Work Has Never Been So Much Fun

I can't remember enjoying work this much. Maybe when I was sixteen, working at the movie theater, ripping tickets and watching the same film twelve times.

With Claude Co-Work, I run two or three projects at once. All of them at seriously high quality.

I'm taking the curriculum from the cohort based leadership program I co-facilitate, updating it, building a brand standard, and creating a website and session content dashboard. All with Claude. I'm also asking it for research help to prove our training model is every inch as transformative as we claim. That research is real labor. Every citation checked. Every source ranked for quality. What's different isn't that AI made our case sharper. What's different is that I'm not building it alone.

And I'm mapping out a keynote address using ChatGPT. I have it act as a famous keynote speaker serving as my mentor. It gives me prompts. I write. Together we shape the structure and hunt for the right story and message for the audience. No one will ever hear an AI written keynote from me. But every keynote will be better than the one before, because I'm thinking about upstream impact, not just the keynote itself.

I can run all of this in parallel because I give Claude access and instructions, then rotate. While it works on one piece, I'm refining instructions on another, reviewing output on a third. Both Claude and ChatGPT know my voice. It's recorded in memory.

I've barely touched what comes next. Automating more multi-step projects. Programming marketing campaigns.

How did I learn this? Podcasts. Substack articles. I asked Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini to build lesson plans. I experimented and didn’t let failed experiments defeat me.

Why do I keep posting about AI?

Not because I'm oblivious. I see the environmental cost of data centers. I see the unchecked power flowing to tech billionaires. I see what happens when AI, maybe AGI soon, operates without adult supervision.

I post because the time is here.

As a social worker, I want people to take seriously the devastation coming for certain careers, and to prepare for post-AI work now, while there's still room to move.

I also post because of what AI can bring to mental health and substance use recovery. New generation medications. Therapies we couldn't have imagined five years ago.

If you think AI will reduce your workload, here's a reality check. Used properly, it will help you do more, and do it better. Every output will demand every inch of your subject matter expertise and writing skill. AI will embarrass you if you put something into the world without checking it first.

Treat it like a brilliant, overeager assistant who will take too much initiative if you aren't watching.

What AI gives me isn't space. It sparks my imagination. The more I realize what it can do, the more I elevate my requests. I imagine greater impact. I say things like, "Hey, why don't I turn this into a dashboard…a website…a podcast?"

Working with AI isn’t my primary livelihood. My work is leadership development, facilitation, coaching. But AI is making me better at all of them, and I want the same for you.

I hope you'll have as much fun as I'm having.