How to get 10× more from AI

The love that burned out

Success can kill work you love just as thoroughly as failure. That happened to me with websites a couple of decades ago.

When I was young, I built one of Estonia’s first content management systems that let clients edit their own copy. Because I charged so little, I built several hundred websites in ten years. There was more work than I could handle, and for weeks on end I worked from morning until night. I told my girlfriend at the time: “Pick one day a month when we’ll go out. I’ll work on all the others.” Romance, programmer edition. :)

Fifteen years away

I did not stop because I failed to keep up with the times. I was so utterly fed up with websites that for the past fifteen years I was certain I would never make another one. Then I experimented with AI and... wow. Giving the new Tauri.ee a makeover felt like eating the best pizza in the world. Bellissimo!

Choose your partner first

How do you get 10× leverage from AI? First define what you need from the tool: output quality, privacy, price, integrations and ease of use. Then gather recommendations from several sources — including AI — and give the most promising tools the same real task. Taste one bite from each and choose your partner based on the result, not the advertising.

Ask for five at a time

Then start firing away: do not ask for one idea or image; ask for FIVE AT ONCE. One AI answer is like looking at a house through a keyhole; five to ten reveal much more. Choose your favourites, say what does not work, and ask for another round. Ask for some bold and flamboyant options and others that are restrained and inventive. You choose — then repeat. That is how you open the door to the house of AI creativity instead of peering through the window.

It is easy to test. When AI gives you a good answer, do not stop: “Give me five more strong new ideas in this direction!” When you get a beautiful image, ask: “Please make five exciting versions of this, each a little different!”

Do not produce blindly

Do not hit the new-results button blindly. That is like baking 80 pizzas without tasting a single one. The result is not a master chef but a very large cheese problem. :D Before every round, look at what worked. Otherwise the result will not improve. Worse still: YOU will not improve.

Experimenters win

The people who benefit most from AI will be those who combine enough theory with consistent real-world experimentation. Knowledge alone is not enough, but neither does aimless button-pushing teach you much. The winners will be those who try, compare results and can explain why one solution works better than another. Think about it: who becomes the better photographer — someone who takes eight pictures a year, or someone who runs 800 experiments, compares them and learns why one works and another does not?

The 10× lives between attempts

Your chance to get 10× more from AI never lives in its first answer. It lives in how many new possibilities open between the first and tenth attempt. The best AI result is not born from the best prompt, but from a tool that makes every next experiment — and every next day — a little smarter.

Mistakes are cheap now

An old Estonian saying goes: “Hard in training, easy in battle.” AI makes mistakes cheap: better to make a hundred small mistakes while practising with a machine than one very expensive error in the real world. AI’s greatest charm is not that you get more done. Perhaps it gives you back the appetite and desire to do something with passion again.

AI that remembers every attempt

Right now, my own greatest passion is one step beyond that: building myself a personal AI that remembers everything — especially my mistakes and what I learned from them — and gives me stronger support every day. The winner of the AI era will not be the person who can write the cleverest first instruction. It will be the person whose next attempt remembers all the previous ones.