AI Explorer

Chat was the doorway. The rooms beyond it — images, voice, audio — are where a lot of the value hides.

• Generate an image you'll actually use — a slide background, a header, a concept sketch. Seeing AI make something usable breaks the "it's just a chatbot" frame and opens a whole category of work you were skipping or paying for.

  Try this: Swap in your own concept, generate it, then drop it straight into your next deck or doc.

  Prompt A clean, minimal hero image of [your concept], muted colors, lots of negative space for text. Copy

  Image generation tools ↗ now and then
• Talk instead of type for a day with a voice/dictation tool. Speaking runs 3–4× faster than typing and kills the friction that stops people using AI for longer thinking.

  Try this: Draft your next long message or note by speaking it — try Wispr Flow, Superwhisper, or even your phone's built-in dictation.

  Voice & dictation tools ↗ now and then
• Turn a dense document into something you'll absorb — an audio overview or a Q&A. The knowledge in a 40-page PDF is useless if you never read it. A different modality gets it into your head on a commute.

  Try this: Upload a report to NotebookLM, generate an audio overview, then ask it questions like a tutor.

  NotebookLM ↗ now and then

You've got the context habit from Level 1. Now a few techniques that reliably lift the output.

• Give the AI a role and an audience, not just a task. "Act as a skeptical CFO" frames the whole response. The same question answered "as an expert X, for audience Y" comes back sharper.

  Try this: Swap in any role and audience that fit your task. A worked example:

  Prompt You're a skeptical CFO. Here's my budget proposal — poke holes in it before I send it to the real one. Copy

  Getting Started → use roles ↗ keep doing it
• Show, don't tell: paste an example of what "good" looks like. One strong example teaches your standard faster than three paragraphs describing it (this is "few-shot" prompting, minus the jargon).

  Try this: Paste real examples of your "good", then ask it to match them:

  Prompt Here are two subject lines I love: [paste them]. Write five more in exactly that style. Copy

  Guide coming soon: A Practical Prompting Guide keep doing it
• Break a big ask into steps instead of one giant prompt. "Outline first, then draft" beats "write the whole thing" — you catch the wrong turn at the outline, not after 800 words.

  Prompt First give me an outline. I'll approve it, then you write it section by section. Copy

  Working With AI, Not Through It ↗ keep doing it
• Ask for three versions, not one. Re-running is nearly free. Comparing options beats polishing the first thing it handed you.

  Try this: Ask for a spread of tones, then steal the best bits of each.

  Prompt Give me three versions: one formal, one warm, one punchy. Copy

  keep doing it

Level 1 was a few bullet points. This is the version that compounds — built once, paying off in every chat.

• Let the AI interview you to build your profile, then save it as custom instructions. You don't have to know what to include — let it ask. The result is a dense brief that upgrades every future answer.

  Try this: Answer honestly; the profile is only as good as what you tell it.

  Prompt Interview me with 10 questions to build a profile that helps you give me better answers. Then write it up as custom instructions I can paste into settings. Copy

  Let AI Interview You ↗ one-time setup
• Add the details that quietly kill "generic" — competence by area, audience, currency/units. "Expert in marketing, beginner in finance" stops the AI both over-explaining and over-assuming. Units and language stop the small daily annoyances.

  Try this: Add lines like this to your profile:

  Prompt I'm expert-level in B2B marketing, a beginner in finance and law. Use EUR and the metric system. Answer in English. Copy

  The Setup That Makes AI Stop Being Generic → Tier 2 ↗ one-time setup
• Spin up one Project (or Custom GPT) for a recurring job, with its context pre-loaded. Stop re-pasting the same background. A Project remembers your style guide and product facts, so every task starts ahead.

  Try this: Make a "LinkedIn posts" project with your tone rules and three past posts loaded. Every new post starts in your voice.

  Project Memory in Claude ↗ one-time setup

Using AI more means trusting it more. These keep that trust earned, not assumed.

• Run the Human-AI Sandwich: think first, let AI generate, then you judge and edit. Outsourcing the framing and the judgment is exactly where AI makes you worse. Keep the bread (your thinking); let AI do the filling.

  Try this: Before: jot your own take in two lines. After it drafts, paste your take back and challenge it:

  Prompt Argue against this. What am I missing? Copy

  Working With AI, Not Through It ↗ keep doing it
• Make the AI show its uncertainty. A confident tone hides shaky claims. Asking it to flag doubt surfaces exactly what to check.

  Prompt Mark anything you're not fully sure about, and list what you'd verify before I rely on this. Copy

  keep doing it
• Notice when it's just agreeing with you — and push back. AI tilts toward flattery. If every idea you float is "great," you've got a cheerleader, not a thinking partner.

  Prompt Don't validate me. What's the strongest case that I'm wrong? Copy

  Your AI Agrees With You Too Much ↗ keep doing it

The jump from "I use AI sometimes" to "I'd be slower without it" happens here.

• Move three recurring tasks into AI for good. Occasional use stays a novelty. Wiring it into your weekly rhythm is what turns it into a tool you'd miss.

  Try this: Pick three — weekly update, meeting prep, inbox triage. Write a reusable prompt for each and actually reuse it.

  How to Actually Get Good at AI ↗ keep doing it
• Run the same task through two tools and notice the difference. You only learn which tool fits which job by comparing — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot have real and different personalities.

  Try this: Give the same brief to two assistants. Whose structure, tone, and accuracy do you prefer? Keep the winner for that kind of job. If work only gives you one tool, run the comparison privately on a personal task — the instinct for what each tool does well transfers.

  AI assistants compared ↗ now and then
• Make the free-vs-paid call on your main tool: if you're getting real use out of it, pay for one — and check what the paid tier changes for your data. Once you lean on AI for real work, the free tier's limits start getting in your way. And if you can't get twenty dollars of value a month out of it, that's worth knowing too.

  ✓ Tick it when you've made a deliberate call — upgraded, or decided the free tier genuinely covers you — instead of drifting along on free by default.

  Try this: The honest test: if you can't get $20 a month of value out of AI, you probably don't need it yet — you might just want a better search engine, and that's free. If you can, the upgrade pays for itself in a week. What usually pushes serious users to pay: the free caps (message limits, the older and slower models) start biting, and paid or business tiers often give you more control over your data, like keeping your chats out of model training. Check your tool's current data settings — they change.

  one-time setup