Transcript & Summary: How I use AI to save 10+ hours per week

[00:00] hey friends welcome to the very first episode of everyday AI a new series where I'm documenting how I'm experimenting personally with various AI tools to boost my productivity achieve my goals and just generally make life a little bit easier in this video I'm going to do a general rundown of how I am personally using AI every day to save at least like 10 plus hours a week and I'm going to be honest if you are already an expert in using Ai and you already know how to do the fancy stuff and you're already deep in the AI Rabbit [00:25] Hole I don't think this video is going to be particularly helpful for you but if you're a relative beginner to the AI stuff and you are not using AI absolutely every hour of every day in your job I'm hoping that something in this video might spark an idea that helps you refine your own approach to AI final thing to say before we dive in is that my life as an entrepreneur and writer and YouTuber may not mirror yours exactly but the ways that I've always found most helpful when learning any kind of tools but in particular AI tools [00:49] is what I call cross context learning basically just looking over the shoulder of someone else who's in a different industry and seeing how they use Ai and then being able to apply it to my own context and so I'm hoping that by showing you exactly what my process looks like you'll be able to cross context apply the stuff into your own work and your own life use case number one how I use AI to augment my writing every day all right so there's a couple of AI tools that I string together whenever I need to write anything so in [01:14] my case I need to write my email newsletter I need to write internal memos for the team all of my YouTube videos are Downstream of writing all of our social media posts are Downstream of writing now broadly I have a three-step process for writing anything step one is that I speak into an app called voice pal that I have built with my team secondly the stuff from from voice pal then goes into either chat GPT or clawed by anthropic and then phase three is that it usually goes from chat GPT or clawed straight into notion where I make [01:37] any final edits that I need to do before the thing is able to be sent so today I need to write my email newsletter and this is the process that I'm going through I start off by opening voice pal and as you can see I've been using voice pal for a very very very very long time since the 9th of December 2023 when we first started building the app now at this point I can hit record or I can hit type type is what I would do if I just want to capture a thought to come back to later but in this context I'm going [01:59] to record okay so I want to do my email newsletter this week about I want to do it about a technique that I've recently been thinking about for beating procrastination and that technique is to go through the motions in the context of filming YouTube videos I procrastinate a lot from hitting the record button for filming YouTube videos because there's all these like emotional and cognitive barriers that get in the way around like oh is this video going to be Val valuable is it good enough etc etc but I [02:24] found that going through the motions I.E just like doing my hair and putting on my hoodie and getting the camera angle sorted essentially sort of setting myself up for Success on the thing makes the step the next step of getting started with the task way easier so it's like a very slow onramp all right so that was phase one I start off by rambling whatever I've got off the top of my head into the thing normally I don't actually do this sitting on my desk normally I will put in my airpods go for a walk and then like do the stuff [02:50] then and that tends to be how I create the bulk of my content through like emails and stuff and then the really cool thing is that voice pal is asking me sensible follow-up questions so it's asking what specific emotional or cognitive barriers do you face when procrastinating on tasks can you share any personal anecdotes or stories to illustrate the effectiveness going through the emotions how do you think this technique of going through the motions can be applied to other common procrastination scenarios I can also [03:11] click on this button and it will ask me even more sensible follow-up questions for example how do you measure the success of this technique in overcoming procrastination it's a good question what are some variations of this technique that could work for different types of tasks how can this technique be adapted for group settings or collaborative projects and then I can click any of these and then it will start recording for that particular one can you share any personal anecdotes of stories that illustrate the [03:31] effectiveness of going through the motions yes I can actually um so until I just started telling myself you know what I'm just going to go through the motions great so that is going to upload and then you can see it's added the it's added what I've just said to the stream and now it's asking me even more follow-up