5 ways AI can boost your productivity in 2023
Introduction
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been the talk of the town lately and it is clear that AI will revolutionise the way we work and do business in the future. AI algorithms are becoming smarter day by day learning from the huge amount of data that it is being fed. What does it mean for us? AI is here to stay and ignoring it is not an option. Although there are pros and cons of AI (which i am not going to address in this article), using the right AI tools can help you immensely in gaining an edge over others in terms of prodictivity.
AI use cases and tools for productivity
This year, I have committed apporximately 30 mins a day to learn about what’s happening in the AI space including developments in different AI platforms and plugins. I have been playing around with many of these with the intention of boosting my productivity. In this article, I am sharing 5 ways you can use some of these tools and the best part is- they are completely free. You may already be familiar with some of these tools but I hope the article leaves you with something new to maximise its potential.
- Get inspired using ChatGPT
You can think of ChatGPT as an AI chatbot which is capable of understanding questions and responding with intelligent human like answers in seconds. It is highly interactive and capable of responding to your different requests.
You can use ChatGPT for almost any question you have. I commonly use it to rephrase my writing in different tones/context, generate ideas on various topics and to develop content. I used it to develop a detailed 6 month training plan for a marathon and the output was pretty amazing. I also used it to write a personalized birthday song for my friend. There are many tools that have been built using ChatGPT. One of the tools I have been using is “Merlin”; a google chrome extention that allows you to use ChatGP3 on your favourite sites. For example; you can use merlin on your google search to obtain an AI response for your search querry or to draft a reply to a tweet.
It is important to keep in mind that the model is trained with data upto 2021 only. If you’re expecting responses based on more recent findings, ChatGPT will not be able to help you. Facts and figures generated need to be verified as they may not be 100% accurate (You can always ask ChatGPT for the source of the data and verify it). The quality of the response depends on the quality of your input. It is important for you to be very specific on what you want when you type your question.
2. Generate images you want using Canvas Text-Image
Canva is one of my most used tools for designing. It’s simple to use with pre-defined templates for almost everything. It also has a wide range of stock images, icons, audio and videos. Canva recently added a brand new app called “Text to Image” which uses Open AIs DALL.E to generate images based on your text input. I used it to generate an image on “AI vs Humans face-off” and the generated images were not too bad (refer image below). You can incorporate these images to an exiting design or simply download it. This will save you alot of time in looking for the right image.
3. Up your presentation game using “Tome” and “Rehearse with Coach”
Making presentations are a part and parcel of my day to day work. Getting started on a presentation usually takes time. Thinking of an outline, structure and layout is made so much easier using Tome. Tome is an AI tool that generates your presentation for you. Although I use powerpoint predominately for my presentations, I use Tome to help me get started. Here is a presentation “Tome” made for me in seconds on; the key lessons from the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear
Did you know that you can improve the delivery of your presentation using MS Powerpoint “Rehearse with Coach” feature? This feature analyzes your presentation including verbal and non verbal communication giving you real time feedback. The best part? It gives you a report of your performance at the end including your pace, pitch and even fillers used. This is perfect tool to help you practice and perfect your presentation.
4. Enhance your audio using Adobe Podcast
As a podcaster, audio editing is the most time consuming process. I have had to re-record episodes just because background noise was too difficult to edit. Adobe Podcast Beta is one of the free tools I discovered that not only eliminates all background sound from your audio but also cleans up fillers such as “Umm” in seconds, so that you sound professional. It has a clean and simple user interface where you simply have to drag and drop your audio file. The enhance speech feature does the magic saving you valuable editing time.
Adobe Podcast also allows you record audio remotely with others. This is a feature I am yet to try. (Btw check out my podcast here)
5. Organize and Plan better with Notion and Notion AI
Over the last month, I have fallen in love with Notions interface. Notion is a note taking and productivity app that allows you to plan your goals, maintain your tasks/projects, store your ideas/thoughts and much more. I had been using different platforms such as Apple notes, google docs/sheets and physcial notebooks. With Notion, I can now bring together all of this in one platform. It has templates which are already built for different aspects such as: journaling, travel planning, project management and more. Notion has announced Notion AI alpha which is currently in the wait list stage and will be out towards the end of the year. Although I have not used this AI tool, the potential to increase your productivity looks immense. Imagine using AI to do any of the below (see picture) within your notes/work management platform instantly.
*Above are five of the many use cases and tools out there
Concluding Remarks
What works for everyone, may not work for you. Tools like ChatGPT are open source and allow developers to build more focussed business models using API’s. There is no doubt that there will be a proliferation of these apps in the coming months. There are several out there already. The key would be to choose what works for your use case the best.
AI tools will not be free forever. Open AI and other AI companies have already made it clear that these tools will not be free forever.
Be responsible with using AI. It is important that we don’t become overly dependant on AI. While it is good to be aware of what is happening in the AI space and learn the capabilities of these tools we need to be conscious that we don’t become handicapped because of these tools.
What are your thoughts? What are some of the AI tools/apps you’ve used? comment below.
This article was written 100% by me with no AI involvement.
