How to Use AI at Work: Start With One Small Habit

I wonder how much time I’ve wasted over the years doing things I never really needed to do myself.

I’m talking about all the little tasks that come with running a business. Checking spreadsheets. Looking up information. Preparing for meetings. Following up with people. All the crap that needs to get done but doesn’t necessarily require my experience, expertise, or even much of my brain.

Over the past year, I’ve started handing more and more of that work to AI.

And the more I use AI, the more I recognize opportunities to use it.

I’ve developed a habit of asking myself, “Why am I doing this? Could AI help me?”

I Used to Do All This Myself

Here’s an example from my digital marketing work.

One of my regular tasks is researching SEO keywords and developing blog titles for clients.

I know how to do this. I’ve been doing it for decades.

I’d open Google Search Console, identify keywords where a client was hovering around the first page, check search volumes, and then dig through their previous blogs to make sure we weren’t repeating ourselves.

Then I’d use that research to come up with titles that were SEO-friendly and interesting enough that an actual human might want to read them.

It works. It’s also tedious as hell.

So one day I asked AI to check Search Console for me.

That worked. Then I had it check my keyword research tool. Then review previous blogs. Then consider the client’s content categories.

Eventually, I wrapped the whole process into an AI skill. Now I can ask for blog title recommendations for a specific client, and AI handles most of the research.

I didn’t build that overnight. It happened piece by piece over the better part of a year.

Each time I discovered something AI could handle, I handed it another part of the process.

An Example of My Own

I’m a small business. I don’t have some elaborate Salesforce or HubSpot CRM tracking every sales conversation.

A lot of my sales opportunities are sitting in my email.

And because I’m busy doing other things, sometimes I forget to follow up.

So I started asking AI to check my emails once a week and identify sales opportunities that need attention.

In the past month, I’ve launched a couple of awesome projects that might otherwise have slipped through the cracks.

That’s money – and delivered services – I might have left on the table.

I’ve also used AI to check QuickBooks for unpaid invoices and help fill in missing email addresses on prospect spreadsheets using an email-finding tool.

These aren’t groundbreaking technological achievements. They’re ordinary business tasks that used to require me to stop what I was doing and go hunt down information.

Now I can ask AI to help.

Nobody Gets Good at AI by Avoiding It

I think this is something people overlook.

AI has improved tremendously. We’ve got ChatGPT Work, Claude Cowork, apps, plugins, skills, and all kinds of connections to the software we use every day.

But I’ve also gotten better at using AI.

The more I’ve used it, the more I’ve understood what it’s capable of. And that experience has changed the way I approach my work.

You can watch a hundred videos about AI tools. At some point, you’ve got to actually use the damn things.

You’ll discover what works, what doesn’t, and where you can hand off another little piece of your workload.

There’s a Catch: Don’t Give Away Your Brain

Remember my blog-title example?

When I first started asking AI to generate titles, some of the results were absolute garbage.

Technically, they might have included the right keywords. But the titles were generic, boring AI slop.

A good blog title takes some art and some science. You need the keyword data, but you also need to understand the client, their audience, and what makes people curious.

AI didn’t automatically know any of that.

Over time, I learned how to build more of my own expertise into the instructions I gave it. The results improved because I got better at teaching AI how I approach the work.

This connects to something I call soul drift.

As we hand more work to AI, there’s a risk that we gradually hand over our judgment, creativity, and passion along with it.

I’m happy to let AI do the tedious research. I still want my experience and judgment shaping the outcome.

And yes, I still review the titles.

How to Start Using AI at Work This Week

Here’s what I’d suggest if you want to get better at using AI at work.

Connect your Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 tools to your AI platform, assuming your company’s policies allow it. Your email, calendar, and files are a good starting point because so much of your everyday work already lives there. If you’re using ChatGPT, OpenAI has instructions for connecting apps.

Then pay attention to what you’re doing throughout the week.

Whenever you find yourself buried in some repetitive task, ask yourself:

“Could AI help me with this?”

Try a few simple experiments:

• Ask AI to review your calendar and help prepare for upcoming meetings.
• Have it check your emails for people you need to follow up with.
• Ask it to find documents or transcripts buried in your files.
• Give it a couple of weeks of your calendar and ask what work it could help you handle.

That last one could send you down a hell of a rabbit hole. You’ve been warned.

But you might discover opportunities you never would have thought of yourself.

Use appropriate privacy settings, and keep your own judgment involved. AI can make mistakes, sometimes with remarkable confidence.

You Might Be Surprised What You’re Still Doing Yourself

I’ve spent the better part of a year gradually offloading pieces of my work to AI.

I’m still finding more.

And I suspect a year from now, I’ll look back at some of the things I’m doing manually today and wonder why the hell I was wasting my time on them.

That’s how I’m learning to use AI at work. I keep experimenting, learning, and discovering what else it can help me accomplish.

At Cingularis, we help businesses that do good do even good-er. Part of that work is helping people use AI while protecting the expertise, judgment, heart, and soul that make them valuable.

If you’d like help figuring out where AI fits into your business, that’s something I cover in my article on leveraging an AI consultant.

So here’s my suggestion.

The next time you’re about to tackle some tedious little task you’ve done a hundred times before, ask yourself one question:

“Could AI help me with this?”

You might be surprised how often the answer is yes.