Work Less Wednesday: October 29

👋 Hey Reader!

This is issue #178 of Work Less Wednesday, where I share with you 5 things you should know about, in 5 minutes or less. That leaves you with 10,075 other minutes this week.

🤖 1. Why ChatGPT Is So Damn Lazy - Try A Credit-Based LLM

If you are using a subscription-based AI tool (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.), you’ve probably noticed that it is lazy.

• You upload pages and pages of context and it only seems to read the first few pages.
• You set clear constraints (word count, audience, style), and it drifts off-topic or bloats the response with garbage.
• You provide a detailed example to mimic, and it copies surface phrasing while missing the structure or logic you actually wanted.

That is by design.

Think about the incentives.

Subscription-based companies want you to use as little credits as possible.

This saves them money and they keep more of it in their pocket.

But doing deep research and reading tons of context requires credits.

So they fake it.

They are incentivized to do a bad job.

Recently I’ve been using a credit-based LLM called Manus for deep research projects.

(Think: thousands of pages of context, large agent projects, etc.)

Because the incentive for credit-based LLMs is to be thorough (it takes more credits), you get much better outputs.

So for your day-to-day use, I’d stick with ChatGPT or Claude.

But if you need to go deep on something, definitely consider trying a credit-based tool like Manus.

(There are other tools like Manus, I have no incentive to share, just telling you what I’m using right now.)

📉 2. The Problem With Competing On Price - Email from Charles Miller

Got this email from my friend Charles Miller (CEO of Platoon) last week about the problem with competing on price. It never works out the way you hope.

I’ve reproduced it below for you:

About ten years ago I invested in a little vacation rental in Colorado.

We’ve been working with the same small outfit to help us manage the property — looking after guests, showing up when a pipe bursts — essentially covering our asses when I’m a few thousand miles away. And they’ve been amazing to work with.

I get cold emails like this from their competitors all the time:

Sounds like a great deal right?

But here’s the thing… if someone leaves a great long-term relationship over nothing other than a few percentage points, they’ll likely leave you just as fast.

That’s the problem with building your business on price alone.

It attracts people who value the idea of saving a few bucks rather than a real partnership.

And those people are never loyal.

The moment someone cheaper comes along, they’re gone.

This is why I’ll always believe in leading with value, not discounts.

Because value creates alignment, and alignment builds longevity.

A race to the bottom almost always ends the same way… everyone loses.

You can get Charles’ daily emails here.

🧰 3. Tool I’ve Been Curious About - Sublime

Thinking about dipping my toes in the water of Sublime.

I follow their founder on Substack and have been intrigued.

I’ve been looking for more ways to save and gathering inspiration that do not rely on algorithms (as much).

Sublime is a personal knowledge app for saving, organizing, and remixing ideas.

You capture anything that sparks interest - web pages, PDFs, podcasts, images, highlights - and keep it in one home.

It then surfaces hand‑curated, related ideas from others to help you explore and connect concepts.

If you want to see more, check out this post “What does Sublime actually do?”

What do you think? Anyone using it?

Check it out here.

🎃 4. What Horror Movies We’re Watching This Halloween

We here at the Webster household are big horror movie fans.

My wife recently completed a “100 horror movies in 92 days” challenge leading up to Halloween.

So what are we watching this Halloween?

For the last several years, we’ve had a consistent double-header on Halloween.

These two Rob Zombie movies:

1. 💀 House of 1,000 Corpses
2. 🐐 The Lords of Salem

These films aren’t for beginners, but if you’re a true horror fan, I recommend.

A couple others we watched this week:

1. 🎃 Halloween III: Season of the Witch - The only Halloween franchise movie that doesn’t feature Michael Myers. Massively underrated and weirdly awesome. Also features this epic commercial.
2. 🧓 The Home - Horror movie starring Pete Davidson. Don’t watch it, it’s not good. If you really must watch him in a horror movie, watch Bodies Bodies Bodies - which is good.

Happy Halloween!

🖐 5. More Things I'm Into This Week...

🎧Podcast I’m Listening To - Design Podcast (Front & Center) featuring my client Alex Adam (Founder of Boredom Kills Creative)

📘 Article I’m Reading - The 25 Most Interesting Ideas I’ve Found In 2025 (So Far)

🎮 Game I’m Playing - Ball x Pit on Switch 2 (Thanks Jon Courtney!)

🧠 Concept I’m Thinking About - 5 Levels of Mental Toughness

💬 Quote I’m Pondering…

How we can work together

When you’re ready, here are two free ways I can help you:

• 👤 My Substack. My weekly Substack inner entrepreneur discusses the internal side of entrepreneurship - mindset & growth.
• 🎧 My Podcast. Listen to or watch my free podcast The Rich Webster Show. It is an unfiltered look behind the scenes at my life and work.

And one paid engagement:

• 🧪 The Lab. I advise and mentor 6-7 figure Creative Solopreneurs. If you want to work closely with me (i.e. we speak 1-2 times a week), watch this video, then follow the instructions.

😊 Have a great week - Rich

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