questions based on this how do you think the concept of going through the motions can be applied to different areas of life beyond exercise and content creation one of my philosophies on using AI tools is that the goal is [03:58] not to get the AI to write the stuff because like what's the point right like what's the point I could I could go and clae or Chad or whatever and I could say hey just write a newsletter for me it sort of defeats the purpose right the purpose is for this to be a personal newsletter where I'm sharing what are genuinely my own thoughts and so the reason I'm using AI to augment this is to help me pull stuff out of myself rather than to do the work for me the kernel and the seed of the idea is coming from me myself and I'm only using [04:27] the AI in a way to augment that all right do one more what specific emotional or cognitive barriers do you face when trying to start a task and how do you think going through the emotions can help address them uh for me [04:39] personally okay fantastic so now we have created a stream out of these four thoughts if I wanted to I could now press the export button and I could create a draft of Life notes so let's see what this looks like straight up this is actually using uh Claude 3.5 behind the scenes to do the writing uh I don't like this either okay so generally if I don't like the output what I will do is I will hit copy to clipboard and now I can go on Claude which is my favorite app for writing stuff I have created a project for where [05:15] is it for Life notes and then I can go on Claude and say let's turn this into an issue of Life notes and let's see what Claude does uh eh yeah no don't like it it's oh it's it's it's really over over indexing on like one format of newsletter that I once wrote H okay go away don't really like it all right let's try CH jpt uh I have a life notes project in chat GPT boom you know what actually this is pretty good um so what I find useful is I almost always use both Claude and a chat GPT and give them basically the [05:55] same prompt uh Claude I have found to be for the most part 8 % of the time just better at writing but the nice thing about Chad GPT is that Chad GPT has the memory function so it actually knows a lot more about me than Claude does and so maybe like 20% of the time Chad gbt will just give me a better first draft compared to the thing that I've created with CLA cool so what I will do I feel like this is good enough for a first draft I'm now just going to open up notion paste it into notion so now I've [06:19] got the thing and now I'm going to do my own edits on this because for example I don't really want the subheadings there is one other thing I often try which is that with voice P what I can do is I can go into each stream and I can show the original transcript so this has all of the m and R's and all of that kind of stuff but then I can copy that stuff into for example [06:43] Claude you know actually this is good this is pretty good let's just bang out the same thing in chat GPT and just see which one is better so I'm going to create a new one within this project boom this is also good I like this I prefer it compared to this one boom I don't like simple but powerful eh it's a bit too yeah [07:17] so okay so this is actually not bad now um this is what the process looks like most of the time so we're starting off with the transcript and stuff from voice pal either exporting a draft straight into notion from voice P although usually I tend to use chagi P or clae as like an interim to be able to sort of like have a bit of a conversation with it back and forth and then you can see when it goes into notion there's actually quite a few edits that I've made that I've made to the whole thing one mistake I've often seen people make [07:42] with AI tools uh is that they sort of think that the output is just going to be amazing straight up but you saw like in in this example I did like four or five different outputs a few with Claude a few with Claude project if you would chat gbt chat gbt project even voice P directly and for all of them I was like eh eh like it's fine but it's not perfect it's and sort of by doing these outputs a few different times you come to one that's like 80% good and then I shove it into notion or whatever text [08:08] editor of choice and then I go through and make the edits and it's just this back and forth process I've seen a lot of people think that like oh my God AI can just help me with with my writing and they expect the process to Take 5 Seconds it usually doesn't take 5 Seconds previously writing my newsletter would take me about 2 hours cuz I'd be typing everything up now it takes more like half an hour because I start off by speaking and then like with voice pal like throughout the week I can just sort [08:31] of send in thoughts and then you know usually by the time I get to writing my newsletter I've got at least some thoughts of stuff that I was capturing throughout the week and then it becomes a lot easier to make it happen oh by the way if you are enjoying this video so far and you might like to start your own business someday then a great