You’re Not Behind (Yet): How to Learn AI in 19 Minutes

AAli Abdaal
Computing/SoftwareSmall Business/StartupsManagementAdult EducationInternet Technology

Transcript

00:00:00In this video, we're gonna talk through
00:00:01the five phase process that you can follow
00:00:03to become fluent, native, super productive,
00:00:05using AI in about three months.
00:00:07Increasingly, business owners are genuinely making decisions
00:00:09about who to hire, who to fire, and who to promote
00:00:12based on their level of AI fluency.
00:00:14And if you do, in fact, happen to own your own business,
00:00:16there is also a widening gap between businesses
00:00:18that are using AI properly and businesses that are not.
00:00:20So this video is split up into five distinct phases.
00:00:22There's timestamps for everything down below,
00:00:23and let's get into it.
00:00:24Phase one is building your foundations,
00:00:26and this is gonna be week number one.
00:00:28Now, before you try and do anything clever with AI,
00:00:30we just need to make sure that we have the habits and tools
00:00:32appropriately set up for us to actually remember
00:00:35to actually use it.
00:00:36I consider these things non-negotiables
00:00:38for everyone in my team, and so if you skip them,
00:00:40I think your life will be a lot harder than it needs to be.
00:00:42Foundation number one is use AI for everything
00:00:44that you were initially thinking of using Google for.
00:00:46My personal preference is Claude by Anthropic for most things,
00:00:49but you can use Chad GPD, you can use Grok,
00:00:50you can use Claude, you can use Gemini,
00:00:52whatever seems reasonable,
00:00:53whatever you already have access to.
00:00:54Foundation number two is always have that particular website
00:00:57open in a pinned tab,
00:00:58because the habit we wanna be developing
00:01:00is basically always having some kind of AI chat window open
00:01:03on your screen or whatever
00:01:04with literally everything you're doing.
00:01:06Foundation number three is to use your voice
00:01:08rather than your keyboard.
00:01:09There are also things like WhisperFlow
00:01:10and the built-in dictation on Windows and Mac,
00:01:12and also there's now built-in dictation
00:01:14into most of these AI tools,
00:01:15and you will find that if you are speaking to the AI,
00:01:17you can generally speak a lot faster,
00:01:19and you can generally ramble a lot more
00:01:21compared to if you are trying to type.
00:01:22And honestly, this one habit will absolutely transform
00:01:25how much value you get from AI,
00:01:26so if you're not using it already,
00:01:28then feel free to get started.
00:01:29Foundation number four is to download the mobile apps.
00:01:31This means you can use AI again as a Google replacement
00:01:34or as a thinking buddy wherever you are in the world,
00:01:36because you always have your phone on you.
00:01:37You can use it while walking, you can use it while commuting,
00:01:39you can use it while on the sofa.
00:01:40If you're on the toilet, you can talk to the AI.
00:01:42If you're in bed and you're one of those people
00:01:43that brings their phone into bed with you,
00:01:45I don't recommend it,
00:01:46but you can talk to the AI in bed if you really want to.
00:01:47And then foundation number five
00:01:48is to automatically record your online,
00:01:51and ideally as well your in-person meetings.
00:01:53So you probably do Zoom calls or Google Meets
00:01:55or that kind of thing,
00:01:56but there are loads of free AI tools
00:01:57that let you automatically record
00:01:59and transcribe those Zoom calls.
00:02:00The one we've been using for the last five years
00:02:02is called Grain, and if you want something free,
00:02:03then Fathom is usually one that I recommend.
00:02:05Okay, so that is it for week number one
00:02:07of learning how to use AI,
00:02:08getting these five foundations in place.
00:02:10If you're watching this
00:02:11and you haven't done any of these five things,
00:02:12100%, I'd recommend pausing the video, doing those things,
00:02:15and then coming back,
00:02:15because all of the rest is gonna build on this foundation.
00:02:18Phase two is using AI as your coach,
00:02:20and this is gonna be week number two.
00:02:22Now this is where we're actually gonna start using AI
00:02:24in a meaningful way beyond just being a Google replacement,
00:02:27but the key thing to know is we are not yet asking AI
00:02:29to do our work for us.
00:02:31We're asking it to help us think better
00:02:32about the work that we are already doing ourselves.
00:02:34For example, on my team, we've got Nicole,
00:02:36who's our social media manager,
00:02:37responsible for growing my Instagram.
00:02:39Now Nicole could go to Chachapiti or Claude or whatever,
