Latest / Breaking the Timeline by Shana Francis / Everyone Is Using AI. Almost Nobody Is Using It Right, And It Is Quietly Costing Your Career

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Everyone Is Using AI. Almost Nobody Is Using It Right, And It Is Quietly Costing Your Career · Breaking the Timeline by Shana Francis

• Shana: CEO of OpenAI, the man who built ChatGPT, ⁓ said something recently I have not been able to stop thinking about. He said, roughly older people use AI like a Google replacement. ⁓ People in their and 30s use it like a life advisor. ⁓ And people in ⁓ use it like operating system, ⁓ connecting it to ⁓ running their whole Through it. And the reason that landed for me is because I think he accidentally described three completely different career trajectories. Not three different generations, three different relationships with the most powerful professional tool most of us have ever had access to. And which one you are right now matters more than you probably realise. Today we are getting into all of it. So I want to start by being honest with you about something. This episode has been sitting in my head for months. the reason I kept not recording it is because I was worried it was going to come across like one of those 10 AI prompts to save your week videos that ⁓ are everywhere right now. ⁓ And this is what this is. What I actually want to talk about is a mindset, a way of relating to these tools that most people, and I mean most, the data backs is up and have not made the shift yet. And the people who have made the shift, they are moving differently, professionally, creatively, ⁓ in terms of how they think and how they show up. ⁓ And I want to break down exactly what that looks like ⁓ and how you get there. But before we get into it, I want to say I work as a senior lecturer in initial teacher education. I run a coaching practice and I'm also building a content brand. I use AI across all of those daily. So this is not me speculating from the outside. What I am not is a tech person. And nothing in this episode is a product endorsement. I am just someone who figured out how to use this properly and noticed that almost everyone around me was not. The gap is what today is about. So let's open the office. Right. The data first because I think it reframes the conversation before we even get into the practical stuff. A 2025 London School of Economics survey found that 83% of Gen Z and 73% of millennials are using AI at work. So if you're in your 20s or 30s, you are almost certainly already in. 83% of Gen Z and 73% of millennials are using AI at work. You have used it. You have probably used it this week. The adoption is there. But is the stat that tells the real story. Huff of Gen Z say they turn to AI before asking their manager a question. And I want to sit with that for a second because ⁓ the surface, that sounds like Progress. Like the generation is resourceful. They are self-sufficient. They are not waiting around. But if you are using AI the way most people use it, as a search engine, as a shortcut, as the thing you throw a question at, you take the first answer from, then you have not actually developed any capability. You just outsourced the thinking to a machine ⁓ and moved on. And here is the thing about that. Your manager can tell. The person interviewing you can tell. college sitting from you in that meeting can tell. Not necessarily because the output is bad, ⁓ but because there is a texture to thinking that has been stress tested by a real mind. ⁓ And there a texture to thinking that has just been generated and accepted. They are different. And over time, one of those positions, you as someone worth investing in, and the other one does not. Now, in UK workplaces, and specifically, this is the generally interesting thing I found. actually millennials who are AI adoption, not Gen Z. 64% of millennials in UK view AI as an essential thing to hit business objectives. And 48% say they more enjoyable because of it. ⁓ Now, those high figures Aren't this younger colleagues thing? And the reason I think that is worth naming is because there is a narrative that the AI fluence is a person's game, that digital natives have the advantage, that if you did not grow up with this stuff, you are already behind. That narrative ⁓ is wrong. What determines who wins with AI is not how young you are, ⁓ it is how intentional you are. An intentional is a mindset, not a demographic. So, two modes of using AI, and I want to be really clear about the difference because I think this is where most people get stuck. Mode ⁓ one is task outsourcing. ⁓ have something that needs okay? You give it to AI, it does it, you move on. This is generally useful. ⁓ I am not dismissing it. Draft an email, summarize a document, turn your bullet points into protective or productive sentences. Time saved, useful output, fine. But it is shallow. And if that is the only relationship you are having with these tools, you are using the most sophisticated thinking technology in human history as a slightly faster version of a word template. Now, mode what I think ⁓ as a thinking partnership. ⁓ it is a completely different thing. In thinking partnership, you are not giving AI a task. You're bringing it a problem. The full problem, the context, the stakes, the thing you are actually trying to figure out, ⁓ thing you are worried about, the bit you do not understand yet. And then you are having a conversation with it, a real one. You are pushing back on what it actually gives. You are asking it to challenge your assumptions. You are using it to surface the