AI tools like Claude and Github Copilot can have a transformative effect on your productivity. Easy to say – but how do you actually get there? I’ve talked to a few folks who want to integrate AI-powered productivity into their workday but are at a loss on where to begin – so they take a stab at a few ChatGPT or MS Copilot prompts but end up with the AI equivalent of “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine”: amusing at best, frustrating and utimately useless at worst.

One of my favorite phrases is this: “Success is found at the margin.” I recommend applying that principle to the dilemma described above. Look for something marginal in your workday and try handing some of the heavy lifting to an AI tool.

Example: I deal with a lot of Terraform on a daily basis, designing templates for automated infra deployments. A key part of Terraform are variables file – lists of declared variables telling the Terraform engine what inputs to expect in the course of deployment. Building these files is often tedious – not overly hard but can take a while to build, and can be tricky when dealing with complicated variable types for complex inputs.

When I began my AI journey, my first common prompt for Github Copilot was “Build a variables file for all variables in main.tf” – and within seconds, there they were. A marginal task which could be almost completely offloaded to AI. It was a great introduction to improving my productivity with AI and I’ve since offloaded many other marginal tasks.

What is a rote, repetitive marginal task common to your workday? Start small – pick one marginal task and put AI to work!

Categories: Free Guides & Advice

Tags: Advice, AI, Github Copilot, LLM