Hey Subscriber First Name,

A few things in this one. A story about someone who did something that seemed impossible, a breakdown of the current AI landscape to help you stay ahead, and something I found really hard but did anyway.

I want to start with someone called Dr Navjot Sawhney. Nav runs The Washing Machine Project. The mission is simple: give women and girls back their time. Around 5 billion people don't have access to a washing machine, and the burden of hand-washing clothes falls almost entirely on women. Up to 20 hours a week that could go towards education, work, or simply rest. Nav and his team designed the Divya, a hand-powered, off-grid washing machine that needs no electricity. It's now reaching almost 50,000 people across 15 countries, and in early 2026 they started manufacturing locally in India to get closer to the communities who need it most.

I'd actually heard about Nav's work on social media years ago and remember being struck by it. How does someone take on a problem that big with so little? It stayed with me. Then in January this year, when I started posting on LinkedIn regularly, I came across Nav and his work again. This time I didn't just scroll past. I reached out, sent a message, and to my surprise he replied. That turned into real conversations, and those conversations turned into a genuine connection. I didn't think that was possible through a platform most people use to scroll past motivational quotes. But it happened.

Now imagine this was your project.

Let's break this down a bit. Because whether it's work or life, we all face things that seem hard. Projects that feel like a mountain. And the natural reaction is to look up at the summit and freeze.

Sometimes we back away. We tell ourselves we'll get to it later. Other times, especially at work, we don't have that luxury. The project lands on your desk and you have to deliver, ready or not. And when that happens without the right mindset, it chips away at you. Your energy. Your confidence. Your health. We don't always get to choose our projects, but we do get to choose how we approach them.

Nav's story reminded me of three things I keep coming back to.

1. You don't need a grand plan. You need action.

Most of us overthink the start. We want the full picture before we take the first step. But the full picture never arrives. Nav didn't have a roadmap. He had a prototype and the willingness to try. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, puts it simply: "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems." Nav built a system. One prototype led to feedback. Feedback led to a better design. A better design led to partnerships. Partnerships led to scale. It started with doing, not planning.

2. Show up consistently.

The hard part isn't starting. It's showing up again the next day, and the day after that. Especially when progress feels invisible. But that's how real change works. Not in big dramatic leaps, but in small, steady repetitions. The people who make things happen aren't the most talented or the most prepared. They're the ones who kept going when it stopped feeling exciting.

3. Small improvements compound.

James Clear talks about the power of getting 1% better each day. It sounds small. But if you improve by 1% every day for a year, you end up 37 times better by the end of it. That's not motivation. That's maths. And it works for everything. Your projects. Your skills. Your habits. You don't need to transform overnight. You just need to be slightly better today than you were yesterday, and trust that it adds up.

MAKING IT HAPPEN: Your Weekly Strategy

Think about the thing that feels hardest right now. The one you keep pushing to next week. Now ask yourself: what's the smallest version of that thing I could do today? If the hard thing is "start a blog," the small thing is "write one paragraph." If the hard thing is "have that difficult conversation," the small thing is "send one message to set up the call." The hard thing stays hard if you keep looking at it from a distance. But the moment you take one small step towards it, it starts to shrink. That's how Nav started. That's how most things worth doing start. Not with confidence. With a single step.

AI for PMs: Making Sense of the Noise

Last week I promised I'd start breaking down what's happening with AI in a way that actually makes sense. So here goes.

There's a lot of noise out there. New tools every day. Headlines about jobs disappearing. Most people are still figuring it out. And that's fine. The landscape is moving fast and nobody has it all worked out yet.

The simplest way I can explain where things stand is to think of it in five layers.

Layer 1: The knowledgeable friend (LLMs). You'll hear the term LLM a lot. It stands for Large Language Model. In simple terms, these are AI tools built to have conversations with you. Think of it like that friend who seems to know everything. The one you text when you need a quick answer or a second opinion? That's what tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot are at this level. You have a conversation, ask questions, and they give you answers. The difference is this friend has read almost everything on the internet. You're still making the decisions, but you've got someone genuinely useful to bounce things off.

Layer 2: The colleague looking over your shoulder (AI Assistants). These are sometimes called AI assistants or copilots. They're built into the tools you already use, so instead of you going to them, they come to you. Imagine a helpful colleague sitting next to you while you work. They're not waiting for you to ask. They're watching what you're doing and chipping in. "Want me to tidy up that email?" "Here's a summary of that hour-long meeting." "This paragraph could be clearer." That's Copilot embedded in your Outlook, Teams, and Word. And if your organisation has rolled it out, you'll know exactly what I mean. You're still doing the work, but someone's got your back.

Layer 3: The team member you can delegate to (AI Agents). You'll see the term "AI agents" everywhere right now. These are AI systems that can take a goal, plan the steps, and carry them out on their own. You give them a task. "Research these three vendors and come back with a comparison." They go away, break it down, do the work, and come back with results. Like a capable team member who doesn't need micromanaging. You still review and decide, but the legwork shifts. This is where things are heading, and it's early days.

Layer 4: The self-organising team (Multi-Agent Systems). Now imagine it's not one team member, but a whole team of AI agents working together. One does the research, another writes the report, another checks the quality. And they coordinate with each other without you managing every step. You set the objective, they figure out who does what. Think of it like a project team that runs itself. This is still mostly experimental, but it's developing fast.

Layer 5: The one everyone's worried about (AGI). AGI stands for Artificial General Intelligence. AI that can do anything a human can, across any domain. This is the one that gets the headlines. "AI will take all our jobs." It doesn't exist yet, and there's a lot of debate about when or even if it will. But here's what I think: even if we get there, the human skills become more valuable, not less. Judgement. Leadership. Empathy. The ability to navigate uncertainty and bring people together. If you're building those skills now, you're investing in the thing that matters most regardless of what happens with AI.

I'll be digging into each layer over the next few weeks, sharing what you need to know.

A Quick Word

Speaking of doing hard things. I filmed my first video this week. I'd been putting it off for months. The inner voice was relentless: "You'll look funny. You'll sound silly. You'll embarrass yourself." But I decided to do what I talked about earlier in this newsletter. Stop overthinking, take action, and just get it out there instead of dreading it. So I hit record. It wasn't perfect, but it was real. You can watch it on my LinkedIn. Whatever the hard thing is for you this week, take the step. You'll be glad you did.

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Take care and speak soon,

Bilal