How can you leverage AI use to enhance personal and professional life?

In this solo episode of the Happier at Work podcast, I delve into the transformative impact of AI in my own business and personal life. Drawing on a year's experience with AI, particularly the paid version of ChatGPT, I share practical insights and tips on how AI can streamline content creation, adjust tone in professional communication, and provide technical solutions. By exploring real-life examples, I illustrate how AI can support both professional and personal growth without replacing human creativity and critical thinking.

The main points include:

• Personalisation of AI to suit various business needs, from content creation to technical tasks.
• Importance of prompt engineering to maximise AI utility.
• Using AI for brainstorming and generating new ideas for podcast content, social media, and newsletters.
• Examples of AI’s role in personal life, including travel planning, gift suggestions, and personal fitness.
• Cautionary advice on AI policy in corporate settings, privacy, confidentiality, and avoiding plagiarism.
• Insight into overcoming AI’s limitations, such as bias and inaccurate outputs.

Join the conversation and explore how AI can enhance your workplace happiness by freeing up time for meaningful work and human connection. 

Do you have any feedback or thoughts on this discussion? If so, please connect with Aoife via the links below and let her know. Aoife would love to hear from you!

Connect with Happier at Work host Aoife O’Brien:

Website

LinkedIn 

YouTube

Previous Episodes:

Episode 192: The Power of AI in Behind the Scenes Workflows with Aoife O’Brien

Episode 200: Reskilling DIversity and Building a Happier Workplace with Bhushan Sethi

Episode 250: Leveraging Workplace Trends with Bhushan Sethi

Mentioned in this episode:

Thriving Talent book

Book

Recording in progress. AI, whether you love it or hate it, it's definitely here to stay. And in today's episode of the Happier at Work podcast, I'm gonna spill the beans on all the ways that I use AI in my business and also in my personal life. So this time last year, I shared after my episode with Bhushan, I shared all about how I used AI in my podcast, and that has evolved somewhat since then. I'm not gonna go into a massive amount of detail on how I use it for the podcast. Suffice it to say that this is my real voice, and if you're watching on video, this is the real me. It's not an avatar or anything like that. This is actually me.

It's not my fake voice or AI voice or anything like that. But if you're interested in how I use AI for the podcast, definitely go back and listen to that episode. We touched on when I say we, Bhushan and I touched on AI in our conversation from last year. We touched on it as well in our conversation for this year. So I suppose from my perspective, I wanted to share an update, and I think it's really interesting and helpful and hopefully will inspire or share some ideas of how you can use AI in your day to day work or in your personal life as well. So, a couple of things, and if you're watching on video, I'm gonna be looking down and I'm kinda just making sure I've covered absolutely everything. I did ask AI to help me, and I I definitely didn't give me all the ways. There are so, so many ways that I use AI.

I started using the paid chat g p t a little over a year ago now, I think it is. And I just was using it so much that I ran out of, like, the really, really good stuff, so I decided to pay for it for my business. So one of the first things that I use it for is content creation, and for that, I mean, it's brainstorming ideas. So helping me to come up with ideas. It could be podcast titles. It could be ideas for the podcast. It could be social media posts, but also for my newsletter, like titles or ideas of things to share. Another way that I use it is checking for tone.

So when I first started doing this, I was really surprised when AI came back and said, well, maybe your tone needs to warm up a little bit. I'm the kind of person, if I'm writing an email, I'll often get straight to the point. You know, I may say, I hope all is well. I definitely don't say, I hope this email finds you well, because I've seen enough memes about that. But I do then use AI to check for tone to to make sure that I'm coming across in the warm way that I want to be perceived rather than really cold and kind of clinical. So that's a way that that AI definitely helps me. Another thing I use, and this is kind of a bit meta, but using AI to help me to narrow down AI prompts. So you can use AI to help you to use AI more effectively effectively by narrowing down prompts.

If you want support on that, definitely reach out to me. I've gone through the process of doing that, and I think it's really great to be able to really you know, because AI is all about the prompts. It's all about the information that you feed into it. And on that note, I'm gonna share at the end, this is a framework that I came across when it comes to to how to structure your prompts using AI, so I'll come to that at the end. Another great thing that I use AI for is technical questions. So if I want to put in a specific formula in Excel or I want to do a particular thing in Excel. So one thing I'm thinking of in particular is highlighting cells. If I need to highlight specific cells, if I want to remove duplicates, the easiest thing for me to do, I used to go to Google.

Now I go to AI, and I say, what is the formula? You can literally just copy and paste the formula across from AI. It's really, really handy. I also recently had to reduce the size on a PDF because it was too large to send in an email. So I asked what's the best way? This is a laptop I have. What's the best way I can reduce the PDF size? I thought I was gonna have to go on to one of those dodgy websites, but in the end, I have an Apple Mac, so there is a facility to be able to do that, which I had no idea about. AI knew and it told me. Another thing in relation to this as well is systems. So having fully thinking through what are all of the considerations that I need to do.

For example, my recent change to put the bonus episodes of the Happier at Work podcast into a private podcast feed. There were so many considerations that I haven't I hadn't really thought of. Well, first of all, I need to actually let people know. I didn't I kind of missed that off on on when I was thinking things through, but I had to create email sequences, setups, landing pages, all of those kinds of things, and just helping me to think through what are all of the steps that I need to do in case I miss anything. Another brilliant thing, and I share this with my business friends as well. If you're reading a book and you're thinking, wow, I find this really inspiring, one thing that I do, not just summarize the book, but from what you know about me or from what you know about my business, how can I apply the learnings from this book to this particular situation? So I think taking all of that information from the book but applying it very specifically to your situation. And that works wonders for me in business. It's saying, you know, the output that I get from that is really, really beneficial to me.

I've used it a little bit on a personal level as well, like, how can I apply the learnings from this in my personal life as well? So just going a step beyond just summarizing a book, but how to actually apply to very specific situations as well. It's really great for doing research. So if I want to know more about a specific client, if I want to know, are there there clients that are similar to this client that I've I've worked particularly well with. And another really great thing is summarizing data. So you just got a whole load of data from a massive report that you want summarized publicly available report. This is not not putting up any proprietary information or anything like that. Separately then, or kind of building on that, I think AI is really great at at providing alternative perspectives. So can you think about this from the perspective of someone else? That can be really useful if you're going into a conversation that you know is gonna be quite difficult, you know, trying to look at those alternative perspectives that maybe someone else might bring, but also automations and systems and setting those things up.

So while they're not directly AI, thinking about how to make your workday better. What are all the repetitive things that you have to do, and how do you take out the repetitive nature of what it is that you need to do as well? Definitely, for me, doing research into those kinds of things, like getting support on, okay. So maybe there's a more efficient way to do this, or how can I do this differently, or what software do you recommend to do very specific things as well? So that's probably not a comprehensive list, but I think that should do for now. I'll move on to how I use it in my personal life then. So, you know, you you probably would have seen all of the the things flying around, all of the, like, oh, I've asked my Chatcheapiti to talk to me as if I'm a or talk about me as if they're my drunken best friend, or I've asked Chatcheapiti to be my cheerleader. Like, I think those are really brilliant because if you use it regularly, it should know who you are, and it talks to you in a very positive light. So I did use that recently. Like, hey.

I'm having a not so great day. Can you help me by just reinforcing my message? Tell me what I'm about. All of that kind of thing. And it really helped me to to see that alternative perspective or see, like, this is a synopsis of all of the things that I've been working on, all everything that I have achieved. So I think from that perspective, it's not gonna replace coaching. I know there are AI coaches out there, but I think using it for that, like, I'm having a bad day. Can you help me with some mindset tips? I'm having a bad day. Can you coach me through the process, or can you ask me a series of questions to figure out what's going on? Things like that, I think, can be really, really useful.

I've used it for travel itineraries. I'm going to this destination, so I was going to Madeira. Can you make some recommendations of where to go, what to visit, what restaurants? It can do an entire itinerary for you as well and say you should stay at this hotel. You should eat at this restaurant. Now, again, going back to this idea of the prompts, and the the prompts are the important thing. And I think I'm learning that more and more as I use it more and more because I'll put in something that is maybe one or two sentences thinking, okay, I I think I've nailed it here, and then it will come back with with questions or suggestions which make me realize I should have put that those kind of limitations, let's say, in the original prompt as well. So, travel itineraries, gift ideas as well. When I was trying to come up with some gift ideas, I was just really struggling, and it came up with some pretty good suggestions.

I picked the ones that I liked and I said, can you suggest more things in along these lines? And that it was really brilliant as well. This is kind of a random one, but when I'm in Tenerife there sometimes be insects that I've never seen before. I just don't know what they are. And I take a picture and I uploaded that to ChatGPT, and it tells me what they I think this is, you know, and again with the prompts, I found this in my kitchen or I found this in my bathroom or I found this in a particular place. Don't worry. We're not talking about cockroaches or anything like that, but just random things that I just didn't know what they were. Personal fitness. So I've recently started back in the gym a couple of months ago.

I've been doing weight training and I said, this is what I've been doing. Can you help me to create a plan? Now one of the things that it did was, like, it was just so comprehensive. It was like, oh, and don't forget to track your progress. But it's not just about tracking your progress. It's on the weighing scales or measurements or anything like that. It's tracking your progress. Like, did I do my stretches? Did I do this? And all of these different things that I hadn't really thought about. It was just so, so comprehensive, I thought.

