I’m in Bali right now, coworking with a good friend of mine.

About two years ago, he and I were also both here on the island.

In fact, that’s when we met.

I remember our first conversation well. He was extolling the virtues of cryptocurrency and I was, to put it mildly, skeptical. To me, crypto felt like a hype—nothing more.

In the months after, we often talked about a different hype: AI tools, and in particular ChatGPT.

I was initially quite skeptical about those, too.

I thought most AI tools were like hammers looking around for anything that resembled a nail.

Then one day I spent an afternoon playing around with ChatGPT.

And it blew my mind.

You could ask for insights from spreadsheets, get inspiration for gifts for loved ones, summarize overly long emails…

But was only the tip of the iceberg.

Today, ChatGPT and similar tools can do way more.

Recently, I was doing some emotional work, processing some negative habits I picked up in the past and trying to overcome them.

For a few weeks, I spent maybe an hour a day talking my challenges through with ChatGPT. I told it to act like a therapist of sorts.

And I truly talked to ChatGPT, because I just pressed the microphone button in the app and talked for ten minutes at a time. I didn’t have to tediously type it all up—ChatGPT transcribed my voice to text almost flawlessly.

By the end of those few weeks, I had made incredible progress on this issue that had been bothering me for so long. It truly blew my mind! I would have barely been able to schedule an intake appointment with a human therapist in that time.

(I will add here that you should, of course, also seek out a human, licensed therapist if you need to process serious things.)

And progress in AI tools is happening so quickly. There is now a ChatGPT tasks feature, which promises to be an AI-based task manager. Trust me, you’ll hear more from me on that front!

And just a few days ago, OpenAI announced ChatGPT Operator, which can make restaurant reservations or book flights for you. I mean, wow!

We should still avoid running around with a hammer, looking for nails.

But please, don’t sleep on AI for productivity.

If you’re stuck on something, just see whether ChatGPT can help… it might blow your mind, too.

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P.S. Generative AI tools are getting so good at creating images, too. Here’s a fun AI-generated image of me:

Be honest: if I hadn’t told you it’s an AI-generated image, and you’d looked quickly, would you have realized?