AI with ALLIE

The professional’s guide to quick AI bites for your personal life, work life, and beyond.

April 4, 2024

If I had told you ten years ago that my favorite productivity hack would be strolling through the park talking to a chatbot, you would’ve laughed in my face.

But, today, we’ll be talking about turning your everyday spaces into AI-friendly zones, finding joy in AI interactions, and simplifying your life with technology that's as intuitive as texting a friend.

Let’s get started.

The productivity hack that matters most

The worst sentence I can hear is, "Oh yeah, I used ChatGPT a few times. I don't use it anymore."

That’s like being handed a winning lottery ticket, ripping it in half, lighting it on fire, and…I don’t know…throwing the ashes into a vat of expired cheese.

And probably a smelly one, like brie.

At this point, there are people out there who have thousands of hours of AI practice. Not because they are geniuses, not because they are engineers, not because they are psychics…

But because they made AI a habit.

I am constantly meeting with C-Suite executives from Fortune 500 companies or private equity firms or top SMBs. And while there are many mistakes I see (and I cover those in my course), NOT making AI a habit is one of the biggest misses.

So let me give you the most tactical rundown of making AI a habit, so you can shoot ahead of the competition.

And it starts with a book.

Atomic Habits by James Clear is a life-changing work that has sold over 15 million copies worldwide and has a 4.8-star rating on Amazon.

I listened to this book in October 2020 during a challenging time in my life. My apartment in San Francisco flooded while I was in Utah, ruining some of my most prized possessions. And GPT-3 had recently come out, so my hours at work had exploded. So I did what any sane person would do during a global pandemic and rented a Nissan Rogue Sport and drove 8 hours to visit my sister in Denver. On a freezing cold walk around Washington Park, I listened to the audiobook of Atomic Habits.

**Other life-changing books I read during that road trip include Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (best if you feel scattered), The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer (best if you’re stuck in your head), and Do Nothing (best if you’re burnt out) by Celeste Headlee. Can’t recommend these enough.

Why it’s important to make AI a habit

As Jean-Paul Sartre said, “We are our choices.”

**side note: I read Sartre’s 1946 piece “No Exit”, would recommend if you’re looking to ruin your sleep and friendships for a bit. Anyways, choices, we were talking about choices…

There’s a whole world around our choices. My flowchart of life and business is the following: I reflect on my values to create goals that drive my pillars that force me to make tradeoffs to come up with priorities that lends itself to tactics which if done repeatedly can become habits which hopefully drive intended outcomes which ladders up to an eventual impact which gets assessed through reflection and improved through optimization. Or, if you’re feeling fancy, VGPTPTHOIRO.

And using AI is no different.

Using AI is a choice. And you can build that choice into a habit, just like brushing your teeth (at least twice a day), drinking water (64 ounces), exercise (30 minutes a day), and sleep (7-9 hours a night). Quit treating AI like a chore—people who treat AI as a chore will resent it and use it less. And quit thinking that AI is only for work—that’s like only using your phone to order pizza.

It’s no secret that AI is revolutionizing the way we work, but you have to choose to use AI, choose where to use it, and choose to use it wisely.

How to make AI a habit

We don't have to invent advice from scratch. We can lean on one of the best habit books ever written: Atomic Habits by James Clear.

If you haven’t read it or you need a little refresher, the author has a 4-step strategy to make a habit stick:

1. Make it obvious - Place cues for your desired habit in your environment, like putting a book on your nightstand.

2. Make it attractive - Pair your desired habit with something enjoyable, like listening to a podcast while exercising.

3. Make it easy - Reduce friction by preparing in advance or breaking tasks into smaller steps, like laying out gym clothes the night before.

4. Make it satisfying - Reward yourself for completing your habit, like sharing progress with an accountability buddy.

Let's dive in and see how we can apply these to our AI practices.

First, make it obvious 🎯

The first step in forming any habit is to make it visible.

When it comes to AI, this means putting it right in front of your freaking face and making it super duper accessible. Incorporating visual cues into your environment will keep it top-of-mind, and it’s shocking how few people have done even one or two of these.

