You need a personal AI strategy. Yesterday.

Good news: I have a template for that.

The sooner you invite AI into your life on your terms, the less chance it has to barge in unannounced. But if you’re feeling stuck (or if your plan consists of ‘use ChatGPT’), I’ve built you an interactive one-page Personal AI Planner - everything you need to get you started with designing AI into your life. This planner is based on my personal approach to learning AI and has enabled me to stay focussed, carve out time for studying and trialling tools, and make a huge amount of progress on my mission to become a SuperHuman.

Print it, tap it, scribble on it. Just don’t let the next month slip by on autopilot.

Here’s how it looks and how it works:

Section 1: AI Literacy

Here you’ll list your four biggest AI knowledge gaps (Gap #1-4) and then commit to one action you’ll take in the next 30 days to shrink them. Like:

• Knowing which tool does what

• Prompting

• How LLMs actually work

• AI ethics

• Data protection and privacy

Possible one-month actions

• Enrol in a short “Gen-AI fundamentals” course

• Read one book (e.g. The Coming Wave or Smart until it’s dumb)

• Subscribe to a single, trusted newsletter or podcast

• Run a 10-day trial of a new tool and log wins/fails

Section 2: Personal resilience

Here’s where you identify the personal strengths you must shore up to stay steady during all this change, plus one life tweak you’ll make this month. Like:

• Are you prone to anxiety or depression?

• Could your diet do with some work?

• Do you have a health condition you need to manage?

Possible one-month actions:

• Set a 22:00 device curfew

• Schedule a daily fifteen-minute walk

• Track sleep with a smartwatch and aim for one extra hour

• Try a weekly guided meditation or breath-work session

Section 3: Protecting your career

Break your work down into two columns: the areas that are at highest risk of automation and those that are the most resilient to automation. It might be tough, but take a deep breath and be honest with yourself.

Then choose one protective move for the next 30 days.

Possible actions

• Become your team’s “AI super-user” and lead small automations

• Block time to deepen skills in the tasks that still need you

• Begin a pivot course or micro-credential in an AI-proof niche

Section 4: New Opportunities

In this part you will list your unique skills, passions and experiences and then pick one small opportunity to test or explore in the next month. Try to think creatively about what you can do now that wasn’t possible (or wasn’t so easy) before the advent of genAI.

Possible ideas

• Can you redesign your life to have more free time?

• Is there a side hustle that’s now within your grasp?

• Maybe you have a passion you can now pursue.

Section 5: Being Human

I’ve been pretty vocal about the human skills you’re going to need to build to survive and thrive in an AI-driven world. And you’re going to need to strengthen your brain. Choose your thinking focus for the month - creativity, curiosity, critical thinking or learning mindset - and write one workout to exercise it.

Examples

• Do a daily five-minute sketch to loosen creative muscles

• Practise Socratic questioning on one tricky decision each week

• Ask ChatGPT to argue the opposite side of your favourite opinion

• Join a friend to co-read and debate a challenging article every Friday

Section 6: Voice and influence

What role do you want to have in the AI conversation? This might just change every aspect of your life. You might not be up for a new project or a new thing to learn about, but you don’t have a choice. So think about where you want to sit on the bus.

“If you’re not designing AI into your life, someone else is. I would much rather be in control of how AI impacts me, and this planner has proven invaluable to helping me think through how I’m going to implement AI.” James. Content Marketer.