Why most AI education makes you want to take a nap
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Ever notice how the best AI resources are also the most boring? I was digging through Anthropic's new "AI Fluency" guide this morning... Don't get me wrong, it's PACKED with value. Super well structured. Tons of great info. If you were grading it like a term paper, it'd get an A+. But I started falling asleep trying to get through it. It reads like a textbook written by robots FOR robots. Which reminded me of Jesse Cole and the Savannah Bananas. You know...the baseball team that turned America's most "boring" sport into a sold-out circus act? Dancing players. Choreographed routines. Fans going absolutely wild. Most people don't know this about Jesse... He was an INCREDIBLE baseball player. Full college scholarship. Christmas cards from the New York Mets. The whole deal. Then he tore his shoulder and became a coach. And something unexpected happened: He was bored out of his mind watching the sport he loved playing. This guy LIVED baseball. Understood every strategic nuance. Could predict every play. And he was falling asleep in the dugout. (Kinda like how I feel reading most AI documentation...) So Jesse started asking different questions. Instead of accepting that baseball was just boring to watch, he wondered: "What if every single moment was exciting?" Not just the home runs. Not just the great catches. Every moment. He studied Walt Disney. Cirque du Soleil. Saturday Night Live. Then he started experimenting. When Jesse took over his first team, they had:
He couldn't even pay himself for 3 months. So he tried everything. Grandma beauty pageants. Flatulence Fun nights. (yup) Salute to underwear nights. Most of them failed spectacularly. But he kept experimenting. Kept asking: "What would make ME excited to watch this?" Fast forward to today: The Savannah Bananas have a 3.5 MILLION person waitlist for tickets. They create 10-15 brand new experiences EVERY SINGLE GAME. They have more social media followers than most MLB teams. Jesse refused to accept that baseball had to be boring. Which brings me back to AI education... Why do we accept that learning AI has to feel like homework? What if every tutorial made you laugh? What if every explanation came with a story? What if documentation read like your favorite newsletter? I've started running my AI content through what I call the "Bananas Test":
If any answer is no, I start over. Because when you make learning feel like entertainment... People remember. They apply what they learned. They get results. And they come back wanting more. (Just like those 3.5 million people on the waitlist) So next time you're creating content...AI, marketing, quantum physics, whatever... Try asking: "What would the Savannah Bananas do?" Add some unexpected joy. Some personality. Maybe even some fun. I mean, we're literally teaching computers to think. To create. To solve problems we couldn't imagine 5 years ago. That should be exciting. Stay Curious, P.S. Want to see this in action? Just insert the image into your favorite LLM and let it run. P.P.S. Ready to transform your own content? Here's the exact prompt I use: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kQfOBEgBErG1bFWAo2msVsgwFUrsG2C3k5en8qZiV0Y/edit?usp=sharing Jesse's team does table reads and REHEARSALS for a baseball game. Check out my SubStack to become... |