Here are some ideas to make AI more obvious:

• Add a ChatGPT button to your Stream Deck (mine is below!)

• Pin your favorite AI tools to your browser toolbar

• Set your favorite AI tool as your homepage

• Put ChatGPT on your phone home screen

• Put ChatGPT as one of the 4 main buttons at the bottom

• Add a Siri voice prompt for “Siri Pro Mode” to call ChatGPT

• Add an NFC tag at your desk to open your favorite AI app

• Begin each day by asking your AI tool for a summary of your schedule, news updates, or to tackle the first task on your to-do list

• Add a Post-It on your desk that says “Claude is sexy”

Next, make it attractive 😍

Pair it with something.

Habits are more likely to stick when they're associated with positive emotions and experiences. To make your use of AI more attractive (other than I guess telling it to straighten its back and be confident), try to pair it with activities or environments that you find enjoyable or rewarding.

Atomic Habits calls this “temptation bundling” but it’s basically: take a thing you already have to do and smush it with a thing you want to do. Like doing squats during the commercials of your favorite TV show.

Here’s what I do to make using AI more attractive:

• Dictate emails or tasks to Otter AI while on a 30-60 minute walk

• Have a full conversation with ChatGPT Voice while doing my makeup (press the little headphones in the bottom right of the app!) - I even bought an extra charger and phone holder that attaches to my mirror

• Use Speechify to read articles out loud while commuting or eating

• Feed my to-do list to AI every morning while my breakfast is heating up

Then, make it easy 🧘‍♀️

Uhhh…anyone else exhausted at the end of the day?

Yeah, makes sense. We have 1,000 things getting thrown at us, every text is another fire to put out, and then we also have to feed ourselves and clean the living room and travel the world and fall in love and go on Price is Right and do laundry?!

Life is hard. So let’s make AI easy.

Reducing friction is key to forming lasting habits. You want the habit to easily fit into your life, like turning the lights off before going to bed. When it comes to AI, this could mean streamlining your processes and removing barriers that could discourage you from using it regularly.

This might look like:

• Creating a pre-written prompt library or standard operating procedures (SOPs) for your most used AI tools or tasks; for example, my team has a 30-page SOP for AI to review contracts

• Use voice-activated assistants to access AI tools hands-free, making it easier to multitask

• Using AI-powered automation tools to streamline repetitive tasks

• Install the mobile app version for AI tools you use so you don’t have to pull it up in the browser (at the very least, you need ChatGPT, Otter AI, and Perplexity AI)

• Integrate AI tools directly into the platforms you already use, like Slack, Trello, or email clients

• Create keyboard shortcuts to activate AI tools or scripts (I have prompts saved in my iPhone as text replacement options)

• Create GPTs inside of ChatGPT for repeated tasks (I’ve built dozens and use 5-10 pretty regularly) - here is my tutorial on how to build one, no code needed, super easy

• Start with one prompt a day (“Write me a poem about <describe outside>” or “Give me six recipes that use <say what’s in your fridge>”)

• Start with just one tool (ChatGPT, Perplexity AI, or Claude)

Finally, make it satisfying 🎉

“What is immediately rewarded is repeated.”

If you’re reading my newsletter, you’re probably a wildly successful executive or a ground-breaking ML researcher or my cousin Deb.

And so it probably feels ridiculous that I’m going to recommend this, but…even though you’re super cool and all…if you use AI, give yourself a treat.

To reinforce the habit of using AI, it's important to experience a sense of satisfaction and achievement when you use it. It’s pure human conditioning. You have to reinforce your behavior.

You can:

• Use a habit tracker like 'The AI Daily Planner' to track your progress (we created this because of this insight - it educates on AI and lets you track your weekly AI usage)

• Share your AI-powered accomplishments with your network

• Have a Hershey’s kiss every time you publish a GPT

• Share your AI creations on social media and ask for feedback

• Create a reward system for yourself (ex: after saving a certain amount of time using AI, you can pick up a bagel with your morning coffee)

• For like a year, every time I did something awesome, I would do this and it weirdly worked?

