AI is often linked with enhanced productivity and creativity, and rightly so. More and more professionals are jumping on the AI bandwagon, and those who haven’t should do so as quickly as possible. You’ve probably heard this phrase: “AI won’t replace you, but someone using AI will.”
What you might not know is that even those using AI aren’t necessarily using it correctly, and this is an opportunity for you.
Take writing an article, for example. You might be tempted to ask ChatGPT, “Write me an article giving 5 good reasons to start writing on Newswav.”
With ChatGPT-4 (the 3.5 version is pretty bad at writing), you’ll get something quite satisfactory, but with two major issues:
- Generic Arguments: The article will likely sound like the millions of others online (and on Medium), bringing no real value to readers. Remember, when you share content online, always aim to add value for those consuming it.
- Lack of Authenticity: The problem with AI is that now anyone can create content in under 3 minutes (literally). To make your work stand out, you need to add a personal touch. This advice was valid even before AI became a part of our lives, but it’s even more relevant in 2024 (and will be in 2025, 2026, and probably 2052).
The key is to change how you view AI and better understand how it works.
Without diving into technical explanations about deep learning and algorithms, here’s a simplified take: AI is like an incredibly intelligent and well-educated intern who just graduated and doesn’t know how to work yet.
So, why use AI?
Simply because you wouldn’t want to miss out on someone who can handle tasks for you, especially if you’ve trained them well.
That’s the most important takeaway: AI can’t yet provide perfectly tailored answers to your needs. You need to lay the groundwork for it to be relevant to your business and activities (and the advantage of the AI intern is that you don’t need to replace it every 6 months).
When should I use it?
Answering this is pretty straightforward because AI can really help in two very specific cases: when you’re looking to automate or save time on daily tasks, and/or when you want to create something or perform a task you’ve never done before.
For the first case, it can be simple things like writing emails for you or generating ideas (AI can replace 75% of brainstorming meetings; imagine the hours saved each week).
Going a bit further, with tools like Make, you can automate complex tasks like fetching information from the internet or social media and creating content without lifting a finger (and I’m not even talking about what AI can do for coding—it’s just sensational).
In the second case, AI can enable you to learn or accomplish thousands of things in a very short time, which seemed unimaginable just a few months ago.
I have a great example to illustrate my point a few lines below, but simply put, Midjourney and DALL-E allow anyone to become a graphic designer for a moment.
This article you’re reading was initially written in Malay. I use ChatGPT, and with a well-optimised prompt (otherwise, it takes liberties that completely alter my writing style), I save a tonne of time on translation. I could do it myself, but it would take me 2 to 3 times longer.
Another example, perhaps even more relevant: when I started my business and needed people to support my project, I had to create a financial plan. My problem was that finance isn’t my thing. But I had no choice.
At the time, I only had a document outlining the main features of my company. I uploaded the PDF to ChatGPT and asked how I could structure my financial plan. Based on its response, I created a first draft, then had it analysed (by ChatGPT) for improvement suggestions.
I repeated this 3–4 times to get a solid document. I watched a few YouTube tutorials and read some articles to ensure I wasn’t doing anything crazy. Spoiler alert: My financial plan was precise and reliable, allowing me to move on to the next phase of my project.
How do I use it?
Every request you make and every prompt you write should incorporate a personal touch. The perfect example is the AI gurus you find on LinkedIn. Whether you like their content or not is one thing, but their methodology is commendable.
They’ve managed to create hundreds of posts with ChatGPT that don’t sound like robotic texts.
Their method is simple: before asking AI to generate texts to help them prospect on LinkedIn and find clients, they provided ChatGPT with a typical persona of their clientele (also created with ChatGPT), a PDF detailing their business, some personal info (name, professional background, etc.), a structure for posts (e.g., with a hook, text, and CTA), and a copywriting method.
As you can see, it’s a bit of work, but think about the outcome: it might have taken an hour or two to create this prompt (and that’s an exaggeration), but it allowed them to generate at least 100 posts (and thus reach many prospects and earn a lot of money).
This is just one example, but you need to understand that the key to succeeding in your professional life with AI is to educate it about your skills and expertise.
What you’ve just read represents my own guidelines for using AI. It’s likely to evolve with new models coming out (I personally think ChatGPT-5 will change the world), but these methods currently help me save twice as much time on everything I do daily.
And that’s why I wanted to share them with you. I hope you can take at least one piece of advice from this article and apply it to your daily life.
Thanks for reading!
dIRa is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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