things you have not thought about yet. The output from mode one is a piece of work. The output from mode two is sharpened version of your own thinking. And those two things have completely different values in your professional life. Let me give you a real example of what this looks like in practice because I think it lands better than a principle stated in the abstract. So I use Claude. That is the AI I use. I've been using it consistently for about a year now. For almost everything I am building, my podcast planning, my coaching business strategy, my content, and some of my teaching. But the way I use it is not to write, say, my podcast episode. That would give me something generic that sounds nothing like me and teaches me absolutely nothing. But what I actually do is bring the full picture. When I am planning an episode, I load in my brand documents, my content pillars, my audience data, my previous scripts, the context of what I have already done, what has performed, what the gaps are, And then I have a conversation about what the next episode should be and why. It pushes back on my ideas. It spots the repeat patterns I cannot see because I am too close to the work. Okay. It asks questions that reframe how I am thinking about something. That is not a shortcut. That is a thinking partner. And the result is that my work is better than it would be if I was thinking alone. Not because AI is smarter than me, but because having something to think against sharpens the thinking. In the same way that talking through a problem with, say, someone else who asks good questions gets you somewhere you would not have got on your own. Head. And here is the thing I want you to clock. That still using AI as a thinking partner rather than a task machine is becoming a career differentiator. Right now, today in every industry, your audience works in. A 2025 report found that 89% of women in tech said their AI skills had accelerated their careers, either by improving their performance in their current role or opening up opportunities they would not otherwise have been accessed to in a proportioned way. Now The proportion who rated themselves as AI experts doubled year on year. Doubled. That is not a slow trend. That is a fast one. And professionally, women who are moving fastest are not the ones using AI to do more tasks more quickly. They are the ones using to think better, position better, and show up differently. Now, I want to talk about some specific women who are doing this well because I think seeing what it actually looks like in practice is more useful than any framework. There is a woman called Susanna Shattak, head of product at Credo AI. So, someone who works in the AI industry itself, which is worth noting. She has talked publicly about Using clause specifically for vendor negotiations, not to draft for emails to stress test her position before she goes in. She said it almost always pushes her to be a tougher negotiator. Because she is not asking it to write for her. She's asking it to challenge her, to find the holes in her argument before the other person does. That is mode two. That is thinking partnership. And the result is that she walks into those conversations better prepared and more confident than she would have been otherwise. Then there is a broader pattern that Fortune identified in their 2026 predictions, which I think is one of most important ⁓ things I have read about, where professional women's careers are going. The argument this. As AI automates routine tasks ⁓ and skills become most valuable in leadership, it is not doing it faster. It is orchestrating complex systems and thinking strategically about how things connect. And the people who will be in the best positions for that are the ones who have already been building those capabilities, which includes specifically knowing how to use AI as a thinking tool rather than a production tool. The operational roles, the COO, the strategist, the person who sees how the whole system works. Those are becoming the primary feeder of the top C. Not the technical roles, not the roles that are closest to the AI itself. The roles that use AI to think at a higher level. That is your audience. That is the lane they are in. And that is what we are trying to help. give them understand about where to invest their attention right now. So let's make this practical. The shifts, not tips, not prompts, shifts in how you approach using these tools. Because I think the way most people are going to read the title of this episode ⁓ is is going to give me some prompts I can copy. ⁓ And can have those. ⁓ There be specific examples. But what I actually want is for you to change the relationship because prompts Without a relationship, change are just fancy task outsourcing. The first shift is giving context, not just commands. There is a version of using AI where you type a question, you get an answer, you copy it. And there is a version where before you type everything, you have told it who you are, what you are trying to build, and what your constraints are, what your voice sounds like, what you have already tried and what it did not work. The second version gets you something that is actually useful for you specifically. Not just useful in general. In practical, this looks like using projects. If you are using Claude, you can create a project and load in documents, your CV, your brand voice, your goals, the context for whatever you are working on. And then every conversation you have in the project already has the context. It knows what you are building, it knows your tone, it knows what stage you are at. You