The simplest way to become AI-native
You don't need to build anything fancy
When you’re asked to become AI-native by your employer, the first thing that comes to mind is to do something with a bang.
What vibe-coded site can I build with all the fancy features that will wow my employer?
What multi-tool and agentic workflow can I build, so I can show I know how to use all of these tools?
But all of these are just distractions that waste your time.
Especially if you’re new to coding (like I was), and suddenly the world is your oyster. Where you could literally build anything so long as you describe it to AI.
As someone who fell into that trap (and eventually got laid off because I had nothing to show for with my AI usage except for burning unnecessary tokens), I should have known this instead:
Being AI-native is about building something useful
Your employer doesn’t care about the number of tokens you burned or the number of tools you integrated into your workflow.
But this is the only thing they care about:
Does this site, tool, or workflow help to make the company more money, or save more of it?
If whatever you built doesn’t do either of these, it’s just a poor ROI in the eyes of your employer.
They are paying you a salary to figure things out with an AI subscription they paid for, and will be disappointed if you have nothing to show for it.
Especially if you took time off from your actual work to build it.
So rather than focusing on something flashy, this is what I’d do:
Start with one problem
AI is excellent as a mindless task executor, or a knowledgeable but clueless intern. If you give it a clear SOP (Skill) and context of what task it needs to complete, it can give you an output that is close to what you expect.
Of course, this takes many iterations (and time) to reach that stage, but I ask myself this question when integrating AI in my workflow:
What is the single most annoying, soul-sucking, repetitive task that I absolutely hate doing inside this workflow, and how can I outsource it to AI?
Usually, this involves a lot of mindless clicking.
One task I absolutely hated was the copying and pasting of every image I had inside my article draft (written in Notion or Obsidian) to the publishing platform (Twitter, Substack, Medium).
Each image involved 5-10 seconds of copying and pasting, and you could imagine the time I wasted doing this for 20 images and repurposing across all 3 platforms.
So I built a workflow with the help of AI to convert my Obsidian markdown file into an HTML file with all the embedded images.
Instead of copying and pasting every image, I could now do this in 5 seconds per platform.
And it all started out with the task that I didn’t want to do anymore, and it was perfect for AI to execute it for me.
I’m sure that in your own workflows, there are tasks that you hate doing too.
The ones that drain so much of your time and you wish someone else could do it for you.
Now, you don’t need to hire an intern, and just outsource it to AI instead.
Being AI-native starts with understanding your workflows
Instead of trying to build something fancy, find ways to make or save money for your employer with AI.
And all it takes is:
Understanding the workflows you do in your 9-to-5
Working together with AI to find an automated solution
After spending 4 months learning how to get good at AI, I’ve settled on a system to build these workflows that can be integrated into your job (and even your daily life).
This is what I’ll be sharing more of in The AI-Native Sprint, a 90-minute crash course that gives you a clear path to becoming AI-Native for busy 9-to-5 professionals.
If you’d like to join us, sign up for the waitlist here: