Pervasive Integration

“As much as I said that I wasn't adopting AI, I think I was doing it more than I thought I was doing it.”

“So it's funny because I considered [using AI to help draft a book] personal and not work. I listed that as one of the personal uses of AI instead of work, because the book was self-published. So it was really a personal project of mine, but the book is about interviews, qualitative interviews for research.”

“So every morning at 8 a.m. I have a planning brief with Claude and I have it saved as a project inside of Claude.”

“And then I might, in my 8 a.m. briefing, I'll say, "All right, this is done. This is done. I want to work on this and this." And I know Claude's going to put time in the calendar, and it's already in a project. So, I'm like doubly organized. I'm organized in my calendar, my time, but also in my filing system, and it's all connected.”

“And it's in my calendar because I integrated Claude with my calendar. So, that's really helped because like I said, I have ADHD and Claude really helps me, is helping me stay on task better because I have 50 squirrel moments a day. That's why I have literally like 40 Claude projects. I love the projects.”

“There's a blend across work and personal. Right now I'm getting my education doctorate. So I'm doing my whole dissertation on AI's role, like my evolution of my leadership skills in conjunction with gen AI. So I use it probably a lot between work and personal and school. For school I'll even have it read my writing and then give me like a review, and not do it for me but just tell me how to improve it. Or I see what it recommends for clarity and conciseness in the writing and then any kind of grammatical errors, I'll use it for that. I'll use it to brainstorm professional development ideas with me for teachers. As far as like, I use a lot of design thinking in the professional development sessions with teachers that I create, and I will have it reference design thinking protocols or design justice thinking protocols to make PD better than what I could do alone, because I have a very limited amount of time to create.”

“Oh my goodness. Well, it's a new role that I started in June and I started the new role into administration in June. So, I'm trying to think, what did I used to do with it? Oh, AI. Okay. So, one thing, does it have to be in my role or can it be in my personal life? Okay. So, I used to meal plan without the use of AI and that was just like looking up recipes and then putting them in an app and the app would tell me what to go buy at the grocery store. Now, I just say, "Perplexity, I am wanting a high protein diet that's low cost. Tell me what to buy at the grocery store. You have all my health data. What should I be eating?" It creates the whole meal plan with the recipes and gives me the shopping list in less than a minute and I like that.”

“And then I use it, I still design as a side gig, and with client's approval I will write whole courses for them and just have it reference their writing style on their website. Well, this one client I have, she has a very unique voice that she speaks in and has podcasting and stuff. So, I'm like, just look up this site, write in her voice with this content and go.”

“So my first win was I took a picture of my fridge and I gave a prompt saying, "Today, you're my personal chef, create for me easy to put together recipes for the week and keep shopping at minimum. I like this, this and this. You are allowed to use all or any of the ingredients, not necessarily everything at once." So, it was very descriptive of what I needed to do, what kind of task, and then I was like, whoa. I got out the whole menu for like four days and I was like, I like that. Then I was like, okay, I'm going to test my pantry. So I went there and I did, okay, now I need something and now I'm trying to do other things. Then I moved to the financial part of it. So okay, I started testing areas and I was like, okay, this is better than me, you know, that's going to be my new BFF. You know, Google is no longer my BFF, you know, it's just my acquaintance nowadays.”

“Those are the parameters, deliver for me by 8 a.m. every day the top 15 jobs. So that's what I start doing, you know, find all the blind spots. Now I'm updating my portfolio because everything that I have designed, not just for [former company] but for [previous employer], I cannot publish because the whole confidentiality. I do have the hard copy. So now I'm converting my pieces into case studies and trying to find a way around, because when you submit your portfolio for review, if they don't see the images they automatically disqualify you. So it's like, okay, a site cannot have the images but if I don't have the images I don't get the job. So I started doing those day searches and project management too. So that's how that started and I'm loving it. I'm taking also, this past weekend I got, it's a very basic thing but it's been helping me a lot, it's from Cursive.io. So it's a very basic course for all those most used AI tools, so Lovable, Claude, Midjourney, little classes that teach me the basics so I know a little glimpse of what I can do with each. So that's what I've been up to now.”

“Where do we have gaps in our finances that we could cut that we're not seeing? Like, here's all of our charges, where are hidden subscriptions that we don't see, or where are areas that we could cut back?”

“My husband is a very numbers person. So being able to use it for that has been, I think, the most, like, my big "oh wow" moment was like, oh my gosh, I can do meal planning for my family without having to do all this extra work. And then I can feed it different variables. And then using it for. My husband does it for more of a technical deep dive, because I'm not the person that you talk to about all of these servers and data and stuff. But being able to essentially be a financial planner for us without paying for one. Because we tend to research a lot of things on our own and it just really speeds up that process.”

“And then same thing for personal, like most recently I've used it for, here's a picture of my room, I need you to decorate it for me. Or, here is our finances. Where do we have gaps in our finances that we could cut that we're not seeing? Like, here's all of our charges, where are hidden subscriptions that we don't see, or where are areas that we could cut back? That's the biggest change that we've been able to make, is doing our own forecasting without actually manually writing the tool ourselves.”

“I still gathered a lot of the information to feed into the tool. But I didn't also have to think of prompts on my own. In my personal life, I use it for many different things. I use it a lot for just bouncing ideas off of someone when I don't necessarily know the answer, or like getting, doing quick research. For example, we're trying to figure out a play set structure in the backyard, and being able to put in our plot plan and have it give the overall recommendation. But I think the first time I actually used it for my personal life was trying to figure out a recipe for dinner. I'm like, I have this at my house. I need it to be ready in 30 minutes. Like, what do I do? And it's been great. So, ever since then, my husband and I have used it for forecasting finances and stuff and retirement, and we can put in a bunch of different data points.”