00:02:41and she could say, "I am a social media manager
00:02:43"tasked with growing an Instagram profile
00:02:45"from 1 million followers to 1.2 million followers
00:02:48"in the next 90 days.
00:02:49"The account belongs to productivity YouTuber Ali Adal.
00:02:52"What are the highest leverage things I should focus on?
00:02:54"What mistakes do you see people in my role commonly make?
00:02:57"What questions should I be asking my manager
00:02:59"to make sure I'm set up for success?"
00:03:01Or for example, we have Geo who's one of my team members
00:03:03who leads our student success
00:03:04for our Lifestyle Business Academy,
00:03:05which is our like online business mentorship program.
00:03:07And she could say, "I run student success
00:03:09"for a high ticket business mentorship program.
00:03:11"Currently the biggest thing our students are struggling with
00:03:13"is defining their niche and coming up with a reasonable offer
00:03:16"within a two week period.
00:03:17"We find that a lot of them tend to overthink
00:03:19"and overanalyze before taking action.
00:03:20"How could I be thinking about
00:03:22"how to solve this particular problem?"
00:03:23And then to use an example from my own life
00:03:24as the business owner,
00:03:25I might go to Claude and say something like,
00:03:27"My goal for 2026 is to grow our business's revenue
00:03:30"from $5 million to $10 million.
00:03:32"And I think the biggest lever we have for that
00:03:33"is our new Lifestyle Business Academy product.
00:03:36"Can you interview me?
00:03:37"Ask me a bunch of questions and help me figure out
00:03:39"what are the key levers I should do
00:03:40"as it relates to annual planning
00:03:42"and quarterly planning for 2026?"
00:03:44And so if you don't have your own like coach
00:03:45that's helping you with your job or a business,
00:03:47or even if you do,
00:03:48like I've got a couple of coaches that I work with,
00:03:50it's still very helpful to use the AI
00:03:52as a kind of thought buddy/coach
00:03:54to be able to ask you questions
00:03:56that can then help you come up with insights
00:03:58that can help improve your performance
00:03:59at your job or your business.
00:04:00Now, this is where the fact that we are recording
00:04:02all of our calls then also really helps.
00:04:04For example, you could have a team meeting,
00:04:06you could have a meeting with your manager,
00:04:07you could have a meeting with your direct report,
00:04:08and you could take the transcript of that call
00:04:10and you could ask the AI to give you insights
00:04:12based on that call.
00:04:13So for example, Nicole, who's in charge of my Instagram,
00:04:14could say, "This is a recording of a conversation I had
00:04:17"with my manager, Angus, where he was coaching me
00:04:19"on how I can be thinking about our Instagram strategy better
00:04:21"based on this conversation.
00:04:23"Can you suggest a curriculum for me to follow
00:04:25"over the next two weeks to improve my skills?
00:04:27"That would be a totally reasonable thing to do."
00:04:28If I've done a coaching session with our students
00:04:30in the Lifestyle Business Academy,
00:04:31the whole thing is recorded and transcribed
00:04:33so I can then chuck it into AI,
00:04:34and I can say, "This was a coaching session
00:04:36"that I ran for my students
00:04:37"in my Lifestyle Business Academy.
00:04:38"Based on the transcript,
00:04:39"I want you to tease out the key themes that came up,
00:04:41"the key struggles that the students were struggling with
00:04:43"so that I can use it to help improve our core curriculum.
00:04:45"And while you're there,
00:04:46"please do give me feedback on my own teaching style
00:04:48"and any blind spots that you notice."
00:04:50Another really useful prompt
00:04:51is you can literally ask the AI
00:04:52to interview you about your job.
00:04:54You could say something like,
00:04:55"I want you to interview me
00:04:56"about what I actually do in my role
00:04:58"and help me identify what's high leverage
00:05:00"and what's probably a waste of time."
00:05:01And I guarantee that if you just use that super simple prompt
00:05:04with literally any job that you have,
00:05:05you could probably find ways to actually just do a better job
00:05:08and waste less time doing things
00:05:09that really don't move the needle.
00:05:10Oh, by the way, if any of this stuff is confusing,
00:05:12don't worry, we've got a link down below
00:05:13to a totally free Google Doc,
00:05:15which is like an AI getting started curriculum
00:05:17that you can just download, copy into your own Google Drive,
00:05:19and you can just like follow it along if you like.
00:05:21Now, obviously we wanna give the caveat
00:05:22around AI limitations.
00:05:24Yes, the AI is cool.
00:05:25It's really helpful to have as a thought partner.
