Longtime listeners will know how I feel about AI, and if you've read my article about AI brain rot, you will also know how I feel about AI.
Recently, I was talking to an acquaintance who explained to me how he has AI agents write his articles for him. He sends a voice note of an idea, and then every morning it picks the ideas it thinks “heavy” on thinks, our best, writes the drafts, sends him the drafts, he requests edits, and then it writes and publishes them. And I asked, at what point do you feel uncomfortable putting your name on this?
This was like such an AI brain rot moment for me because he couldn't even see the issue with this. He just thought AI was some amazing magic bullet that produced articles for him. And I really want to know if he's still using it and how those articles are performing, because that's something we didn't even get into. Not, hey, these are articles that help establish my authority. Just the machine is writing the articles for me. And that's what I want to talk about today, is how are we using AI?
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Streamlined Solopreneur, where I help overwhelmed coaches, consultants, and service providers build systems so their business doesn't depend on them. Each week I share one practical idea to help you beat overwhelm, get your time back, and run your business without sacrificing the rest of your life or your health.
And today I want to talk about this lie that AI is a magic shortcut. That if you're not using AI, you're going to fall behind. Let it create the content, and I will save all of this time. And sure, AI can write stuff. So can my 5-year-old. That doesn't mean it's going to be good.
And here's the real truth of it, right? And I won't, you know, I have an episode where I more or less read my AI brain rot article, which by the way, I spent a lot of time writing myself. But the truth of it is this: if you stop doing the craft, you will no longer be good at the craft.
In a previous episode, I talked about how I participated in and completed a half marathon. That was over 10 years ago. If I tried to participate in and complete a half marathon today, I would not be able to. I have lost the ability to jog long distances, not because of a horrible injury. It's because I have stopped running regularly. And yeah, I was 30 then, and I'm 40 now, but I mean, Jeff Galloway is like in his 70s and still runs marathons. So it's not an age thing either. It's just that I stopped practicing the art of running and I can no longer do it.
So how do we prevent this? How do we use AI to help us save time without letting it steal the tasks that we can do, right? Because that's another thing that we've talked about on this show. You don't have to do everything. In fact, there are things you do that other people can do better. But there are a few of those tasks that you are uniquely suited to do. How do we stop AI from stealing those? Well, it's, it's really very simple. AI does the tasks, not the thinking.
Here's my process for writing an article. I have an idea. I capture it into my ideas bank, which lives in Obsidian. Yours could live in Notion or Apple Notes or SimpleNote or whatever. It is captured somewhere. When I sit down to write, I look at my ideas bank, and I write the first draft. It doesn't matter if it's going to be good.
I think I'm a particular; I think I'm a skilled writer, but even if I weren't, I would still write the first draft because that is how I hash out what I'm trying to say, what I think. And here's a really good example, right? I wrote a book about HTML and CSS. HTML and CSS, a Visual Quick Start Guide, Volume 9. It was not a format I was used to writing, and my editor let me know. He said it was awful. Like he heavily edited it, but I still wrote those chapters, and I took his feedback, and I made it better.
So if I had used AI and said, like, this is the format of the book. This is what I'm thinking. Write it. Could it have done something? Sure. It wouldn't have used my analogies. It wouldn't have used my examples. It wouldn't have been mine. It would have been a robot telling you how to write HTML. Maybe that works for some people, but it probably doesn't work for the people who are buying my book. So we let AI do the tasks.
So once I have the idea, I write the first draft. I read it through. Am I clear? Does this make sense? Great. Then I send it to a copy editor skill in Claude. This is the first time AI is touching my writing. And I do that because I have it check for the mechanics of writing, grammar, spelling. Did I use the right form of their? Because sometimes I will just write whatever one is in my head and not the right one for the sentence. I'm more concerned about getting the thoughts on page. And so I let the robot do that.
I also ask, what is my thesis, and does this piece support it? Do I land the plane? I don't tell it to make any edits. I tell it to give me bullet points of edits. And then I decide, okay, these are, yes, these are good. You missed my point here. This is what I was trying to say. So that is my process.
For this podcast, it is a little bit different. If I am struggling to come up with ideas, I have an idea thing because I want this show to follow a very specific format, and I haven't gotten into the rhythm of that format yet. It's a new format. I'm trying it. Maybe you've noticed, maybe you haven't, and that's great too.
But I do have a, hey, here are my newsletters. Here's everything I've written. Here's my System Starter Kit. What haven't I talked about? What is resonating with my newsletter audience? Let's create an outline. And then I take that outline, and I'm like, that's terrible. Right the hook in the last few episodes, I changed. The client example, I changed. But the general idea is there, and that's based on all of my writing. And you could probably tell by listening to this episode that I didn't let AI script or write it for me. Right.
So I like to use AI in that manner, do some tasks, go diving into my client research folder and tell me things that my clients have said, objections, problems they have so that I can do episodes on those things.
And so I want to tell you about a client, Laura. I might've mentioned her in a previous episode. But we, you know, we had a real discussion about how to appropriately use AI. And so she is using AI to soften emails because she feels like she comes off harsh. I, you know, that's not something that I, I have done that before, but it's not something I'm really in the habit of doing. But this is something that she'll write the email and have a large language model soften it, and then that gets her comfortable enough to send it and vet guests. So people will pitch themselves for her, or she'll look at guests, and she will use the research function in whatever large language model she's using to surface information. I do this as well.
When I pitch to be on guests, the large language model knows what I'm looking for, and it will go through and it will surface information for me, and it'll give me a lot of primary sources, and then I'll click through to those primary sources. And this is the important part, right? It does the gathering, it does some summarizing, but I am still looking at the show and looking at the recent episodes, and I'm pitching what I think is good. So AI is doing the task and leaving the craft to me.
What can you do this week to help let AI do the task and not the craft? Here's what I want you to do. The next time you are faced with a problem, don't go straight to the large language model. Spend 10 minutes thinking about it yourself and writing in a notebook or a piece of paper or whatever. That's what I want you to do because it will help you think through the problem, and it'll prevent you from running to the large language model.
How can you use the large language model? Well, this is really If you're going to do 2 things this week, think about a task that doesn't require you to think. You might've done an exercise from a few weeks ago where you wrote 3 tasks that only you can do, and then things that you can delegate or automate out. Pick one of those and see if the large language model can do it. They're getting increasingly capable.
If you're not sure if the thing you're thinking about can be done by AI, or if you're not sure what to give AI, check out the Solopreneur Starter Kit. It has 4 systems: the Solopreneur System Starter Kit. It's got 4 systems for you. And in each of those systems, it gives you at least one AI prompt or way to use AI in this manner.
And that's how you can start using AI in a way that doesn't do the craft. It does the task. You can find that over at streamlined.fm/kit. I'll put a link in the description, in the show notes. Use AI for tasks, not craft. And if you need some help, you can get the kit over at streamlined.fm/kit. That's it for this episode.
Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, I hope you find some space in your week.