Everyone talks about AI taking over the world. Meanwhile, I’m just using it to check if my outfit looks stupid.
While everyone is talking about MCPs and extremely fancy things, I’ve found the best use of it, and the ways to actually use it to improve my life, are a couple simple and down-to-earth things.
Here are 23 ways to actually use AI in real life.
- Daily Essentials (1-6)
- Leveling Up Life (7-15)
- Productivity Multipliers (16-18)
- Fun Stuff Nobody Talks about (19-26)
The Daily Essentials (1-6)
Caveat: When NOT to Use AI: Confidential work documents, trade secrets, or sensitive personal information (SSNs, passwords, private medical records). If your company has an AI policy, follow it. For medical or legal advice, AI should supplement, not replace, professional consultation. Importantly, for nearly all of these examples, I am using AI to help my thinking not replace it! Ok, let’s get into.
1. Troubleshooting Anything
My most frequent use of AI is troubleshooting. Whether this is my AC not working, website bugs, or Excel formulas. AI nearly always has the fix.
To level up the use of this and make it even faster, I nearly always use screenshots, pictures, and manuals. So, for my website, I’ll screenshot the issue (with cmd-shift-4 on the mac or window-shift-S on windows) drag it into the chat box, and then say what I want to fix or do and link or screenshot that (for example making this cool sparkles animation!) and AI will do the rest.
In any coding I’m learning, any bugs or errors I see, or tasks I need to do, AI is always with me.
Pro Tip: Recently, I’ve been playing around with Google AI Studio, which is an amazing way to do this without screenshotting and constantly asking questions. It’s amazing and I honestly think it’s the future.
2. Outfit Checks and Looking The Best Possible
I have a project on/folder on my AI of choice (currently Claude but can use whatever) that has all of my clothing that I have as well as pictures of myself and what style I like. I’ll try on an outfit, or new piece of clothing that I want to buy, or even link to a new piece of clothing online that I want to buy, and ask AI if it will fit in my wardrobe and look good on me.
It’s brutally honest and actually has good advice.
When in doubt I’ll describe where I am going, what I am doing, and the weather and it will help me with 2 or 3 outfit ideas before settling on the best one.
To take it a step further, you can even use it for hairstyles, facial hair, or even lifting. I often ask it what beard or hairstyle works best with my face shape.
Prompts:
- Analyze this outfit photo for [specific occasion]. Consider the dress code, weather, and suggest improvements while keeping my style preferences of [describe style]
- I’m going to [event type]. Here’s what I’m wearing [describe/photo]. Rate it for appropriateness, style cohesion, and suggest 3 alternative combinations from these items
3. Interior Design
Not just clothing, you can also use taking pictures for interior design. Want to spruce up a room you have? Reorganize furniture? Make the room feel like it has more space? Turn your room into a spacy adventure land?
Simply take a picture of the rooms of your entire place (so AI can adjust to the rest of your living space) and choose a room to change. If you want to purchase new items, tell AI your budget and it will even give you a shortlist!
Pro Tip: I create projects for nearly everything I do. That way the AI has reference for what it’s going to do and I can update it and not hit chat limits. For example, I am moving soon and know the floorplan of my new place. So I have a “new place” project that I do all my interior design and chats in!
Prompt:
- Here’s a photo of my [room]. Suggest 5 budget-friendly changes under $[amount] that would have the biggest visual impact, prioritizing [comfort/aesthetics/functionality]
- Create a mood board for redesigning my [space] in [style] with a budget of $[amount]. Include specific product recommendations and placement
4. A Critical Review of The Research
Most AIs now have the ability to review and compile research. I usually use every single AI I have access to (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Consensus) and give it clear instructions. For example, before I got my ACL surgery I inserted this prompt into every AI:
Give me a complete analysis of the research on ACL reconstruction surgery, please give me pros and cons of every procedure as well as ranking the research with the highest priority to systematic reviews, followed by RCTs, followed by Cohort studies, and then everything else. Please ask me any questions you have to be 95% sure you are searching for the right things for me. My goal is to understand which surgery is best for which patient population, the risks, and exclude as much bias as possible.
