I stopped asking AI to do tasks. I started asking it to think with me. Here's what changed.
Most people are using AI wrong and I was one of them.
For the first year, I used AI like a fancy Google. "Write me a product description." "Summarize this." "Give me 10 ideas for X." Useful? Sure. Transformative? Not really.
Then I tried something different, and it rewired how I work entirely.
The shift: From "do this" → "think through this with me"
Instead of: "Write a go-to-market strategy for my product"
I started asking: "Here's my current GTM thinking: [dump]. What assumptions am I making that I haven't tested? What would you push back on?"
The difference is massive. The first gets you a generic 5-step plan. The second gets you a thinking partner that stress-tests your blind spots.
3 specific ways this changed my workflow:
Pre-mortems before every major decision
Before shipping a feature, I do a quick AI session: "Assume this feature failed after 3 months. Walk me through the 5 most likely reasons why." The answers are uncomfortable. That's the point.
Devil's advocate on copy and positioning
Instead of "make this better," I ask: "Play a skeptical customer who almost bought but didn't. What objections does this messaging leave unresolved?" My conversion copy got sharper within a week.
Pattern-breaking on stuck problems
When I'm spinning on a problem: "What's the most contrarian take on how to solve this? What would someone do if they had to solve this in 24 hours with no budget?"
The honest caveat
This only works if you push back when the AI is wrong. The goal isn't to accept every output, it's to use the friction to surface your own thinking. Half the value comes from reading a response and thinking "no, that's not right, and here's why."
What's your current AI workflow? Have you found prompting frameworks that actually changed how you work or is most of it still hype?
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