00:05:26But the way that I think about the AI tools
00:05:28is that it's sort of like having a very smart colleague
00:05:31who reads a lot of books,
00:05:32but who doesn't have much context on anything
00:05:34other than the knowledge that they've gotten from books.
00:05:36And so it's very useful to be able to talk to that person
00:05:39to kind of mirror your own thoughts or ask you questions
00:05:41or help you think deeper about something.
00:05:43But I would be very careful about taking its advice
00:05:46and treating that advice as gospel.
00:05:48Like you really wanna make sure that the advice,
00:05:50that you actually agree with the advice
00:05:52rather than just blindly following what it says.
00:05:54So by the end of week two,
00:05:55if you're following along with this method,
00:05:56you should hopefully have by this point
00:05:57the habit of turning to AI whenever you're stuck with anything
00:06:01in your personal or professional life.
00:06:02And also even if you're not stuck
00:06:04just as a way of optimizing your performance
00:06:05for whatever goals you wanna work towards even more.
00:06:07But by the way, if you've made it this far into the video
00:06:09and you really wanna nail your foundational understanding
00:06:12of AI rather than just knowing how to use the tools,
00:06:15then one way I found super helpful for doing this
00:06:16is Brilliant who are very kindly sponsoring this video.
00:06:19I have been using and loving Brilliant since like 2019.
00:06:22And what I love about the product
00:06:23is that it helps you get way better at maths and coding
00:06:25and computer science through step-by-step interactive lessons
00:06:28and personalized practice
00:06:29where you genuinely learn by doing.
00:06:31Brilliant has helped me get a foundational understanding
00:06:33of crypto and all the cryptocurrencies and cryptographic stuff
00:06:36that goes on behind the scenes there.
00:06:37It's helped me get a foundational understanding
00:06:39of how algorithms work and how programming and Python works.
00:06:41And recently their how AI works course
00:06:43has been absolutely brilliant.
00:06:45And they basically break down how large language models
00:06:47like ChatGPT actually function behind the scenes,
00:06:49which is A, incredibly fascinating.
00:06:51And also it helps you actually use AI better
00:06:53when you understand how it works.
00:06:54The other cool thing about Brilliant
00:06:55is that they really focus on problem solving
00:06:57rather than just getting you to watch videos.
00:06:59So yes, they give you content
00:07:00to help you understand the concept,
00:07:01but then they give you a problem
00:07:03with like an interactive interface
00:07:04that involves using that concept to solve the problem.
00:07:07And that just makes learning way more fun
00:07:08and way more interactive.
00:07:09The courses are crafted by a world-class team of researchers
00:07:12from MIT and Harvard and Stanford,
00:07:14and they're designed for ages 10 through 110.
00:07:16So whether you're a beginner
00:07:17or you're looking to level up your skills,
00:07:19there's gonna be something for you.
00:07:20So if you would like to learn for free on Brilliant
00:07:22for a full 30 days, go to brilliant.org/aliabdaal
00:07:24or scan the QR code on screen
00:07:26or click the link down in the video description.
00:07:28And that will all get you 20% off
00:07:30the annual premium subscription.
00:07:31So thank you so much Brilliant for sponsoring this video
00:07:33and let's get back to it.
00:07:34All right, so now we're moving on to phase three
00:07:36where things get a little bit more interesting
00:07:37because so far we have only asked AI to help us think.
00:07:40We haven't actually asked it to do anything
00:07:42other than that just yet.
00:07:43And phase three is where that's gonna change.
00:07:45So phase three is using AI as your worker.
00:07:48And this is gonna be weeks three and four.
00:07:50So this is gonna be a two-week phase.
00:07:51Now here is where we're gonna get the AI
00:07:53to actually start doing stuff for us.
00:07:54The mistake I've seen most people make
00:07:56is that they will go straight to this phase
00:07:57and they'll say something like write me this Instagram post.
00:08:00And if you do that,
00:08:01the output is probably gonna be very generic
00:08:02and it's not gonna be very good.
00:08:03Instead, I'd recommend thinking about it
00:08:05using the 1080 10 rule.
00:08:07I think I got this from Dan Martell's book,
00:08:08"Buy Back Your Time."
00:08:09This is like a system you can use
00:08:10to delegate stuff to real humans,
00:08:12given that we're basically treating our AI
00:08:14as a very smart intern
00:08:15that we can talk to in a chat window at all times,
