I was talking to a group of leaders recently, and what struck me is the massive gap in how people are using AI. Some are unbelievable, they’ve basically become AI geeks and experts. Others, however, are completely paralyzed by it and really struggling to keep up.
In this video, I want to suggest a few small, practical ways you can progress little by little to become much more proficient with AI.
As I write this, I’m in Fiji. We are incredibly lucky—it’s only a three-and-a-half-hour flight from Sydney, and this is our fourth time here. But when I say we are in the middle of nowhere, I mean it. We flew to the main island, jumped on a tiny ten-seat plane where you can’t even stand up, flew to a second island, and then took a banana boat for an hour and a half to a little rock of a place.
We are staying at a very basic homestay, but the sea is unbelievable. Yesterday, Cam and I went spearfishing and saw tuna, a massive bull shark, and Spanish mackerel. This place is wild.
Last night, I was talking with our local Fijian host, Willie. To give you an idea of the technology here, there is hardly any electricity, just a few solar batteries and a generator in the evening. For Wi-Fi, they put a phone on top of the island to capture a weak 4G signal. Yet, Willie was incredibly curious. He kept asking me how AI works, what tools he should use, and how it all fits together.
It struck me that if someone in the middle of a remote paradise is this eager to learn, we all need to check our curiosity. If you want to build your confidence with AI, here are three things that have made a big difference for me:
1. Dedicate time to learn it. Don’t just guess your way through. I deliberately booked myself into a few structured AI courses just to understand the foundational logic of how these systems work.
2. Make it a daily habit. On a normal work day, I start my morning with fifteen to twenty minutes of learning something new about AI. Just a short, consistent block of reading or watching tutorials before the day gets away from me.
3. Play and experiment with it. I’ve subscribed to a few different tools—ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, and Perplexity. I am literally just playing with them to see what happens. I try creating custom agents, adjusting prompts, and testing their limits. I’ve made so many mistakes and created some truly terrible things, but that’s exactly how you learn.
At the end of the day, navigating AI isn’t about being a technical genius right away. It’s just about keeping an open mind, experimenting, and staying curious.
So, I ask you this: Are you leaning into AI with curiosity, or are you letting the sheer scale of it paralyze you? What is one tool you could spend just ten minutes playing with today to start breaking down that barrier?
This is this week’s Work Smarter, Live Better tip.
You have a lovely day.
À bientôt,
Cyril