For example, for a lot of these videos, I’ll use a similar prompt to help review the points I make as well as come up with counter point to make sure I’m presenting the most comprehensive, unbiased, and correct understanding of current evidence as a I can.
Prompts:
- Analyze research on [supplement name] for [specific health goal]. Prioritize human trials over animal studies, and flag any industry-funded research.
- Compare the evidence for different [therapy types] for [condition]. Include success rates, side effects, and patient population differences.
- Review the latest research on [parenting approach]. Separate correlation from causation and highlight long-term outcome studies.
5. Summarizing or Reviewing Documents and Spreadsheets
Ever get a tough legal document? Or complicated medical report? Or messy financial excel sheet? Now, of course, you should always talk to your doctor, lawyer, or financial advisor, as they are the real experts (not AI), but, AI can help you to get a basic understanding of what you are looking at before you speak to them.
Long important documents are also painful, and as long as they aren’t confidential, I’ll throw them into AI and tell it to point out things I might have missed or need to look at.
To level this up, it’s helpful to tell AI what your goals or intentions are for the use of the document, so, as it scans through, it can make sure to select the proper pieces.
If it’s an excel sheet, and you download it as a CSV, most Ai tools can even present graphs or trends or results of the data. I use this with my YouTube channel and ask AI to pretend to be a professional YouTube advisor, and help me pick which videos have performed best and try to understand why. It’s awesome!
Use some sort of Excel sheet or Quickbooks or any software at all (as most are exportable as a CSV) to track your finances? I bet in about five minutes any AI could help you find places where you could save money, are spending too much, or even being stolen from (I do this once every couple of months).
Prompts:
- Review this [document type] and create a 1-page summary highlighting: 1) Key decisions needed, 2) Red flags or concerns, 3) Questions I should ask my [lawyer/doctor/advisor]
6. Creating Daily Routines that Are Best For You
AI loves personalization. The more information and specifity you can give it the better it will craft results for you.
One thing I’ve been experimenting with recently, and loving, is having AI create the best daily routine for me (including morning routines, nighttime routines, when to workout, when to study or do analytical work, when to do creative work, and when I should chill).
I tell it my job or what I am working on most of the time, when I like to wake up and go to sleep, I insert sleep data from Whoop and Eightsleep, and I say what my goals are. Then, my favorite thing to do recently, is before I do anything important with AI, is I’ll have it create a detailed quiz for me so it can best understand my goals and information about me to best accomplish the results I need. For example, when I did this project, it came up with a 65 item questionnaire for me! Wow!
Then, I tell it to create me 5 experimental days and what to track on each of those days. I then do each day, track each day, and give the results, and it says what my optimal daily routine is!
It feels like magic!
Pro tip: Quizzing yourself with the direction of AI is one of the fastest ways I’ve leveled up my responses.
Level Up Your Life (7-14)
7. Personalized Diet Plan and Workout Routine
No need to pay $1,000s a month for professional advice on diet and exercise, AI has got you! (Although, I think it’s very very hard to beat a good personal trainer who can watch you and work with you as you exercise).
I’ll simply have it quiz me again, analyze my goals (like put on weight and muscle) and what I like and dislike (like food choices, allergies, etc.) and then it will create a food and workout plan for me!
I created a full project for working out and a full project for eating (because they are so important to me) and then put in my results and health metrics over time.
To level this up you can take pictures of your fridge and pantry, and even your body, and give it goals of what you want to work on.
8. Last-Minute Chef
Remember those pictures of the fridge and pantry?
Unsure what to cook? Don’t want to go to the grocery store? Just plug in those pics, say how long you can be bothered to cook and what you are in the mood for, and AI will do the rest!
9. Duolingo on Steroids
This is the second, and final, way I use the live chat in AI.
I don’t like Duolingo (sorry). I think the app is cool and fun, but it doesn’t actually help with language learning. What helps the most with language learning is being in the country, being exposed to the language constantly, and talking as much as possible.
I have spent thousands on online tutors and classes for learning languages like Italian and Spanish and AI is very good. I usually like to create a project or dedicated chat with goals, verbs, tenses, and situations I would like to learn to speak about and then just go from there. I also only talk in the language with the AI unless absolutely necessary to go to English.