resource to use is Shopify who are very kindly sponsoring this video if you didn't know Shopify is a wonderful Commerce platform that allows you to start and grow and [08:54] manage a business Shopify Powers entrepreneurs by giving you all of the tools that you need to create your business where wherever you are in the world and Shopify that's you sell stuff online or in person or across all of the major social platforms with Integrations for Google YouTube Facebook Instagram and Pinterest and many more and if you want to sell products it is a fantastic way of starting your first business or your side hustle without needing to worry about how to set up a checkout platform or how to manage the operations [09:16] that comes with the faffy of selling stuff on the internet in our business we have personally used Shopify to sell our stationary products to sell our mechanical keyboards and we've also used Shopify to sell some of our digital products like our online courses if you are interested in checking out shop ify then head over to shopify.com Al abdal and that link is also in the video description and that'll let you sign up to a completely free trial of Shopify so that you can try it out and see if it Vibes with you so thank you so much to [09:39] Shopify for powering our business and for sponsoring this video so at this point we have this in our newsletter um as part of my newsletter I also have a section of my favorite things this week I tend not to use AI for that um I tend to just write them so for example I would write something like [10:06] you know sometimes you just write something like this and like AI can't write like this if I must say this is this a good writing well it's not really good writing but it's it's very very me it was quite fun it was quite fun writing this little little paragraph fanboying about this um Tim Ferris Brandon Sanderson podcast interview um sometimes even even though we're in the world of AI and and even though I showed an example of like you know how I used voice pal and Claude and stuff to write this newsletter sometimes I have a clearer [10:42] vision of what I want to say then typing it myself helps me kind of express myself in in this sort of way if I tried explaining this to chat GPT or to voice pal or to Claude or whatever it would have it would have lost them with a color like this is this is colorful and sometimes we just go for color we don't go for like I don't know Clarity of writing or whatever the other thing that I use which I find AI very helpful for is notion AI because I can just do command J and I can say suggest 10 subject lines for this email and let's [11:15] see what it suggests oh okay how I trick my brain into being more productive you know what let's go for that one why not that's easy uh FB six the how I TI my being more productive great if I didn't have notion AI copy that go into Claude and say uh generate uh 20 subject lines for this email please oh it's got how I TR my brain to being productive so I find this sort of thing quite helpful just like copying and pasting stuff into CLA or chat GPT and then being able to just Riff on that okay so that was a lot of how we use AI [11:51] for writing again there's like tons and tons of stuff I I've been doing this for years now with Claude which had GPT so if this is interesting I would love to hear in the comments uh what is like what more would you like to see we do this a lot we use AI for pretty much every aspect of our team's workflow and my personal life but I would love to know what you guys find helpful cuz so then we can make more videos in in the series so another major use case that we use AI for is for any sort of data [12:13] analysis so anytime there is a CSV or yeah any kind of spreadsheet I'm like glorious I can just give it to chat GPT and or clawed and get it to analyze it so for example I can go into advanced mode for the our YouTube analytics like of the last 365 days of content and I can download a CSV file great I'm just going to grab this where is it table data shove it into Claude and say this is analytics data from my YouTube channel I want you to analyze it and based on the data suggest the next 10 videos I could make if I [12:45] wanted to maximize views and subscriber growth let's see what it comes up with so we've got the SS of habit formation evidencebased strategies that actually work okay seven High income skills that be valuable in 2026 okay probably 25 how to build wealth in your 20s a step-by-step guide oh that's good that will do well the psychology of focus how to 10x your concentration oh that's a good title student side hustles that actually make money in 2025 with proof okay how to learn any new skill faster the signs of rid learning yep [13:11] good video five common money mistakes students make and how to avoid them yeah easy evidence-based time management how top yep nice how to turn your skills into six fig business the science of motivation why most people fail to reach their goals actually these are all pretty good your top performing videos average around 35 minutes wow aim for 30 to 40 minute videos fair enough okay here is a prompt that I