Another thing that I use it for is translation. Or if I see a recipe online, I can use it to translate the recipe from Spanish into English, for example. And then speaking of recipes, I will ask it about specific recipes or take the best recipes from specific things. That's one thing. But also, here's a collection of stuff I have in my fridge. Can you tell me what I can make with this stuff that I these random things that I have in my fridge? So it wouldn't be fair of me to talk about all the positives about AI or all the ways I use AI if I didn't share about some of the watch outs when it comes to using AI as well. So this is specifically for working for in a corporate organization, which, pretty much all of my clients are. And it's, first of all, checking, do you have an AI policy, and what does that AI policy actually say? What can you and can't you use AI for? And especially especially when you've got documents, when you've got sensitive information from clients, like, you can't be putting that stuff up into a public AI.

And so check which one you have. Obviously, you you will know which one you have and check the levels the level of privacy that it has as well. Also, the confidentiality around that, again, reiterating this point about any sensitive information, you cannot be putting that into AI. You know, you don't know what that's going to be used for, so definitely check. And if you don't know, then, you know, ask of the chain. I'm sure there's someone who will be able to tell you about that as well. The other thing that and I've noticed this as well that AI can be wrong sometimes. So here's an example.

I've been going through an awards process for the podcast, and I thought I'd be really clever. And I I had snippets, snippets like screenshots from various different feedback that I had about the podcast over the last year. I put them all into a PDF document. I uploaded that PDF and I asked ChattyPT to summarize. And the stuff I came back with was actually wrong. It it had people's names that were not even on the document. It had words that weren't even used. And I was like, what is going on here? And it turns out that it couldn't read the document because there was the images were saved as images into the PDF.

And a bit of troubleshooting, and I figured out that that's what the issue was. And eventually, it said, oh, it appears that these might be images in a PDF. I think it initially, I might have shared it as a Word document, and it was looking for words as opposed to images. So it it was like, I just need to use a different way to do this. So it used a different way to analyze the data. Oh, well, there's too much information here. I can't do it. And then looked for alternatives.

Shall we do images one to five? Yeah. Great. And it went through and it didn't do all of the images. So I said, can you just double check that you have everything there? Oh, I've just double checked. I've counted that there are 50 something images. And no. We don't have all of them. So would you like me to continue? I said, yes, please.

So it went through all of them and got them all and then and only then was it able to summarize the information and pull out the best quotes from it. So that's all of that to say that sometimes AI can be wrong. So so especially when it comes to stuff that it finds on the Internet, sometimes it just makes stuff up if it doesn't have the right answer. I have seen on LinkedIn where people are challenging ChatGPT and saying, oh, hey, ChatGPT. I'm not sure, like, can you share where you got that information from? And chat GBT would be like, oh, you're absolutely right. I just made that up. You know, just things like that. So be careful when it comes to things like that.

Just double check the sources. The other thing I wanted to share as well is bias. Like, this is something that is a really hot topic, especially from a HR perspective. AI lang and those large language models, they're built on the information that are put into them, which is historical information. So if there's bias already existing in an organization or if there is a bias towards male dominated, promotions or things like that, then that will be filtering through if you're using AI in those processes as well. So just something to watch out for. And then the other thing obviously is plagiarism. So where is this information actually coming from and does someone else own it? So whether that is a framework that you're using, whether it is something that it is suggesting.

So it's always really, really important to check out all of that stuff. Now as I promised at the start and I'd love to credit where I got this from but I don't remember where I got it from. I just wrote it down. It was on YouTube somewhere. I just wrote it down. I was like, that's a really interesting framework to think about chat GBT. And again, I would love to be able to credit this person. But the framework is called Risen, so it's easy to remember.

R I s e n. And r is the role. So what role do you want your AI companion to play? Is it the role of a leader? Is it the role of someone to aspire against? Like, for me, it can be a copywriter. It can be a LinkedIn expert, things like that. Then I is for instructions. So what instructions are you giving it? What is it exactly that you want it to do? S is the steps. So what specific steps do you want it to take? And then what is, you know, start with this and then end with this? What is the in, what is it that you're trying to actually do step by step? And then e is for the end goal. So what outcome is it that you're trying to achieve here? And then n is for narrowing.

So if you wanted to have a human voice, if you want again, going back to the idea of limitations that I spoke about earlier, how can you limit what it is that it incorporates into what it is that it's looking at? You know, remember to put in all of the necessary information within that. Now having said that, once you put in that information, you it will for me anyway, becomes immediately obvious that something's been left out. Oh, okay. I forgot to mention this, this, and this. And then you just put it in again. So that comes to the end of today's episode and I'd absolutely love to get involved in a conversation with you about how you're using AI, how do you see it, is it benefiting you? Tell me everything. How are you using it in your organization? How are you using it to improve your work? So it's not about handing over all the work to AI, but it's it's about enhancing what it is that we're doing. And then that frees up time for us to do more of the human side, more of the human connection, more of the critical thinking.

And that's, like, really the huge, huge benefit of AI is supporting us to be able to do all of those human things. So do get involved in the conversation and do let me know. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Recording stopped.