are not starting from scratch every single time. The analogy I always come back to is this. Imagine you had a very intelligent friend who happens to know a lot about your field and also about careers and strategy and communication. But every time you called them, they had complete amnesia. And you had to re-explain who you were and what you were working on before you could have the actual conversation. That is what most people's relationship with AI looks like. Projects fix that. Context fixes that. And once you have done it, you will not go back. Now the second shift is using AI to stress test, not just produce. This one is the one I think has the highest leverage for ambitious professionals specifically. Before you go into a difficult conversation, a performance review, a salary negotiation, a pitch, a job interview, a conversation with a difficult stakeholder, run it through. Not to write a script, but to find the holes. Tell it what you are trying to achieve. Tell it who you are dealing with and what they are in a position to do. Tell it your plan and then ask what am I missing? What is the strongest argument against my position? What question could they ask what I would not be prepared for? What am I assuming they might not think is true? That exercise takes 20 minutes and it changes how you walk into that room. Because you have already had that version of the conversation in private before the real one actually starts. You have already found the weak points in your own thinking. And the version of you that goes in sharpen karma is harder to catch off guard. I have done this before. ⁓ of the most important professional conversations ⁓ have had in the last year. Not ⁓ I lacked confidence, but because I take preparation seriously. ⁓ And is preparation. Real preparation, not the kind where you read through your notes twice and just hope that it sinks in, okay? Now the third shift is treating it like a long-term working relationship, not a one-off search. This is the one that separates the people who use AI well from the people who use it very well. The professionals who are generally pulling ahead. Are the ones who have invested time in building a working relationship with these tools, Who have a project that know their voice, who have a folder of context that they update when things change, who have got it into a habit of thinking out loud to AI all the way, you would think out loud to a trusted colleague. So why not do it to AI? But they are the people who problem solve and create decisions and ideas that is pressure test. Because here is what the compound into all of this over time. Every time you have a thinking conversation, you get better at articulating your own thinking. You get clearer on what you actually believe in and why. You start to notice your own patterns, the assumptions you always make, the angles you tend to miss, the way you think about problems. AI is a mirror for that in a way that is incredibly hard to replicate any other way. And then the output of that, the clearer thinking, the better decisions, the sharper positioning start showing up in your work, in how you write, in how you speak in meetings, in how you approach problems. People around the start to notice you and think. That you're thinking well. That is not AI doing your job. That is help AI helping you do it at a higher level. The connection I want to make before I wrap this up is the one that I think is the actual point. Everything I have just described, using AI to think better, to show up better, to operate at a higher level is a systems conversation. It is about an infrastructure you are putting around your professional life to make sure you are running it at full capacity. That is exactly the kind of work I do with women through Quora. Not just career coaching, not just mindset work, not just a fitness program sitting separately from everything. All of it together, because that is how it actually works. The thinking tools, the physical energy, the identity, the career strategy, they compound other. You cannot sustainably operate a high level in one lane if others' things feel depleted. And using AI, creating infrastructure, that is all that we are about. Creating things that we can do together without the stress. Now, if that resonates, if you are building something and you want support that thinks about all of it together, the link To find out more about Cora is in the show notes today. Now, question before you go. ⁓ I want you to actually sit with this one rather than just moving on to the next thing. Are ⁓ using to think or are you using it to avoid thinking? Because ⁓ those two completely different activities ⁓ that almost identical from the outside, ⁓ but involve. Trying a prompt. Both produce an output. But one is building your capabilities over time, and one is quietly destroying you. And the honest answer to that question tells you exactly which shift to make first. That is your one thing this week. Not a new prompt, not a new tool. Pick one decision or conversation or piece of work you have coming up. That matters. And instead of googling it or asking a colleague or just winging it, take 20 minutes to take it through with AI properly. Bring the full context. Ask it to challenge you. See what it comes out. And then come and tell me what had happened. You can bring it over to our socials or right below. I generally want to know. If you know someone who is using AI using it badly, ⁓ and you will know at least one, ⁓ send them this. This is exactly who ⁓ it was made for. I hope enjoyed today's session, ⁓ and I can't to see you again next week.