How I’m using AI to move quicker
by Bene Donovan // 26 June 2025
AI has a lot of problems. It makes mistakes, hallucinates facts, and sometimes earnestly serves up total nonsense. So it’s not always trustworthy, and it definitely shouldn’t be driving your thinking.
But.
If you know where AI falls short AND keep your own brain switched on it can be your crafty collaborator, ready to help you turn any idea into reality. It’s not the brains of the operation, more like an extra pair of hands. I don’t expect it to do the work for me, but it helps me do more work, faster, with fewer roadblocks in the way.
If you're someone who overthinks things or waits too long to get going, that bit of extra speed makes all the difference.
What I want to share today are three uses for AI that I think are massively underused. They’ve changed how I think, work, and make progress in projects. And you can start implementing them today.
Note: I’m using ChatGPT. Other AI chatbots are available.
1. Dictation: Talking your ideas into existence
Rather than typing everything out, I now dictate pretty much all my ideas to get them down onto the page. My fingers have gotten lazy – and I’m totally fine with that! It’s faster, more natural, and honestly, it just feels right.
Just a few years ago, voice-to-text tools barely understood a word. Now, the accuracy is freaky. Even when I mumble or trail off mid-sentence, it picks up on pretty much everything. It’s a breakthrough that’s going to have all sorts of implications for how we interact with our tech.
In a way, we’ve come full circle. We started off as cavemen grunting at each other, then figured out how to make marks on cave walls. Then came paper, typewriters, computers... and now we’re back to grunting again – but this time our computers understand us.
I use dictation for all sorts of things – brain dumps, half-formed ideas, walking rambles. Last week I dictated a short eBook on the walk to work. If I’ve got a rough thought floating around, I just hit record and let it spill out. Then I clean it up later.
And it speeds things up massively! The average person speaks English at around 120-150 words per minute (WPM), while the average typing speed is around 40 WPM. That means talking your words onto the page rather than typing can make you up to 3x faster. Yes, it takes a bit of practice to keep the words flowing, and you probably shouldn’t do it next to your colleagues in the office… but do you really want to be sat at your desk anyway?
A huge benefit of this technique is it lets you get away from your computer. Somewhere along the line, “work” became synonymous with “sitting at a computer.” I’m all for anything that keeps desktime to a minimum. Dictation frees you up to work while walking and moving. It shifts your mental state completely and lets the ideas flow in a way they otherwise mightn’t.
This is also one of the best ways I’ve found to maintain your voice in an AI-saturated world. Everyone’s using the same tools, and text is all starting to sound the same – bland, polished, safe. But when you speak your ideas, your soul remains intact.
I’ve got plenty more dictation tips to share. In the meantime, next time you're out on a walk, open ChatGPT on your phone, hit the mic icon 🎤, and talk through an idea that’s been on your mind. Then let the bot tidy up your stream-of-consciousness into something coherent.
It’s like having a new superpower – and I guarantee you’ll soon uncover countless uses for it.
2. Apply frameworks to your own messy life
I think we can all agree: books are great for learning new things. The trouble is, by their nature, the advice is general. They’re written for broad audiences, so they speak in frameworks and principles, not specifics. And unless you’re naturally good at applying abstract ideas to your own situation, you’re kind of on your own. If you get stuck, tough luck. The book’s not going to bend over backwards to help you out.
This is where AI becomes incredibly useful. One of the most underrated things you can do with it is take a book you like, grab a summary of the core ideas, and ask the AI to apply it directly to your life.
Let’s take Atomic Habits by James Clear, a highly practical book all about how to make your habits stick. He handily provides a summary of the whole book on his website. Copy & paste that into the chatbox. Then tell the AI everything you want it to know – your goal, your context, your sticking points. You want to start running? Great. But you’re slightly overweight, not a morning person, and haven’t gone running in years. (Yes, I might be speaking from experience.)
Now let the AI do its thing. It’ll take those core principles and generate a personalised running plan. One tailored to you, in seconds.
That’s crazy to me. It fixes one of the biggest problems with AI: its tendency to give vague, generic advice. Normally, it draws from everything ever written by anyone in the history of human civilisation, which is... a bit much. But if you focus it – give it a narrow lane and a clear goal – it suddenly becomes laser sharp.
So if you finish a book and think, “Yeah, but how do I actually use this?”, try this approach. Treat the AI like your own personal coach. It’s like having the author rewrite the book just for you.
3. Spotting your blindspots
This is another thing I’ve been doing more and more. Whenever I talk through an idea, I’ll ask the AI to look at it and tell me what I’m not seeing.
A few different ways you can use this:
“Tell me what I'm missing.”
One of my favourite prompts. Simple but effective. You give AI as much context as you can (again, dictation is useful for this. You can also copy & paste any relevant info). Then just ask it: What am I overlooking? It will always picks up on something you hadn’t considered – not because it’s smarter, but because it's not trapped in your own head.
Critique on demand.
Roleplay time! You can ask the bot to play devil’s advocate, tear holes in your argument, or review it like a grumpy investor. Stress-testing your idea, you’ll get instant suggestions for how to punch it up, without the awkwardness of a real person shooting you down. And as you’re working with a chatbot, you can develop the idea with a bit of back and forth until you’ve arrived at something you’re happy with.
Zoom in/out.
Ask it to zoom out: “What bigger context am I missing?”
Then zoom in: “What’s one small area I’m underthinking?”
Use it like a lens – wide-angle and microscope.
Forced reframing.
Get it to intentionally reframe your idea:
- “What would a total beginner think of this?”
- “What if this idea was built for kids instead of adults?”
- “What’s a more cynical take on this whole plan?”
- “How would a scientist rip this apart?”
- “What would a burnt-out version of me hate about this idea?”
It helps you think outside the box and break you out of your own framing – which is often where your blindspots are hiding.
Cut to the heart of the matter.
We all get stuck in our own little echo chambers. The AI doesn’t care what you meant, it looks at what you actually said. That honesty can sometimes be brutal, but in the long-term it’s always useful. So ask: “What am I really trying to say here? What’s the real intent behind my words?”
Finally: Don’t lose your mind to the machine
All of this sounds like magic. But let me be really clear: it’s not. This only works if you show up with clear intent, strong instincts, and a willingness to use your own judgement. AI can accelerate your process, yes. But it can’t give you vision. It can’t give you taste. It can’t tell you what actually matters to you.
As Harry Dry points out, “There is no AI prompt for conviction”.
Sometimes it will spit out the exact insight you need. Sometimes it serves up total rubbish with a confident grin. You’ve got to stay sharp. Use it like the tool that it is, not a fountain of truth.
Stick to your guns 🔫