00:08:17we're gonna be using the 1080 10 rule.
00:08:19Now the 1080 10 rule is that you are gonna do
00:08:21the first 10% of the job.
00:08:23You're gonna ask the AI to do the middle 80%.
00:08:26And then you're gonna do the final 10% for a taste check,
00:08:28for a vibe check, for like quality assurance on the thing.
00:08:31You absolutely do not wanna be jumping to
00:08:33trying to get the AI to do 100% of the work for you,
00:08:36because that's when you end up with absolute garbage.
00:08:38So let's say Nicole, who's in charge of my Instagram,
00:08:39needs to come up with content ideas for a filming day.
00:08:42That's a core part of a job.
00:08:43The new version of this would be to go to Chajabiti
00:08:45or whatever and say,
00:08:46"Hey, come up with 50 content ideas for my Instagram."
00:08:48But if instead Nicole were to say,
00:08:50"This is a transcript from Ali Abdaal's latest YouTube video.
00:08:52Here are three Instagram reels from competitors
00:08:55that performed really well this month.
00:08:56Here is a current content strategy doc
00:08:58that explains our target audience and brand voice.
00:09:01Based on all this, give me 20 hook ideas
00:09:03that would work as Instagram reels.
00:09:05Focus on counterintuitive takes and pattern interrupts."
00:09:08So Nicole's given the AI a lot of context.
00:09:10She's copied and pasted a bunch of stuff
00:09:11and therefore the AI is generally able
00:09:14to give a much better response.
00:09:15And then Nicole is obviously gonna go through the list
00:09:17of content ideas that the AI has given.
00:09:18And she's not just gonna take all of them wholesale.
00:09:20She's gonna use her own taste and her own discernment
00:09:23to decide which of the ones she actually agrees with.
00:09:25And then what you can always do is you can, you know,
00:09:26let's say you've gotten 20 ideas from the AI
00:09:28and you like five of them.
00:09:30You can just copy and paste those five back into the AI
00:09:32and say, "Hey, these were the five
00:09:33I resonated the most with.
00:09:34Give me 50 more ideas along this vein."
00:09:37And then of the 50 more ideas it generates,
00:09:39maybe you'll like another 10 of them.
00:09:40So now you've just generated 15 content ideas
00:09:43without having to do a lot of the heavy lifting yourself.
00:09:45But crucially, all 15 of those have been human vetted
00:09:47so that they actually have taste and discernment
00:09:49applied to them rather than just being AI slop.
00:09:52Now I wanna do a little tangent at this point
00:09:53about the idea of taste.
00:09:55This is the key thing that separates the people
00:09:57who use AI well from the people who don't.
00:09:59For whatever you're doing for your work or your business
00:10:01or your personal life, you should have an intuitive feel
00:10:05for what is good and what is bad.
00:10:07If you're a total beginner to the thing,
00:10:08you might not have developed that taste yet.
00:10:10But over time, as you become a better professional,
00:10:12you will develop a feel for like,
00:10:13"Okay, this is actually a good piece of content.
00:10:16This is a good sales page."
00:10:17You have this feeling of taste around what is good
00:10:19and what is not.
00:10:20And the biggest issue with AI is that if you are asking it
00:10:22to generate stuff for you, it will produce stuff
00:10:25that hopefully you'll think, "Ugh, I don't really like it."
00:10:30You'll get that internal feeling of like cringe
00:10:32at the output that the AI has produced.
00:10:34That's a very good sign because that means your bar for taste,
00:10:37like what you think is actually good is here
00:10:39and the AI has not quite met that bar.
00:10:41And your job is to give it feedback
00:10:43like you would a junior team member or an intern.
00:10:45So by the end of week four, the whole idea is that
00:10:47if you start doing this with anything
00:10:48that a chat GPT window can respond to,
00:10:50like anything to do with writing or strategy,
00:10:52and you're developing the habit of anytime you're doing
00:10:55anything at all, you're asking yourself,
00:10:57"Could I ask the AI to do this in addition to me
00:10:59so that I can test the response of the AI?"
00:11:02And it's really a process of experimentation and testing.
00:11:04Okay, so at this point in phase three,
00:11:06you're already ahead of most people
00:11:07because you're using the 1080 10 rule to communicate
00:11:10with your AI intern.
00:11:11But the issue is every time you use AI right now,
00:11:14you're starting from scratch.
00:11:15You're opening up a new chat GPT clawed window or whatever.
00:11:19And so instead of starting from scratch every time,
00:11:21what if the AI could actually get better and better over time
00:11:24so that the hundredth time you do something
