#9: The Invisible AI Advantage: Why Some Are Already 10 Steps Ahead

Hey fellow AI explorers, and a special welcome to new subscribers. Coming to you this week with a packed edition of The Inside Track, including a very useful tactic.

Enjoy!

–Martin

💡 One Idea

The Invisible AI Advantage: Why Some Are Already 10 Steps Ahead

There's a massive opportunity gap right now. While everyone's talking about AI, a small group of people are quietly outpacing their peers by 2-3x in productivity.

AI is already a powerful force multiplier for work. Most people just don't know how to harness it. Or perhaps they know it intellectually, but they're stuck at the starting line.

The productivity K-curve is forming

Imagine two professionals with comparable skills, both building similar products or services:

• Person A produces at a 1:1 ratio (1 hour = 1 unit of output)

• Person B produces at a 1:2.5 ratio (1 hour = 2.5 units of output)

Both have the same hours available, but person B consistently produces 150% more value. Over time, this gap compounds dramatically.

The future isn't uniformly distributed. It's forming a K-curve where some are accelerating rapidly while others fall behind.

My AI workspace reality

ChatGPT and Claude are my two most-used applications. I've also built several automations running in the background (like my Newsletter Butler serving me curated news every morning).

When I tell people this, they invariably ask: "What do you use it for?"

My answer? Everything. From evaluating projects to drafting marketing copy, editing my writing, researching complex topics, and even debugging code.

Often, the person I'm talking to has only made a few attempts at one-shotting CoPilot or tried a basic ChatGPT prompt. They haven't experienced the compound returns of deeply integrating AI into their workflow.

The time investment barrier

Here's the counterintuitive truth: Adopting AI requires more work now to work better later.

This "meta-work" means learning new skills while unlearning old patterns. It's why most people don't cross the threshold to experience the compound returns – they abandon the process when it feels like extra work.

Most of us default to familiar methods, even when slower. Breaking free requires consciously pausing to ask: "Could AI help with this?"

Start small. Pick one recurring task and enhance it with AI until it's second nature. Then tackle the next. The compound effect of these improvements is what creates the upward slope of the K-curve.

Sneak peak:

I'm currently building two internal tools and documenting the process. Next week I'll share a walkthrough of how I went from initial concept to working application, with the specific steps you can follow to build your own.

🛠️ One Tactic

The Automation Potential Matrix

Many people freeze when deciding where to apply AI. Here’s a great place to start:

Map your recurring tasks and grade them:

1. List your recurring tasks in a spreadsheet

2. Grade each task (1-10):

   • Value: Impact of delegating to AI

   • Effort: Complexity to implement

3. Prioritize using: Value ÷ Effort × 10

4. Note potential implementation approaches

You can now start making organised and intentional efforts to learn, experiment and apply AI to your work.

This mapping exercise can be used both for personal tasks, team-level and company level. When I consult with companies that wants to apply AI to their operations, we always start with this.

Bonus: Copy my ready-to-use Google Sheet

Power move: Grade only the value column, then upload to ChatGPT with this prompt:

I'm mapping out which tasks would be valuable to automate with AI. 

Please review the attached spreadsheet and do the following for each row: 
- assess what a good solution would be. This could be suggesting an existing tool/product, suggesting the user writes a special prompt, or explain that it would require building a custom workflow. 
- based on proposed solution, give it an effort score between 1-10 (where building custom workflows is 8 and up)
- calculate the priority using this formula: value/effort*10

Order the tasks based on priority and return the table with all columns. 

Ask: Hit reply and let me know what your highest priority tasks are, and I’ll try to write about some of it in the coming weeks.

That’s it for today. Thanks!

– Martin