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about

Hi, I’m Em. I build weird little things with AI.

Mostly side projects, usually with a coffee going cold next to the laptop. Some of them turn into tools people actually use. Some of them never leave my machine. I write about both.

A doodle of Em at her laptop with a coffee, under the words ‘i build weird little things with ai’, while a little robot films her and asks ‘again?’

How I got here

I spent nine years in operations and picked up a PMP along the way, so a lot of how I build still looks like project management. Ship the smallest piece first and see what falls over. I’ve also ghostwritten more than twenty books for executives in tech, HR and operations, and co-authored Master Effective Team Management.

Then the AI tools got good enough that I could build the things I used to only write plans for, so I started building them. It feels like the gap between having an idea and having a working version of it has shrunk a lot, and I wanted to find out how far. I’m still finding out.

What I try to stick to

  • Progress over polish. One step towards finished beats waiting for it to feel ready.
  • Show the middle. Share the work while it’s still messy, before it gets tidied up.
  • Say when something didn’t work. That’s usually the part worth reading.
  • Keep it free where I can. Here’s why, and what free means here.

A lot of build content seems to skip the messy middle, the stuck point and the workaround and the thing that didn’t work before the thing that did. So I write mine down as it happens. That includes the launch that got zero signups and the novel I shelved to figure out where my line with AI is.

Things I’ve made

A friend-of-a-friend intro club, a classroom dashboard, a Korean reading tool, a dog food checker, a budget planner, an interval timer for my run intervals, and a few more. They’re all on the projects page, and the free templates live in starter packs.

Em holding up a phone that says ‘follow?’ while three friends stare, thinking ‘she think she’s better than us’
me, asking you to follow

Say hi

I’m @creativemindhabits on Instagram, and I post the comics on X too.

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