00:11:26is actually way better than the first time you do the thing?
00:11:28That is where we get to phase four,
00:11:29which is using AI as a system.
00:11:31And for most people, this is probably gonna take
00:11:33around one to two months to get really comfortable
00:11:35with this approach to AI.
00:11:37Now, at this point, I'd like to offer you an analogy,
00:11:38which is imagine that you were baking a cake.
00:11:40You got ingredients in the cake and you bake the cake.
00:11:42And like, you know, you follow a basic recipe
00:11:44and it comes out okay
00:11:45'cause it's the first time you've baked the cake.
00:11:46And now you find yourself having to bake this cake every day
00:11:49because it's part of your job.
00:11:50And over time, you start finding yourself wanting to add sugar
00:11:52at the end of the process
00:11:53because the cake is just a little too not sweet.
00:11:56And so at some point you might ask yourself,
00:11:57"Wait a minute, what if I were to just modify the recipe
00:12:00so that I just added more sugar upfront?"
00:12:02And you look at the recipe and you see the recipe
00:12:04involves one cup of sugar or whatever.
00:12:06You're like, "All right, let me try 1.5 cups of sugar
00:12:08to see if the cake has my desired sweetness."
00:12:11So you give it a go, you add an extra half cup of sugar,
00:12:13and then you see how the cake turns out and you're like,
00:12:14"Oh, that's actually pretty solid."
00:12:16So then you update the recipe.
00:12:18So from now on, you're using 1.5 cups of sugar
00:12:21rather than one cup of sugar.
00:12:22Then to continue this analogy,
00:12:23let's say you realize after a while
00:12:25that, huh, it always seems a little bit dry
00:12:26and I find myself wanting to add chocolate sauce
00:12:29at the end of it just to add that like moisture.
00:12:30You might then think to yourself, "Wait a minute,
00:12:32why don't I experiment with the recipe?
00:12:33What if I were to add the chocolate sauce
00:12:35earlier on in the process?
00:12:36What might that look like?"
00:12:37So you add the chocolate sauce earlier,
00:12:38you experiment with it, and lo and behold,
00:12:40it turns out amazing.
00:12:42And you're like, "Great, I'm gonna update my recipe
00:12:44so that the chocolate sauce is in there every single time."
00:12:47And this is how your grandma's cake recipe
00:12:49ended up being passed down the generations
00:12:50because she probably worked on it hundreds of times
00:12:52and developed that recipe over time.
00:12:54What the hell does any of this have to do with AI?
00:12:56Well, I'm glad you asked because it's the same kind of thing
00:12:58when we are working with AI.
00:12:59The idea is that we are trying to build our own prompt library
00:13:02using prompt engineering.
00:13:03So the very first time, let's say Nicole,
00:13:05our social media manager,
00:13:06the very first time she uses chat GPT
00:13:08to generate content ideas,
00:13:09she might say, "Here is a transcript of some content
00:13:11that my boss Ali Balazs produced.
00:13:13Give me 50 Instagram Reel hook ideas from it."
00:13:15That would be version one.
00:13:16That's version one of the recipe.
00:13:18Then she sees how it goes.
00:13:18She realizes the hooks are a little bit generic.
00:13:20And so she adds to the prompt,
00:13:22"Make sure each hook uses a pattern interrupt
00:13:24or a controversial take.
00:13:26Avoid anything that sounds like generic advice."
00:13:28It's like, "All right, maybe if I just ask the AI
00:13:30to not be generic, maybe it won't be generic."
00:13:31And then she looks at the results of that same prompt
00:13:34and she's like, "Oh, this was actually a little bit better."
00:13:36So then she updates the recipe and calls it version two,
00:13:39V2.
00:13:40Then she notices that the output it's giving
00:13:41is that the hooks are a bit too long
00:13:43to actually be a sentence
00:13:45that I could say out on an Instagram Reel.
00:13:46So then she updates the prompt to say,
00:13:48"Make sure each hook is under 20 words."
00:13:50Again, she tests the output and she realizes,
00:13:52"Oh, wait a minute, that was actually better.
00:13:53So let me update my recipe.
00:13:55Let me update my prompt."
00:13:56So it's now a V4 prompt or V3 or whatever.
00:13:58Then she finds, I give a feedback saying,
00:14:00"I really don't like rhetorical questions
00:14:01'cause rhetorical questions are just never something
00:14:03that I use in real life."
00:14:04And so she then updates the recipe to say,
00:14:05"Make sure you never use rhetorical questions."
00:14:08And that is V5 of the prompt.
00:14:09At this point, Nicole could use an app like TextExpander.
00:14:12She could create a keyboard shortcut for the phrase,
00:14:14I don't know, IGH, Instagram hooks.
