earlier in 2024, I got the Infinia credit card from HDFC Bank. This is sort of like “winning” the credit card game. There is no clearly better card an Infinia holder can upgrade to. (While there may be more beneficial cards for some people based on their spend patterns, it’s hard to do better than Infinia for most people.)

My “credit card optimisation” game pretty much ended when I got the Infinia, with me winning the game. However, I still habitually explore other credit cards every now and then. As expected, such explorations end with a reaffirmation of what I already know: there aren’t many cards I can upgrade to. The time spent looking at credit cards is wasted time, more or less.

But why do I still look at credit card options even when I know it’s not a productive use of my time? I think it’s because I don’t have anything more productive to do.

This is where the advice to “dream big” shines through. Dreaming big and working towards achieving those dreams is an effective way to realise your potential. Had I dreamt of doing something more meaningful than simply collecting credit card rewards, I wouldn’t be wasting time now browsing credit card brochures.