Why building an AI habit matters

The chasm between AI users and non-users is widening at an alarming pace.

As someone deeply entrenched in AI, I've witnessed this troubling trend firsthand, and I'm determined to bridge this divide.

While I am NOT advocating for using AI for everything (don’t put your social security number into ChatGPT, Billy!), I am urging everyone to familiarize themselves with the breakneck speed at which our world is transforming.

The AI revolution isn't just knocking on our doors; it's already storming through the job market.

And we are going to see AI experience be a key factor in hiring, promotions, and even wealth creation.

If the takeaway of this newsletter edition still isn’t clear: the more you engage with AI, the better equipped you'll be to navigate the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

And people who follow this newsletter (including you, Deb) are at an advantage. You’re getting the real tips, the real insights, and the real action to take. Share this with your family and friends and colleagues and uplift your inner circle.

Start small, make it fun, and watch your AI habit build. I’ve helped millions of people build an AI-first mindset, career, and business—if this newsletter edition changes the way you use AI, let me know.

Allie

Free AI education to upskill yourself

If your New Year's resolution was to learn more AI, consider this your friendly Q2 reminder to keep leveling up.

To help you stay on track, I've curated a selection of my recent public talks and courses - all completely free:

Tools, courses, and blogs that caught my eye:

Over the last few weeks, I’ve pulled together some of the top releases, and my take on each one. Check it out.

1. The EU Parliament adopts the EU AI Act — The EU AI Act has been officially adopted, and its enforcement is anticipated in May following minor procedural steps, receiving early support from industry giants like IBM and Salesforce (read it) (my thoughts)

2. Anthropic’s Claude 3 release — Claude 3 Opus, developed by AnthropicAI, is outshining GPT-4 across various metrics, impressing with its accuracy and minimal need for edits; my team loves its writing style so much, we upgraded to the paid version (try it) (my thoughts)

3. Building with ChatGPT on your iPhone — I crafted a free daily automation that takes the local air temperature at 10 a.m., then texts me a weather update along with an personalized outdoor activity suggestion if it's above 55 degrees and rain-free (learn it)

4. Open Interpreter’s 01 Light — The 01 Light, a portable voice interface for computers that adapts and learns (similar to the Rabbit R1), has developers buzzing with its rapid sell-out and high GitHub interest; I bought one (my thoughts)

5. Inflection AI’s big leadership change — Inflection AI, which had raised over $1B, revealed a major shift as cofounders Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan depart to start up Microsoft AI, with Reid Hoffman staying on the board and Sean White coming on as CEO; this is not a sign AI is slowing down, but might be a sign that model development has its “winners” in OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and Mistral; Stability AI (which has raised $176M based on internet reports) CEO has also stepped down (read it)

6. Dr. Ritu Raman’s interview on biohybrid design, nanosensors & creating muscles — Dr. Ritu Raman, an esteemed MIT Mechanical Engineering Professor and Forbes 30 under 30 awardee, is at the forefront of the evolution age by talking about her work on biohybrid design, nanosensors, and synthetic muscles; I’m keeping my eye on bioengineering investment opportunities (watch it) (my thoughts)

7. HebbiaAI’s Matrix LLM — HebbiaAI released Matrix, an AI product branded as "the interface for AGI," revolutionizing the AI-first approach with its capacity for complex questions, vast data handling, and transparent responses, featuring an editable thought process grid (read it + join waitlist) (my thoughts as one of their investors)

8. Rows AI — Writing a Facebook ad with GenAI is like 0.00001% of the use cases that matter in the AI age, and one thing I’m looking forward to is more data analysis and AI for spreadsheets and time series data. Rows AI significantly improves and optimizes your spreadsheets by integrating AI, allowing you to analyze, summarize, and modify data more efficiently (watch demo) (try it)

Feedback is a Gift

I would love to know what you thought of this newsletter and any feedback you have for me. Do you have a favorite part? Wish I would change something? Felt confused? Please reply and share your thoughts or just take the poll below so I can continue to improve and deliver value for you all.