00:14:17And then by typing IGH into any kind of text bar,
00:14:19it would automatically expand out
00:14:21and give her the whole prompt.
00:14:22And this would be an example of prompt engineering
00:14:24to generate a prompt library.
00:14:25So in Nicole's case,
00:14:26she would have a prompt for hook generation.
00:14:28She would have a prompt for turning a transcript
00:14:30into a LinkedIn post, for example.
00:14:33She might have a prompt
00:14:33for analyzing a competitor's Instagram account
00:14:36and figuring out what they're doing
00:14:38that we could basically steal ideas from.
00:14:40And so if you were to apply this to your own work,
00:14:42then by month three, you'll have a prompt library.
00:14:45Then now over time,
00:14:46all of these prompts are just getting better
00:14:47because you're able to add more context to them
00:14:49as the workflow changes or evolves.
00:14:51The other thing you can then do
00:14:52when you have this sort of systemized list of prompts
00:14:55in your prompt library is you can start experimenting
00:14:57with different AI models.
00:14:58So maybe you're just using the basic free version
00:15:00of ChatGPT for your hook generation or whatever.
00:15:03But then you think, you know what?
00:15:04Let me try the free trial of ChatGPT Pro
00:15:06and see if ChatGPT 5.1 is any better.
00:15:08And over time, you realize that actually certain models
00:15:10work best with certain prompts.
00:15:11And at that point, you might be like,
00:15:13man, I'm getting so much value from this.
00:15:14I might as well just get the pro subscription
00:15:16to ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini,
00:15:18or ask your workplace to pay for it
00:15:20or whatever the situation is.
00:15:21In my case, I have a paid subscription
00:15:22to all of these things
00:15:23because I find them incredibly useful.
00:15:24At this point, or maybe even before this point,
00:15:26you might have realized that actually there's a bunch of tasks
00:15:28you might need to do in your work or in your business
00:15:30that actually cannot just be done through a text interface.
00:15:33Like maybe you need to create slide decks.
00:15:35And so you can find AI tools for that.
00:15:37There's gamma, there's beautiful.ai,
00:15:39Figma Slides now has some AI generation tools applied to it.
00:15:42The mistake people make here
00:15:43is getting overwhelmed with all the choices.
00:15:44Oh my God, there's a hundred new AI tools
00:15:46coming out every week.
00:15:47How do I know which one to use?
00:15:48It's like, don't worry about it.
00:15:49Find the AI tools that are helping you
00:15:50with your specific use cases,
00:15:52with your work or with your business.
00:15:53Now, everything at this point has required you
00:15:55to be in the loop, but wouldn't it be absolutely sick
00:15:57if you didn't even need to talk to the AI?
00:15:59What if you could just set up a kind of system once
00:16:02and then have the AI automatically running in the background
00:16:05doing the work for you?
00:16:06And this is where we get to phase five,
00:16:08which is AI as infrastructure.
00:16:09This is probably gonna be month number four
00:16:11onwards for most people.
00:16:12And you could spend literally years going deeper and deeper
00:16:14into this rabbit hole.
00:16:15So again, to use Nicole as an example,
00:16:16part of her job is to take transcripts
00:16:18from the YouTube videos that I've created
00:16:20and to figure out what are some of the interesting points
00:16:22I made in these YouTube videos,
00:16:23which we could then film separately as like an Instagram reel
00:16:26or write up as an Instagram carousel.
00:16:28But even if you're doing prompt engineering,
00:16:30prompt library, 1080 10 rule,
00:16:31you are still finding yourself manually doing stuff.
00:16:34And at a certain point you might think,
00:16:35man, we're releasing so much content.
00:16:37I'm having to do this manual repetitive task
00:16:39like for three hours every week.
00:16:41I wonder, is there a way I could automate this?
00:16:43And this is where we get into the rabbit hole
00:16:45of AI automation.
00:16:46And there's like a few different like levels of depth here.
00:16:49So level one would be using AI automation
00:16:51that's built into tools that you're already using.
00:16:54So Nicole might discover for example that,
00:16:55hey, our editors edit videos in Premiere Pro.
00:16:58We use a plugin called Firecut,
00:16:59which is an AI plugin to speed up editing.
00:17:01And Firecut automatically generates the transcript
00:17:03and can automatically just chuck it into a Google drive.
00:17:05Fantastic, that's one step of the process
00:17:07that's already been automated
00:17:08that we didn't really need to do anything for.
00:17:10Then you've got level two,
