I spend a lot of time teaching people how to use Gen AI to reduce the amount of time spent on doing mundane or repetitive work. However, I often emphasise that the time saved doesn’t immediately equate to having more free time to spend doomscrolling on your phone.
We should use the recovered time to focus on more important things like spending time with our families, engaging our customers, self-learning, and getting proper sleep. You see, all important things take time to do.
For instance, I’m currently redesigning an assignment for my NTU undergrad class, and that takes hours to do over several days. I will write out the first draft, and after a good night’s sleep, I will realise that there are certain logical and logistical gaps I’ve missed, then I have to revise it again a few days later. This happens even though I asked ChatGPT and Gemini to comb through the assignment brief, but the machines cannot see what my subconscious can. And my subconscious needs time to work on the problem.
The same goes with the other things I was working on for my consultancy and training projects. I can’t say, “Oh, I will finish this in the next two hours” and be done with it. All good work requires a few days or weeks of thinking, iteration, and refinement.
The past week has been so busy that I’ve not been able to touch my Chinese language studies or my online Udemy course (for an advanced AI topic), and that makes me upset because I’ve lost my learning momentum. How will I be effectively bilingual and keep ahead of the AI curve if I haven’t spent time to make these two things happen? But there are non-negotiables – I will still make time for my 6km jogs three times a week, rain or shine.
The bottom line is that we cannot rush many things if we want to do a good job. While Gen AI can indeed speed up many things, you don’t want to rely on it for the things that demonstrate your true value. Writing meeting minutes is an essential but low-value task, so we should automate that. Following up with clients to ask how they are is a high-value task, so you should not send an automated email, but give them a call or set up a coffee session.
Even writing these few paras takes me half an hour, and I need to spend another 30 minutes refining this newsletter before I’m ready to publish it. I will not automate my newsletter because obviously, you don’t want to read a machine’s work. Why, your time is precious!
What I wrote last week
Gen AI doesn’t just augment work, but magnifies who we are.
A thought exercise I did with my undergrad students about their future jobs.
Why I promote the use of AI-generated images even though they have very little value in themselves.
Jet Li has some important philosophical advice to give you: “So Be It”.
I discovered how to edit the text in NotebookLM slide decks!
I think the new Masters of the Universe movie will flop. It’s just too generic and too late.
The funniest photo I saw this week.
Here’s the latest batch of learners from The Straits Times Masterclass in Advanced Gen AI in a cute forest setting. The next set of Masterclasses will be in April, find out more on STSkills.