quite like you've given me a level one response I want you to go deeper and give me a level two and three [13:39] response that's always a little fun thing to try with pretty much any prompt okay interesting level three micro optimization o title structure Matrix this is interesting oh that's a nice video how to make your first $100,000 in 2025 five skills make richion 2025 the signs of success eh how to build a six figure side hustle yep that's nice evidencebased study method actually yep that's nice how to build wealth while studying yep that's nice will stay poor in 2026 The Ultimate Guide to Financial Freedom okay interesting five high [14:15] income skills to learn before 2026 yep that's nice how to actually achieve your goals science based yeah we've already done that so a couple weeks ago me and my wife went to uh Taiwan for a our like baby moon which is apparently the final holiday you go on before you have a baby cuz we've got a baby in a few months and so while we were in Taiwan I was actually using Claude as my personal tour guide so this was kind of how it went how how it went I am currently in um this big Square in Taipei in Taiwan [14:43] and there is this absolutely there's these two identical looking absolutely enormous buildings on either side of the square uh where am I and can and what can you tell me about it it sounds like your Liberty Square formerly known as Chang sh Chang Kai shakor Square yep that was it the National Theater National Concert Hall nice that's interesting help me understand the whole like semiconductor thing like how did how did Taiwan become like the home of semiconductors oh that's a fascinating story that combin strategic planning [15:13] education and timing here's how Taiwan became the semiconductor Powerhouse Story begins in the 1970s why is creating semiconductors so difficult and why how on Earth can it be the case that this single company controls 90% of the supply of semiconductors that seems utterly utterly bizarre considering how important semiconductors are in the world okay I'm in this temple in Taipei and there are people who are throwing down these uh what look to be Stones um or sticks or something yeah they're picking up sticks and then they're [15:48] throwing them onto the floor what's going on here oh you're seeing people use Moon blocks these are CR sa this was like exactly what me and my wife were doing when we were in exploring Taiwan it was like was like like Claude was basically our own personal tour guide like any question that we had we were like you know just speak directly into it get a response and then we were sort of reading it out to each other so that you know we it was like you know a viy way of like jointly having Claude be our [16:12] tour guide while we were hanging out in in Taiwan now Chad GPT also does work as a as a as a tour guide and I do use it for a lot of stuff but to use CH GPT as a tour guide uh I am currently in uh Calon in Hong Kong I want you to tell me some interesting things about cowon station so you hit the tick button and then you have to press the send button and so it takes two clicks to be able to speak to it rather than one click so that was two clicks right so you it transcribes first and then it and then you press the [16:44] button whereas with Claude you press the transcription button and it does it straight away so just that elimination of friction is why I prefer claw rather than chat GPT when I'm doing like this sort of casual search enging like um tour guiding as I'm as I'm going around Chad B does have its um sort of real-time feedback thing but I don't really like it cuz it talks too slowly hey Chad BT uh I'm currently uh thinking of cooking something special for my wife for Valentine's Day she really likes sushi but she's currently [17:18] pregnant so she's not allowed to eat like raw fish can you help me come up with some variant of [17:27] sushi that's a lovely idea since Izzy loves sushi but can't have raw fish while pregnant you can make pregnancy safe sushi with cooked ingredients veggies and creative flavors here are some great options cooked and safe Seafood Sushi shrimp Andor it's not bad it's just it just speaks a little bit too slowly so I generally prefer to interact with these different tools while where I speak to them and then they they give me the response in text and then we just kind of go back and forth but purely because [17:56] of that slight extra friction of like the double click on Chad GPT that's why I prefer to use Claude um there's also perplexity that I've been experimenting with for like search enging e type stuff but you know these are some of the ways that I use AI to save lots of time in my work and my life all right this video is getting insanely long but if you are still here in the video I hope you have found value from it again please I would love it if you could leave a comment down below and tell me what you liked [18:16] about it and what you didn't like about it so that when I make more videos in this series uh we can just make them as as useful as possible thank you so much for watching and I will see you hopefully in the next video bye-bye