00:17:11which would be using simple automation tools
00:17:13like Zapier or like maker.com.
00:17:15Basically these are connector tools
00:17:16that let you connect to different apps together.
00:17:18So you can say every time there's a new Zoom call recording,
00:17:21I want you to automatically get a transcription
00:17:23from the Zoom recording.
00:17:24And then I want you to run that transcription
00:17:26through ChatGPT using this particular prompt,
00:17:29which we get from our prompt library.
00:17:30And then I want you to give me the output as a Slack message.
00:17:32You can do that kind of stuff with Zapier or maker.com.
00:17:35Level three is where you graduate
00:17:36to a more powerful automation tool,
00:17:37something like N8N,
00:17:38which I've been playing a lot with recently.
00:17:40Now these give you more granular control
00:17:42over these automations that you're building,
00:17:43but they do require a little bit of more technical knowledge,
00:17:46but you can build much more fancy, sophisticated workflows.
00:17:49And when you're at this phase
00:17:50and you start watching video tutorials on YouTube
00:17:52about how to use N8N,
00:17:53all of that stuff starts to make sense
00:17:55and you start getting way more ideas
00:17:56for what you could automate if you wanted to
00:17:58in your professional or your personal life.
00:17:59The other example could be Gio,
00:18:00who's our head of student success
00:18:02for Lifestyle Business Academy.
00:18:03One use of automations for her
00:18:04that we are currently trying to build
00:18:05is that every time we have a coaching call
00:18:06with one of our students,
00:18:07all of that is automatically recorded by a grain
00:18:10and it's automatically transcribed.
00:18:11So every week, can we run a weekly automation
00:18:13that automatically takes all of the transcripts
00:18:15for all of the students' coaching calls,
00:18:17combines that with the conversation we've had our students
00:18:19based on the Slack support channels,
00:18:21'cause we give all of our students one-on-one Slack support.
00:18:22And then based on its knowledge of where the students are
00:18:25in the lifestyle business building roadmap,
00:18:26based on our own CRM, which we have in Notion,
00:18:29can the automation take all of this data
00:18:30and automatically give us a weekly report for every student
00:18:33that summarizes what are their wins
00:18:35and what are they struggling with
00:18:36and what are the areas where they might need support next week.
00:18:38That will be sick because currently that's a manual process
00:18:40that takes hours and hours every Friday.
00:18:42And if we could automate that work,
00:18:43it would save our coaches a lot of admin time
00:18:45and it would mean that they can actually spend more time
00:18:47talking to the students rather than doing admin
00:18:49and try and sort of put data together all in one place.
00:18:51And then level four of automation is where
00:18:53you're not just using built-in sort of connector tools
00:18:55that drag and drop stuff.
00:18:57This is where you're actually building your own AI apps.
00:18:59You might not be building them to try and sell them
00:19:01to the market because that's actually kind of hard,
00:19:02but you can totally build your own internal tools
00:19:04that you're using within your workplace
00:19:06or within your business.
00:19:07But to be honest, a lot of this is overkill.
00:19:08Mostly for most things, you don't really need to,
00:19:11at least right now, go much beyond like learning
00:19:14how to use Zapier to connect things together.
00:19:15So as you get into this world of automations,
00:19:17you start realizing that like, whoa,
00:19:18this is infinite rabbit hole of things I could automate.
00:19:21And then the discipline becomes basically
00:19:23deciding what is actually worth automating
00:19:25versus what's worth continuing to do manually
00:19:27versus even better, what's a process
00:19:28that you actually don't need that you could just delete
00:19:30from your work or from your business.
00:19:31Now in this video, I've given you a lot of examples
00:19:33of team members of mine, but if you're interested
00:19:35in my own personal workflow for how I actually use AI
00:19:38as an entrepreneur and business owner,
00:19:39then I've got this video over here that walks through
00:19:41exactly how I use AI to create new features
00:19:43for the software that we're building,
00:19:45how I use it to generate content ideas
00:19:47for building my personal brand,
00:19:48and that shares a bunch more data
00:19:49around like the input process output method of using AI
00:19:52to improve your productivity.
00:19:53So that'll be right over here.
00:19:54Thank you so much for watching and I will see you there.