Try doing this 30 minutes a day compared to Duolingo 30 minutes a day and if your language learning isn’t better I’ll eat my left sock. And I hate eating left socks. The right ones are much better.
10. Learn From a World-Class Professor
Nearly every time I am trying to learn (and not just fix) things I always have the AI act as a professor or teacher, or Nobel prize laureate in the field.
For example, while I am learning to code, I’ll make sure every time it gives me instructions or teaches anything, it actually tells me and quizzes me on what it is doing before it actually does it. Then, when I am done a project, I’ll have it create for me a full test, grade it, and then tell me what to do next!
If you want to level this up, I usually create a massive Excel sheet first based on the time I have to dedicate to learning, what I want to learn, and projects I want to create.
Then, every time I am being “taught” AI will reference this (I also keep my grades on there too) and go to the appropriate lessons or questions!
Prompts:
- Act as a physics professor. Explain [concept] using real-world examples I’d encounter daily. Quiz me with 3 conceptual questions before we move on.
- Be my Spanish tutor. Correct my grammar gently, explain why, and give me 3 similar sentences to practice the same concept.
- You’re a financial advisor. Explain [investment concept] like I’m your nephew who just got their first job. Include what mistakes to avoid.
11. Excel Sheet Magic
Ever wonder how people make excel sheets so nice? Well, probably lots of experience, and training, and profesionalism… blablabla
There are these things called “scripts,” that you can apply to your excel sheets on Google Sheets. So, get your CSV file on sheets somehow, make sure the content is correct, and then have AI (after screen shorts and CSV export) “prettify” the sheet!
It creates a set of code that will automatically make your Sheet look nice!
I did this with my coding plan spreadsheet recently and it made it look so much better and even added a tracker!
12. ELI5 → Expert Shift
Trying to learn something in detail? Ask AI to explain it to you in 5 levels, all the way from like you are five years old to a world-class expert.
13. Coding
Coding with AI is… so much fun. Some days, I lose the entire day just on Cursor. Right now, my favorite way to do this is in Cursor, but using Claude in the terminal.
Build static HTML sales pages, Next.js websites, anything and everything.
The most (long-term) effective way to do this is actually learn some of the basics behind the coding languages like HTML, CSS, Java, PHP, etc. so when something doesn’t work, or you want to change a very specific thing, you don’t beat your head endlessly against the AI wall, you can just go into your codebase and actually change it.
Pro tip: I used AI to help me determine my goals with coding (what I was trying to build) and then had it build me an action plan for building the thing and learning at the same time in Excel. This is an amazing way to create about 6 college courses for free. Here’s mine if your interested.
14. Book and Movie Recommendations
Unsure what to watch alone or with someone one night? Open up the chat function, and just talk about what you are in the mood for. It’s helpful to reference movies you like or dislike.
Same for books!
Productivity Multipliers (15-17)
15. Organizing my To-Do List
I accumulate about 100 todos a week on my Things App and it is always a pain to sort through and organize them all. So, what do I do?
I copy and paste them into AI and ask it to organize them based on category. Then I just copy and paste them into where they need to go, and delete all the ToDos, this saves me hours a week!
Pro Tip: Sometimes if I feel particularly overwhelmed, I’ll have a quick chat with AI about my weekly priorities and what I need to do, and have it create an Eisenhower matrix for me for the next week. This prioritizes everything I need!
16. Calendar Analysis
Now, you’ll need to keep a good calendar for this one and have an AI that can integrate with a calendar application (most can), but I love on a monthly or yearly basis to do an audit of my time. How much time did I spend doing “fun” things like vacation and dinners. And how much time did I spend working?
At the gym? Traveling?
Then I’ll ask it to create a scoring system for me so I can say whether this thing added enjoyment or took away enjoyment from my life.
Then it will compile all the information and give me an analysis and even recommendations about what activities add to my life and what take away!
Again, if this is connected to your calendar and email, it is 10x better. But on mornings when I feel like I have a billion things I have AI look at my calendar and mail and give me a summary and important things to remember and do for the day.
