Getting Paid in AI Tokens?

Hi Sheconomist Insider 👋 It’s Thamina, Founder of The Sheconomist. This is your bi-weekly dose of celebrating the female economy where I help ambitious, purpose-driven women like yourself flip the script on money, career & wellbeing conventions so you can live life on your own terms.

TLDR:

• 👩‍💻 How to create career insurance for yourself

• 🧃 An AI community for women I just joined

• 💰 Why you should care about the price of oil

• 💜 Meet Gesche Haas, Founder of Dreamers & Doers

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🧪 Freedom Formulas

Is AI making us all more fragile?

I've become addicted to Claude Cowork and Claude Code over the past couple of weeks.

Tasks that used to take me several days, now take less than 30 minutes. It's truly mindblowing.

But it's also making me a little uncomfortable in ways I'm still trying to process.

(and yes, maybe I'm a hypocrite because I leveraged AI to help me organize my thoughts to write this post)

I've been living in the US for nearly a decade now and finally became a permanent resident last year.

In that time, I've optimized almost every corner of my life toward convenience.

I eat out more than I cook.
My gym is in my building.
Amazon delivers to me the next day.
New York gives me almost everything I need within a mile radius.

And now AI is doing it to my work life.
Tasks that used to take hours, compressed to minutes.

Every time I go back home to Germany, I experience the contrast.

Fewer delivery options.
Smaller stores.
More walking.
Less instant everything.

And often healthier people, less overstimulated, more physically active by default.

Not because they're necessarily more disciplined.
But because the environment builds in friction.

Which made me wonder: what is relentlessly optimizing toward minimum friction actually doing to us?

Convenience removes effort.
That's the point.

But effort doesn't always equal inefficiency.

It's also how we build capacity.

Physical capacity, cognitive capacity, emotional capacity.

You don't get stronger by removing resistance.
You get stronger by choosing the right resistance.

AI removing friction from work is one of the best things that's happened to my productivity.

But only if I use the time and energy I gain to reintroduce friction somewhere else.

Exercise.
Cooking.
Deep, sustained attention.
Hard conversations.
Putting in effort to spend quality time with loved ones.

The things that compound not in my output, but in me.

Of course most of us should adopt AI.

Again, I freakin' love Claude!!

But let's not allow convenience to bleed everywhere until nothing hard remains in our life.

❣️ Thamina’s Top Picks

👩‍💻 The science of getting better at what you do - this piece is holding up a mirror for all of us

🧃 

🧴 Been really loving this skincare balm post laser resurfacing - leaves a nice “glass skin” without being greasy

🎙️ One of the world’s leading AI experts (a woman!!!) joins Emma Grede for a great conversation on how all of us should think about using AI

✨ This week’s Moodboard

Post credits go to Anwesha, aestheticdiary, mindset.therapy, ✨️Living Luxe✨️

💸 Cooking up Wealth

I'm going to give you permission to care about oil prices.