Introduction
Everyone has AI now. Even Old MacDonald. He has an AI here and an AI there and all that. But many are trying to take AI to the very top to solve the world’s problems. I only want it to empty my email. It hasn’t solved the world’s problems. My inbox is still full. AI is in its infancy for who knows how long. That doesn’t mean AI is useless. I’ve found a few ways that AI has helped me. Some ways enable me to make things I’ve never done before. Other ways have enabled me to stop making things I’ve been doing forever.
Some Examples
I never imagined I could create half a dozen web apps on my own over a year. But I did. AI like ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor made it all happen for me. It took me over a year to learn VBA. The VBA projects I have look like mud and often break. These work. They even are pretty to look at.
I never imagined having tons of manuals, one-pagers, and strategies on my Google Drive. They are all drafted from AI. They are no masterpieces and most of them, when shared, will go on being unread by the masses. I could have written them. I bet I could have even added some flair to them. I didn’t value them enough to write them. They’re small info dumps for a technical procedure. These AI elves didn’t object to my demands and scribbled. A few additions and corrections here and there and boom! I have a finished document. Another personal project of mine crossed off the old list of things-I-would-like-to-do-but-will-never-get-to.
Note-taking stinks. I can’t ever make sense of what I wrote down. After meetings now, I throw my cryptic notes to ChatGPT. I demand it to make sense of them, combine repetitive info, and spill it back to me in new bullet points. Bam! I review and correct it. I then deprive it of any thanksgiving and plug its contribution into my meeting minutes. These things have freed countless half-hours post meetings. I used to recollect what on earth I was trying to write down. I now spend that time on more valuable work.
Conclusion
The not-so-secret first step with using AI in your everyday work is to find small tasks. Small tasks that are low value and not crucial. Something that you’d throw at a young, wide-eye intern eager to please. The first step may stay as a second step and third step and so on. You may only use it for that small, annoying thing you hate. You’ll find yourself doing more valuable things, like resting.