Prompts:
- Analyze my past month’s calendar. Show me: 1) Time allocation percentages by category, 2) My most productive time blocks, 3) Where I’m overcommitted, 4) Suggested schedule optimizations
- Look at my calendar and emails from the last 72 hours. Give me a morning briefing with: 1) My top 3 priorities for today with time estimates, 2) What I need to prep for each meeting, 3) Urgent emails requiring responses, 4) My available deep work windows. Keep it scannable and end with one motivating insight about what completing today’s priorities will achieve. Please let me know if you have any questions before making this for me. I would also like to integrate this [gym time], [chore time], [x time] into my day.
17. Reviewing Email
Now, you have to trust your AI of choice a lot here because this is giving it deep access. But I allow Claude to access my Google Drive, Calendar, and Mail.
I love the integration because it helps me find things that the normal search function can’t, and it even can assess what I am dealing with right now! Currently, I only have it integrated with my personal email adresss, but in the future if it could integrate with multiple it would be huge.
Some Useful Prompts:
- Find important missed emails: “Show me emails from the last week that might be important or urgent that I may have missed”
- Clean up inbox: “Help me identify which emails in my inbox can be safely deleted or archived”
- Follow up reminders: “Find emails I sent in the last month where I’m still waiting for a response”
- Meeting preparation: “Search for all emails related to [specific project/meeting] to help me prepare”
- Contact analysis: “Show me my most frequent email contacts and analyze our communication patterns”
- Time management: “Find emails that require action items and help me prioritize them”
- Newsletter cleanup: “Identify promotional and newsletter emails I should consider unsubscribing from”
- Document hunting: “Search for emails containing important attachments like contracts, receipts, or documents”
- Relationship insights: “Analyze my email communication with [specific person] to understand our collaboration history”
- Productivity review: “Help me understand my email habits and suggest ways to be more efficient”
- Travel coordination: “Find all emails related to my upcoming trip/event and create a summary”
- Project status: “Search for all project updates and create a timeline of progress”
I simply don’t have enough emails for automatic email sorting beyond junk/work/personal (I do that with custom filters in the Gmail and Mail Apps). But I have heard good things about Superhuman. I just don’t need it.
Fun Stuff Nobody Talks About (18-23)
18. Holiday Trip Planner
Here I’ll use Mac Whisper and transcribe a long message about any trips or long weekends or adventures I want to go on and then it will help me craft a trip! Usually I’ll include things like budget, duration of the trip, specific locations I like, types of activities I like (general tourism versus specific things like surfing or hiking), food I like, season I’ll be visiting, who I’ll be going with, and general vibes I am looking for.
Then I like to have a list of potential things to do created for me before intinerizing stuff to do.
Importantly, when I actually travel, I don’t necessarily stick to the itinerary, I just like to have it.
19. Hobby Finder
Now, I think I have more than enough hobbies, I often feel like I never have enough hours in the day. But I’ve felt I should become more social with certain hobbies instead of hunkered over my keyboard 24/7.
So I’ll ask AI to quiz me about finding a “social hobby” and then it usually comes up with some great things to do in the local area for me to meet people and do fun things! For example, I’ve tried rock climbing, business and reading clubs, sports leagues, and more!
Pro Tip: when you ask AI to quiz you, ask it to mostly do multiple choice with the numbers 1/2/3/4/5 so you can quickly enter your answers. If it needs a longer response you can type or talk that out.
20. Weekly Recipe Planner
The recipes are actually pretty on point in my experience! I’ll tell AI what I have to do this week, how much time I have to cook, what I’m feeling like, and it will create usually really good plans!
Often, I’ll prompt it that I like high protein meals, that are easily re-heatable, and very tasty!
Pro Tip: I’ve built a project for this with my favorite foods, allergies, diet goals, and preferences. Make sure to include skill level, available cookware, time and budget constraints, and any dietary restrictions.
Prompts:
- Create a week of dinners using only these ingredients I already have: [list items]. Include prep time and cooking instructions.
- Plan 5 weeknight dinners that take 30 minutes or less, use no more than 5 ingredients each, and create minimal dishes.
