An Honest Look at My AI-Powered Workday

Many people think of AI as a simple chatbot - but I get more done by managing it like a cross-functional team.

Today, it became my strategist, researcher, and tech lead (simultaneously).

Background: As a self-employed consultant juggling multiple business functions, I've been wondering just how much my productivity has truly improved with AI. I've also been sharing some productivity gains in recent posts, and many of you have asked questions about my approach.

So I decided to document everything I accomplished in a single day. The exercise was partly for my own clarity - to see if I'm genuinely being more productive or just feeling busy - and partly to understand how I'm actually using these tools in practice to answer your questions.

I tracked everything I did today, both with and without AI assistance, and the results were eye-opening.

In a single day, with AI assistance for the vast majority of tasks, I accomplished work across multiple categories:

Content Strategy & Social

🔍 Developed a very detailed internal LinkedIn strategy after analysing 365 and 90 days of post analytics
📘 Created an internal guides for LinkedIn carousel creation (I need to do more carousels instead of always text posts)
💬 Posted and planned my daily LinkedIn comments (maintaining my 3-5 daily habit)
✍️ Started drafting a blog on AI ethics with copyrighted works (incredibly nuanced topic)
🧾 Began planning a blog on how to review an outgoing client proposal the brief (before sending)

Business Development & Research

📊 Analysed 3 competitors' e-learning courses for insights (I'm planning my "AI Accelerator" series)
📧 Analysed 6 months of my email marketing analytics (to find patterns and suggest strategy)
🎙️ Researched options for automating more of my podcast production (I have dropped the ball on the podcast recently)

Technical Implementation

🤖 Built, deployed, and tested an AI chatbot on Vercel (a cloud computing site)
🛡️ Used my custom GPT to check if Vercel are GDPR compliant (in case I want to use them)
🔗 Configured GitHub integration for future development projects (I needed this for Vercel)
📨 Communicated with OpenAI support to resolve account issues

All while having ~10 different AI conversations running simultaneously.

And by the way, that work was GOOD, not shody AI rubbish. As an example, the LinkedIn strategy is solid, and detailed, and highly customised for me and this business:

It's 6,000 words in total and includes strategy, and implementation (e.g. checklists + examples).

The clear upsides

The sheer volume of work I completed and ideas generated in a single day would have been impossible before. AI has become my thinking partner, research assistant, and implementation aide all at once. As an independent consultant wearing multiple hats, I’m genuinely more productive across all the different areas my business requires attention.

Rather than just a helper following instructions, I’ve found treating AI as a distributed team - with different conversations handling different specialised roles - dramatically multiplies what I can accomplish. The quality hasn’t suffered either—in many cases, this approach helps me think through problems more thoroughly and consider angles I might have overlooked.

The honest challenges

While I’m confident I’m being more productive, managing this “multi-threaded” approach requires intention. With a lot of AI conversations running simultaneously, there’s a very real risk of starting more than I can properly finish. The cognitive switching between different domains is smoother with AI assistance, but still requires mental bandwidth. (And if you don't like having a lot of tabs open, my web browser today would have terrified you.)

There’s something both exhilarating and occasionally overwhelming about how quickly I can now move from idea to execution across multiple domains simultaneously.

What I’m learning:

1. For consultants & business leaders juggling multiple business functions, AI is genuinely transformative - it multiplies output capacity
2. Structure becomes MORE important with AI, not less
3. The ability to categorise and batch similar tasks becomes important
4. Having clear “done criteria” helps harness AI’s power without endless exploration

I’m still optimising my workflow, but I’ve never been more productive or had more business opportunities in development simultaneously.

What about you?

Has AI dramatically changed your workday? How are you managing the expanded capacity it offers? And what systems have you found helpful for organising all the possibilities it creates?

Hit reply - I'd love to hear about how it's working (or not working) for you! And if you need help, I'd be happy to chat.

Alastair.

My mission is to help you and your team automate repetitive tasks, boost productivity, and drive innovation - all with a Human-First approach. I’ll help you create systems where robots and humans peacefully coexist - with no one plotting the other's obsolescence!

“If your opinion on AI can fit on a bumper sticker, you’re probably wrong”

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