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First week back: predictions for the year and AI tools

The Friday Takeaway2 min readSam Page

First week back. The Friday Takeaway is served 🥡
On the menu today: First week blur, predictions for the year, and AI tools.

  1. First week blur
    My blurry photo sums this one up. Gorgeous start to he new year. Full moon. Lots of potential ahead. But first week back always feels a bit blurry as we all emerge from Christmas and NY. Three things I've done to get on track...

→ Write a list of tasks, using pen and paper. Tackle things one step at a time.
→ Immerse myself with others to see if I can support them feel better.
→ Make some plans for the year ahead to look forward to - holiday booked!

Got any tips you can offer?

  1. Lunch with industry friends/partners
    It was a real pleasure to have lunch with Martin and Tim this week. As well as catching up on Christmas and the first week back, we chatted about our thoughts for the year ahead. Here they are:

→ Confidence is returning to businesses. They know they need to get on.
→ Approaches are still tactical, but strategic thinking is re-emerging.
→ AI hype is moving to AI reality. Automation, and it's role being to get to 65%.
→ Buyers are fed up of all the noise. They want relevant stand out.

What's your view on the year ahead?

  1. Playing around with tech
    I've always believed that to advise on tech, you have to be very familiar with the tech itself. As well as meeting a neighbour for an "AI tech share" I've been working on a few tools recently. Experiments this week include:

→ AI investment advisor - researching and advising on daily trades.
→ Insights AI agent - researching and producing insights materials.
→ Marketing support through a team of orchestrating and expert AI agents.

Primary platforms I'm using if it helps:

→ n8n, OpenRouter, Apify, Weave and all the LLMs.

Want to chat tech? Probably doesn't sound very appealing, but if you do, always love jumping on a call or grabbing a coffee.

  1. Tech horizons
    I've been asked a couple of times already this week what timeline horizon a business should work to, when putting a marketing/DX technical solution in place. The easy answer is roughly 5 years (scaled up or down depending on size or org) - the harder part of the puzzle is working out what that means. I'll do a longer post on this another day!

What's your view on this?

Happy New Year everyone. Let's make 2026 a great one.

First published on LinkedIn.

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GEThttps://sam-page.com/thinking/first-week-back-predictions-for-the-year-and-ai-tools.mdtext/markdown; charset=utf-8

---
title: "First week back: predictions for the year and AI tools"
url: https://sam-page.com/thinking/first-week-back-predictions-for-the-year-and-ai-tools
date: 2026-01-09
author: Sam Page
type: The Friday Takeaway edition
categories: [The Friday Takeaway]
reading_time: 2 min
summary: "First week back. The Friday Takeaway is served On the menu today: First week blur, predictions for the year, and AI tools."
first_published: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn%3Ali%3Ashare%3A7415324494749442048
---

# First week back: predictions for the year and AI tools

First week back. The Friday Takeaway is served 🥡  
On the menu today: First week blur, predictions for the year, and AI tools.

![](https://sam-page.com/img/thinking/first-week-back-predictions-for-the-year-and-ai-tools-li1.webp)

1. First week blur  
My blurry photo sums this one up. Gorgeous start to he new year. Full moon. Lots of potential ahead. But first week back always feels a bit blurry as we all emerge from Christmas and NY. Three things I've done to get on track...

→ Write a list of tasks, using pen and paper. Tackle things one step at a time.  
→ Immerse myself with others to see if I can support them feel better.  
→ Make some plans for the year ahead to look forward to - holiday booked!

Got any tips you can offer?

2. Lunch with industry friends/partners  
It was a real pleasure to have lunch with Martin and Tim this week. As well as catching up on Christmas and the first week back, we chatted about our thoughts for the year ahead. Here they are:

→ Confidence is returning to businesses. They know they need to get on.  
→ Approaches are still tactical, but strategic thinking is re-emerging.  
→ AI hype is moving to AI reality. Automation, and it's role being to get to 65%.  
→ Buyers are fed up of all the noise. They want relevant stand out.

What's your view on the year ahead?

2. Playing around with tech  
I've always believed that to advise on tech, you have to be very familiar with the tech itself. As well as meeting a neighbour for an "AI tech share" I've been working on a few tools recently. Experiments this week include:

→ AI investment advisor - researching and advising on daily trades.  
→ Insights AI agent - researching and producing insights materials.  
→ Marketing support through a team of orchestrating and expert AI agents.

Primary platforms I'm using if it helps:

→ n8n, OpenRouter, Apify, Weave and all the LLMs.

Want to chat tech? Probably doesn't sound very appealing, but if you do, always love jumping on a call or grabbing a coffee.

4. Tech horizons  
I've been asked a couple of times already this week what timeline horizon a business should work to, when putting a marketing/DX technical solution in place. The easy answer is roughly 5 years (scaled up or down depending on size or org) - the harder part of the puzzle is working out what that means. I'll do a longer post on this another day!

What's your view on this?

Happy New Year everyone. Let's make 2026 a great one.