- Design a week of meals for $50 that feeds 4 people, includes a shopping list organized by store section, and uses ingredients in multiple recipes to minimize waste.
- Create a meal plan for someone who is gluten-free and vegetarian, but lives with family members who aren’t. Include easy modifications to make everyone happy.
- Design a Sunday batch cooking session (3 hours max) that produces grab-and-go breakfasts and lunches for the work week. Include storage instructions and reheating notes.
- Create a Mediterranean diet meal plan for someone who’s never cooked much before. Include basic technique explanations and suggest kitchen tools needed.
- Plan a week of dinners featuring [current month]’s seasonal produce in [your region]. Focus on simple preparations that highlight fresh flavors.
- Create dinners that satisfy these family members: a vegetarian teen, a spouse who avoids carbs, and a picky 7-year-old. No separate meals allowed!
21. Personal Accountant
You can create a personal finances project and simply paste in or link to a Google Sheets folder tracking everything. I think QuickBooks actually does this better and more simply still, but what you can do is have it export everything as a CSV and then use AI to analyze the CSV for trends and anything you missed. You can also, after speaking to your accountant and getting a tax return ready or anything like that, simply paste everything in and get it to check for any mistakes or ways you could potentially save more money.
I did this with my businesses and it prompted me to convert my LLCs to an S-Corp which should save me ~5 figures next year in taxes!
- Review my spending CSV and identify: 1) My top 5 unnecessary recurring expenses, 2) Categories where I’m overspending vs. typical budgets, 3) Quick wins to save $[amount] monthly
22. Study Buddy
If I were still in school, every course of every semester, I would create a project for and input the course syllabus, homeworks, projects, and any other important course documents.
Then I could use this for exam and class planning and prep, and actual studying help.
Pro tip: use the live chat function while in the project or Google AI Studio to help teach you as you go through practice problems or homework. You could even use it to help you make improved flashcards and practice tests for yourself.
23. Writing Assistant
I NEVER use AI for first drafts, outlining, or writing any of my online posts, YouTube videos, or emails. As of now, at least, I don’t have a project that sufficiently integrates my style and voice. I have tried to work this out extensively, but, in my opinion, it is not there yet.
What I have found helpful is to use AI to point out any weakness or missing points in my articles or posts or emails. Also any grammatical, diction, or pacing errors throughout.
Great uses include resume optimization, email review, grammar fixing, and article research and style improvement.
Pro tip: I would create a project for each specific thing you are doing and the style you prefer. So I have projects on long form to short form creation, emails, YouTube scripts, and articles.
Final Tips
Ok, so overall, these are things I pretty much use every day to dramatically improve my life and access to things! Some of the most helpful AI additions I’ve found are:
- Use Voice-to-Text: MacWhisper is my favorite, or a simple dictation button on the Mac, and I’ve heard Flow by Wispr is pretty good for Windows.
- Quizzing: Asking AI to Quiz me to create better answers
- Projects for everything: Creating Projects for nearly everything
- When NOT to Use AI: Confidential work documents, trade secrets, or sensitive personal information (SSNs, passwords, private medical records). If your company has an AI policy, follow it. For medical or legal advice, AI should supplement, not replace, professional consultation.
- Keep a Prompt Journal and Regularly Update Project Instructions – Document which prompts give you the best results and in what projects. I often edit the project instructions based on feedback.
- Prompt Iteratively – Don’t dump everything in the first prompt. Start broad, then add detail based on the AI’s initial response.
- Use “Acting” Prompts Strategically – “Act as a(n) [x]” works great!
- Paste the same prompt in multiple AIs – My favorite is Claude but for important tasks I’ll paste it also in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok.
- Export Important Conversations – When something valuable appears (and you’ll know), I usually save it in a notes doc to make sure I don’t lose it and can find it in the future.
Overall, I would say try to just pick your favorite 3 from above and integrate in everyday life.
Thanks for reading!
Zach
Favorite AI Tools
- Claude
- Claude CODE
- Cursor IDE
- Supabase
- Vercel/V0
- Gemini
- Grok Research
- Consensus Research