Day 3 of CNY.

My son went back to preschool today.

They're teaching him traditions that go back generations. Lion dances. Red packet etiquette. Stories my grandparents told me.

And I keep thinking — what will his world look like in 20 years?

What job will he have? What skills will matter?

I have no idea.

2026 is already a weird year for designers.

AI can execute at our level now. Sometimes better.

It can generate interfaces, write copy, create illustrations, iterate faster than any human.

The craft we spent years building? A prompt away.

So what's left?

Here's what I keep coming back to:

When everything around you changes, the fundamentals matter more.

Not less. More.

The fundamentals:

Who are you?

What are your actual strengths — not just your hard skills, but how you think, how you solve problems, how you work with people?

What do you want?

What's the biggest impact you can have with your specific talents?

I believe the goal of life is to find your gift and share it.

And when you share that gift well, it helps others discover and share theirs too.

That hasn't changed.

AI didn't break that.

Because here's what AI can't do:

It can't taste. It can't judge what feels right for this specific moment, this specific user, this specific business problem.

It can't build relationships. It can't read the room. It can't know when to push and when to listen.

It can't lead. It can't give direction. It can't bring a team together around a vision.

That's still you.

That's still human.

So if you're feeling the ground shift underneath you right now — you're not wrong.

2026 is going to be a strange year.

But the answer isn't to panic.

It's to get clearer.

Clearer on who you are.

Clearer on what you're uniquely good at.

Clearer on the value only you can bring.

AI makes your craft faster.

But it makes your judgment more valuable.

Pick one thing today:

What's a strength you have that no tool can replicate?

Write it down.

That's where you build from.

新年快乐 🧧

— Joseph

P.S. Getting clear on your unique strengths and how to position them is exactly what we work on in the first two weeks of Career Creators. If you want help figuring out what makes you different in a world where AI can do the craft, reply "Details" and I'll show you how the program works.