Sunny afternoon and both robots are doing their thing. The Surfer S2 is skimming the surface and the Scuba V3 is handling the bottom and walls.
First summer I have not had to chase leaves around with a net every afternoon. Pool days are way less work now.
Spent all of last swim season doing everything myself. all the usual pool maintenance by hand. It wasn't the hardest thing in the world, but after a while it got old having that little mental checklist every time I looked at the pool.
Decided to give a robot a shot this year and went with the Scuba V3.
The biggest difference so far is I don't have to think about the pool nearly as much. I set up a schedule, hit start from the app when I need to, and it just handles the routine stuff in the background. Setup was pretty painless too, which I appreciated.
Most of the pool is covered now. The floor and walls stay in good shape without me constantly chasing debris around. I still grab a brush for the steps and a couple of tight spots, but that's a lot less work than doing the whole pool by hand.
I honestly wasn't sure how much of a difference a robot would make. Figured I'd still end up doing most of it myself anyway. Turns out having one take care of the regular cleaning actually does free up a lot of time.
For anyone who's been running a Scuba V3 for a while, any tips or things you wish you knew when you first got it?
Been running a small business for a while and like everyone else I got excited about AI when all these tools started appearing. I did what I think a lot of founders did: I tried to put AI into everything.
Need a new landing page? Ask AI.
Need a business idea? Ask AI.
Need a better strategy? Ask AI.
Need a content plan? Ask AI.
Finally my output increased, but my business didn’t really move faster. I had more documents, more ideas, more polished drafts… but not necessarily better decisions.
For example, I was recently evaluating whether to enter a new market. AI could summarize competitors in seconds, but it couldn’t tell me whether customers would actually pay. I still needed to jump into communities, read the weird comments nobody upvotes, talk to potential users, and notice the small frustrations people casually mention.
The same thing happens with content. AI can help me draft 20 posts in an afternoon, but the posts that perform best usually come from something I personally noticed: a customer question, a repeated complaint, a pattern I saw after talking to people.
I think I’ve become more careful about what I spend tokens on.
The “bad” AI usage for me usually looks like:
- asking AI to generate 100 business ideas without understanding any market
- creating content before knowing who it’s actually for
- summarizing information I haven’t even read myself
- generating strategy documents that nobody will ever use
Basically, using AI to avoid thinking.
The workflows where AI actually helps are the opposite. I do the part that requires judgment, then use AI to remove repetitive work around it. For example:
- I decide what customer problem is worth investigating → AI helps organize feedback and research
- I decide what positioning makes sense → AI helps compare messaging patterns
- I decide what content direction fits the brand → AI helps with execution and iteration
I’m curious how other founders think about this. What parts of your business have you deliberately kept human-only? And what AI use cases have actually created leverage instead of just creating more things to review?
Spent 8 days on Koh Tao with zero real plan beyond beach and snorkel honestly. Based myself around Sairee which was good for food and sunset drinks, grabbed a scooter for the days I wanted to venture out further.
Most days were just riding between spots like Tanote Bay, Ao Leuk, Shark Bay, stopping random places for lunch and somehow it would be 4pm already no idea where the hours went.
Did one of those boat snorkel trips cause everyone said I should but honestly I had just as good a time doing my own thing and parking at one beach for a few hours. Heads up though the roads get steep in some sections so dont rent a scooter there unless youve ridden one before like actually comfortable not just thinking yeah Ill figure it out.
Burned through way more data than usual cause I would not stop sending pics and vids to everyone back home like sorry but have you seen these sunsets tho. Had a 50GB eSIM hopefully.
8 days sounds like a lot for one tiny island right? Didnt feel like it at all while I was there. Koh Tao is the kind of place where you can do nothing for half a day and still feel like that was a good day.
got these PSPs from Lili. I cannot find many reference pics online. Can anyone help check the proportions? Tyia!