AI Transformation: A Soothing Framework for Adapting to the Future

Introducing a practical approach for keeping up with the rapid changes driven by AI.

AI transformation means using AI to exponentially enhance the performance, creativity, and well-being of yourself or your organization.¹

Some examples:

• Summarizing articles, podcasts, and research papers with AI can reduce the time such tasks take by well over 50%.

• Involving AI in decision-making improves their quality significantly. Computers don’t have emotions or cognitive biases, and can quickly run through scenarios and large data sets.

• Using AI as a brainstorming partner boosts creativity because it comes up with many ideas quickly, often suggesting highly unusual—and not always useless—options.

We're talking exponential enhancements here, even on a case-by-case basis. Then consider the combined effects of all these individual changes, and things truly look transformational: you can do the same work in less time with higher quality results.

The AI transformation race is on

When you start the flywheel of AI transformation, you create a process that delivers compounding results: The more AI enhances your performance, creativity, and well-being, the more time, energy, or money you have to accelerate further. Naturally, the inverse is true: Any person or organization not on that flywheel falls further and further behind.

AI-induced stress is real

A friend, Rémy Trichard, recently told me: “AI is not going to replace people. People using AI are going to replace people not using AI.”

These words touch on the flywheel's effect but also the stress AI transformation causes—the uncomfortable feeling many of us have felt over the past six months, ranging from light discomfort to existential crises.

Whether you can articulate it or sense it in your gut, we—writers, content marketers, other creatives—are one of the first groups to have entered a game of musical chairs, with the stakes being our livelihoods.

Staying in this game requires keeping up with an ungodly amount of information: AI tools, content, news, rumors, and on and on. You need to filter little signal from a lot of noise and somehow make time to integrate what's valuable into your workflow.

And then we haven’t even asked the tactical, strategic, and fundamental questions, like:

• What will my role look like in six months? In two years? In five years?

• Which skills should I learn? Which ones should I forget about?

• In which AI opportunities should I invest time or money?

No wonder we’re all getting stressed out. 🤯

A simple framework for AI transformation

I've created an easy-to-follow framework to help you with AI transformation. This model allows you to address essential questions, oversee various time horizons, and dedicate sufficient time to each phase—without getting overwhelmed.

Now: What can transform my daily work immediately?

Before, a new tool or skill might have increased your performance by up to 10%. While meaningful, many of us don't regularly invest time in learning or trying out apps. The benefits might take weeks or months to appear, and, well, who isn't busy? 🤷‍♂️

Now, with AI’s growing capabilities and the explosion of apps, there are tools that can impact your work immediately and dramatically—in the 50%+ range. You can find an AI tool today that will save you hours right away, and days in the long run.

This overview from Is It Worth the Time? shows when the time invested in making a task more efficient pays off. AI dramatically changes the stakes because the potential to shave off large amounts of time has increased exponentially.

This shift means the Return On Attention (RoA) from research, experimenting, and learning has skyrocketed. Every day, a new app, tool, or prompt might emerge that can completely transform your work. Regularly tinkering with new tools and approaches isn’t just a nice idea anymore; it has become essential for professional survival.

How to make regular research and experimentation a habit?

Consider planning a daily or weekly block to create time for reading and experiments. I prefer one 25-minute daily block (one Pomodoro), which I schedule in my calendar first thing in the morning before checking messages or starting other work.²

Another option, particularly suitable for companies, is setting a designated day or time block for the entire team, such as every Wednesday morning.

How should you spend your research and experimentation time blocks?

During these blocks, focus on two types of activities:

1. Consume. Read, watch, and gather information about new tools, trends, and techniques.

2. Experiment. Select and test the most promising tools and tricks to find what works best for you.

While the experiment aspect is self-explanatory, consumption can be overwhelming because of the crazy volume of info.

To make the information stream manageable, spend the first few blocks curating sources relevant to you and your industry. These can be newsletters, YouTubers, magazines, communities, coworkers, or any other media that work for you.

Not immediately trying out tools may feel counterproductive, but investing time in curating a focused and relevant information selection pays off later. This approach prevents overload and keeps you from impulsively trying whichever tool happens to be at the top of your inbox or social feeds.

Another effective strategy is alternating between consumption and experimentation: during the first block, you consume, and in the next session, you experiment, then repeat the process.

Next months: What should I start creating or learning now to transform future work?

Focusing on trends and tools daily isn't enough. We're only at the start of the AI revolution. There are opportunities, needs, and risks unique to your skills and situation that demand a more significant investment of attention or money—beyond what you can cover in daily or weekly blocks.

Examples of "next months" time horizon activities:

• Taking an art direction course to create better AI image prompts.

• Investing time or money in building a prompt database for yourself or the entire company.

• Hiring a developer to design an AI app that writes in your style or brand's voice.

These are non-trivial decisions with potentially large payoffs in time saved, quality increased, or money earned.

How to make “next months” considerations happen?

As with the now horizon, you won't find time to ask, "What should I start creating or learning now to transform future work?" unless you establish a routine.

If you have a monthly ritual, like a review or retrospective, allocate time for this question within that existing routine. If you don't already have such a ritual, create one. (A futurespective format works well. This article offers effective and fun meeting templates you can customize for AI transformation.)

Next years: What will my role look like with GPTn+2? (where n is the current version)

In this time horizon, imagine how the world might change when the GPT engine evolves two generations from now.

As AI progresses, your current role might transform or become irrelevant in a few years. Developing hypotheses about the future can help you make better long-term decisions.

Consider these hypotheses as examples you could envision during such an exercise to think about your future:

1. Content marketers write much less. In two years, content marketers spend less than 10% of their time writing, as AI handles most of that work.

2. Creative agencies de-specialize. Specialized creative agencies broaden their offerings, as AI allows design agencies to create content and vice versa.

How to envision GPTn+2?

Imagining the multi-year impact of a non-existent AI model is haaaard, but we’ve got to try. Run thought experiments and scenarios, drawing insights and feedback from content, peers, friends, coworkers, consultants, AI³, Reddit; wherever you can get them—the potential trajectories are just too difficult to predict alone.

Incorporate these exercises into routines like quarterly strategy retreats or personal year-end reviews. Your approach can range from straightforward and quick to lengthy and elaborate, depending on the scope of the issue you're considering.

Making the AI transformation journey together

I created this framework to simplify the overwhelming process of AI transformation. My goal is to provide clarity and structure for your thoughts and actions, making the overload of information and considerations more manageable.

Share your feedback, ideas, and experiences with the framework so that we can refine it and make it even more helpful for others. Please leave a comment below or send me a message with your thoughts!

👋

Tim

1. Check out AI as a sparring partner for writing to read how I used AI to come to this definition.

2. If I try doing these blocks later in the day, they almost never happen, because this activity is important but almost never urgent.

3. Ironically, AI can be a great help here. You can ask ChatGPT to help you think through the pros, cons, and future scenarios for specific questions and ideas.