Putting AI to work

The interesting question is no longer what AI can do. It is what you do with it on a Tuesday.

Most professional work is reading, writing, analysing and deciding. That is exactly what AI is now good at supporting. The people getting real value are not the ones with the cleverest prompts. They are the ones who folded it into a few daily tasks and stopped treating it as special.

Brief it like a capable colleague

What you get back depends on how you ask. Give the model a role, the context, the constraints, and one example of what good looks like. "Summarise this report" returns mush. "You are briefing a sceptical board. Pull out the three decisions they need to make, in 150 words, and flag the weakest assumption" returns something you can use before your next meeting.

Use it to think, not just to produce

The output is often the least valuable part. Ask the model to argue against your plan. Ask what a critic would say. Ask for the three weakest points in your draft. Used this way it becomes a tireless sparring partner that sharpens your thinking, rather than a machine that hands you words.

Hand it the work. Keep the judgement.

Keep the judgement yours

AI will draft, summarise and suggest. It will also be confidently wrong. So the rule is simple: hand it the work, keep the judgement. Verify every fact and number before it leaves your desk. Never paste anything confidential into a tool you do not control. The final call stays with you, and it should.

Build habits, not heroics

You do not need a strategy. Pick the task you do most often and enjoy least, and put AI on that first. Save the prompts that work so you are not starting cold each time. Small wins, repeated, compound into real hours back, and time is the one thing none of us can make more of.

For a concrete starting point, I have written up the habits and tools I rely on. Read the productivity tips →