How to find your AI use case without outsourcing your thinking
A 15-minute method that I've battle tested on managers, and teams.
"I can't find any AI use case for me."
"I don't see where these tools actually fit into my work."
I hear this constantly in workshops. I hear it from managers, from marketing teams, from executives. And it's not because they lack creativity or intelligence. It's because most of us were never trained to see our work as a system.
We're so embedded in our own processes that we struggle to see the connections. The very places where AI offers the most leverage.
That’s why I want to share a simple, 15-minute method I use to help people get past that block. It doesn’t require new technical knowledge. It works with your exact tasks and your existing workflows.
It needs just a little bit of a mindset shift.
Let’s start, shall we?
First, focus on just one upcoming task
Don’t try to boil the ocean. Pick one real thing on your to-do list. For me, it’s preparing for an upcoming client work where we'll be deconstructing the process of building personalized AI assistants.
That’s my one thing. I'll fire up a Miro or FigJam board and put that end goal on a single post-it note.
Second, think broadly about the components
Now, ask yourself: what smaller pieces of work need to exist for me to complete this task?
To prepare for my client work, I'll need:
A presentation deck.
A few exercises designed for beginners (and a small group of intermediates)
My personal "best practices" cheat-sheet.
Examples of my own assistant usage.
Speaker notes to keep me on track. (because I often like to drift away with the narrative)
A way to repurpose some existing materials for this specific audience.
Let's get those onto the board. Notice how we're deconstructing the big task into smaller pieces?
Finally, select between automation and your expertise
Look at the system I’ve just mapped out. This is where you find your use cases.
I use a simple color code. For every component, i ask myself two questions:
Is this step about gathering, summarizing, or creating a first draft? (Green - a great candidate for AI assistance)
Does this step depend on my unique taste, judgment, or strategic experience? (White - this is where I, the human, should lead)
For my client work, I can use an LLM to help design exercise variations or draft speaker notes from my existing materials. I can ask my own assistant to summarize my most common usage patterns. These are the green cards.
But the final presentation structure, the choice of examples, and the core of the best practices cheat-sheet? That relies on my taste and experience. Those stay white.
Suddenly, I’ve gone from "I need to prepare for a workshop, and client work" to a clear map of what I need to do, where I can strategically plug in AI, and where my own expertise is irreplaceable.
I am no longer just doing a task. I am directing a system.
The real challenge isn’t in prompting or using a thousand techniques to get the job done. This kind of exercises on your own task or project will show you more about what you need to learn next, and what other AI use cases will emerge in the coming weeks or months.
What is the one task you could map out this week?
(PS. If you need help, you can always reach out by replying to this email or DM-ing me on LinkedIn. I would love to help.)