Key Takeaway

Achieving AI fluency requires a systematic transition from basic habits and coaching to delegating tasks and eventually building automated infrastructure that operates independently.

Highlights

A five-phase roadmap designed to move from AI beginner to fluent practitioner in approximately three months.

The 10/80/10 rule for delegation: humans handle the initial 10% and final 10%

Timeline

Introduction and the AI Fluency Gap

Ali Abdaal introduces a comprehensive three-month plan to help individuals become native and productive AI users. He emphasizes that business owners are increasingly making hiring and promotion decisions based on an employee's level of AI fluency. There is a widening competitive gap between businesses that integrate AI properly and those that ignore it. This introductory segment sets the stage for a five-phase journey designed to bridge that gap. The video aims to provide a structured curriculum for anyone feeling "behind" in the rapidly evolving technological landscape.

Phase 1: Building Foundational Habits

Week one focuses on establishing five non-negotiable foundations to ensure AI becomes a seamless part of daily life. The speaker recommends using AI as a primary Google replacement and keeping a pinned chat window open at all times. He highlights the importance of using voice dictation to communicate faster and downloading mobile apps for on-the-go access. Additionally, he suggests using tools like Grain or Fathom to automatically record and transcribe all meetings. These habits are essential because they build the infrastructure necessary for more advanced AI applications later on.

Phase 2: AI as Your Thinking Buddy and Coach

In the second week, the focus shifts to using AI as a coach to improve thinking rather than just doing work. Ali provides examples of how team members can use AI to identify high-leverage tasks or solve specific problems like student over-analysis. He introduces the concept of using meeting transcripts to generate personalized skill-improvement curriculums or to identify blind spots in teaching styles. A key prompt suggested is asking the AI to interview the user about their role to find time-wasting activities. However, he warns that AI should be treated as a smart colleague who lacks full context, requiring users to vet its advice.

Interlude: Learning the Science Behind AI

This segment features a sponsored message for Brilliant, an interactive platform for learning math, coding, and computer science. Ali explains how understanding the foundational mechanics of Large Language Models (LLMs) can actually make a person a better AI user. He shares his personal experience using the platform to understand complex topics like algorithms and Python programming. The section highlights Brilliant's approach of "learning by doing" through problem-solving rather than passive video consumption. This serves as a reminder that technical literacy supports the practical application of the tools discussed in the roadmap.

Phase 3: AI as Your Worker and the 10/80/10 Rule

Weeks three and four involve delegating actual tasks to AI using the 10/80/10 rule to avoid generic outputs. The user performs the first 10% by providing rich context, the AI handles the middle 80%, and the user finishes the last 10% with a quality check. Ali illustrates this with a social media manager example who provides transcripts and competitor reels to generate high-quality Instagram hooks. He stresses the development of "taste," which is the intuitive feel for what is good versus what is mediocre. Users are encouraged to treat AI like an intern by providing constant feedback to refine the results.

Phase 4: Creating a Systematic Prompt Library

During the second month, users should stop starting from scratch and begin building a prompt library. Ali uses a baking analogy to explain how a "recipe" or prompt should be iterated through versions (V1 to V5) until it consistently yields the desired result. This involves adding specific constraints, such as word counts or tone requirements, and using snippets or tools like TextExpander for quick access. As the library grows, users can experiment with different models like Claude, ChatGPT Pro, or Gemini to see which performs best for specific tasks. The goal is to move away from one-off interactions toward a reliable, repeatable system.

Phase 5: AI as Automated Infrastructure

The final phase, starting from month four, moves into the realm of background automation and infrastructure. Ali describes four levels of automation, ranging from built-in plugins like Firecut to complex connector tools like Zapier and N8N. He shares a vision of a fully automated workflow that takes meeting transcripts, Slack messages, and CRM data to generate weekly student reports without human intervention. This phase represents the peak of productivity, where the AI acts as an invisible engine running the business's repetitive processes. The video concludes by encouraging users to choose what is worth automating versus what should be deleted or kept manual.

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