To Optimize Your Work With AI, You Need To First Optimize Yourself.
Learn how to overcome the main challenge my clients face in a 3 minute read
Wordcount: 704
Reading Time: 3 min
Anxiety and A Bad Dream?
Dani suddenly jerked awake. It was 6am on Saturday morning. She was anxious. Did she have a bad dream?
She was supposed to go on a long weekend, hiking, enjoying the mountains, and feeling the fresh air. Focusing on herself and her husband.
But when she opened her eyes, she realized she couldn’t yet leave, because she forgot to ensure the ads her company was running had the latest custom audience.
This kind of thing happens all the time.
Dani’s company sells events; when a new booking is received, she needs to add the email address to the Facebook Ad excluded audiences so ad spend isn’t wasted.
She got up, made herself a cup of coffee, and got to it. It “only” took her 30 minutes, but after a stressful start to her weekend.
The Main Challenge My Clients Face
The main challenge is that we accept what we are used to because we are not aware that there is a better way. My primary role with clients is creating the awareness even though mostly they don’t even know that this is happening.
But I didn’t know Dani's workflows when we met. I don’t know most of my clients businesess when I first start. I guided her to identify the inefficiencies.
She did it, I then automated it. Anyone can learn how to do this themselves, because technology is only 15% of the process. The real secret is that 85% is a mental shift.
Listen To Your Minds Alert System
Ever experienced this: Someone you know is buying a new car. You have heard of it, but you never really noticed it. Now, seemingly all of a sudden, this car is everywhere.
In Neuroscience this is called “Priming.” A form of implicit memory. Google it (or however you do that these days). When your brain is given new information, it activates the neural network responsible for information association. It is not that “all of a sudden” this car is everywhere; you are simply aware of it now.
Your mind does this every day at work. When you feel frustrated, annoyed, bored or distracted your mind is alerting you. And you should listen.
We mostly ignore this because we have been conditioned to think that this is “just how it is.” We tell ourselves “I just had a bad day at work” or “today was a bad day“. So we go home, kiss our spouse, hug our kids and the feeling fades into the background and then it’s gone.
Make Priming Part Of Your Routine
To make a lasting change in your work routines make priming a consistent part of your day. Integrating AI into your work doesn’t make as much sense when you are not aware of where to integrate it. It just becomes another attention grabber, though a very cool one.
The way you prime consistently is by taking notes.
Write the following down daily, and you'll be amazed by the results within a week:
Tasks that made you feel stressed, anxious, bored etc.
All tedious and/or repetitive tasks.
Don’t judge what you do; the goal is simply to write it all down as part of your normal process.
Here is the secret formula:
Priming -> Consistency -> Awareness -> First Key To Change
Talking About Dani’s Stress Created The Automation
When I began working with Dani, I just did the “Prime -> Consistency” part for her, by talking to her about her stress and what was going on in her work life. That’s when she was able to recognize that her morning jolt was not “just how it is.”
Only then was I able to open Zapier, create an automation that takes every new email, places it into her CRM and then into her custom audience on Facebook. Took me 1 hour. But the main work happened in Dani’s mind. I just guided her along.
That is why you can do this yourself.
Priming caused Dani to save 30 minutes a week (26 hours a year). We did this same process for many other tasks, saving her lots of time in the process. But ultimately, the great achievement was removing stress from her life, and that is priceless.