A profoundly underutilized feature of AI is its ability to teach. Instead of just delegating tasks, professionals should ask LLMs to train them in new skills, create practice assignments, and evaluate their performance, unlocking rapid personal development.

People focus on what AI can do *for* them, but a greater opportunity is what AI can teach them. For the first time, everyone has access to a patient, expert tutor. Professionals should spend their spare time asking an AI to train them in new domains, from coding to product management.

A Harvard/MIT study with BCG found that providing specific training on how to use AI—beyond just giving access to it—resulted in a 40% increase in the quality of consultants' output and a 25% increase in speed. This quantifies the immense value of structured AI upskilling.

For subjective tasks, refining instructions has diminishing returns. The most effective way to improve AI performance is to provide it with a set of high-quality examples of the desired output. A library of five great examples is more powerful than a perfectly crafted prompt.

Interacting with AI image generators forces you to learn the technical language of a new domain. To control outputs, you must understand concepts like focal length and lighting (e.g., 'bokeh'). This creates an immediate feedback loop, accelerating skill acquisition far faster than traditional methods.

Instead of asking an AI for a one-off task, identify recurring workflows and have the AI turn them into a "skill." This creates a reusable asset that dramatically improves efficiency and output quality over time, turning the user into a system builder.

A powerful workflow is using AI to research trending frameworks (e.g., for cold emails) and then immediately asking it to apply that knowledge to a task. This allows you to leverage expert techniques without spending time learning them yourself, akin to the "I know Kung Fu" scene in The Matrix.

Using AI to merely generate artifacts fosters overconfidence due to the "authorship fallacy," where you love what you create regardless of quality. A better approach is using AI as a Socratic tutor to teach you a process, enhancing your skills rather than replacing them.

Instead of merely outsourcing tasks to AI, frame its use as a tool to compound your learning. AI can shorten feedback loops and help you practice and refine a craft—like messaging or video editing—exponentially faster than traditional methods, deepening your expertise.