There are only two of us in my business. Some days it feels like we’re running a small universe. There are projects, deadlines, decisions, messages, ideas, follow-ups, loose ends and more information than any one human can hold. We’re not short on effort; we’re short on cognitive bandwidth.
Artificial intelligence is hugely helping us.
Out of necessity, AI doesn’t stay in the novelty stage for long in our work. It quickly becomes a thinking companion woven into almost every aspect of how we work. This doesn’t replace judgement, creativity or relationships, but it can reduce friction, surface insight and help us make better decisions, faster.
We didn’t “adopt AI.” We adopted new ways of thinking, powered by AI.
And the effect on the business has been transformative.
Below are the top ten ways we are using AI that have had the biggest impact:
1. Mapping Insights
Most teams are sitting on more internal knowledge than they can use. Decades of documents, notes, PDFs, strategy slides and meeting files usually sit untouched.
So we started using deep-research AI tools like Gemini Deep Research to dig into our internal Google Drive files. Suddenly, insights that once took days emerged in minutes.
The AI isn’t inventing. It’s synthesising.
Patterns. Contradictions. Emerging themes. All drawn from our own knowledge.
According to the OECD, organisations that leverage internal knowledge effectively outperform peers in both innovation and efficiency. AI is rapidly becoming the engine of that advantage.
2. Building a brain library that grows smarter over time
The second breakthrough was creating AI notebooks around specific themes, such as leadership, emerging markets, strategy, future of work trends. We used NotebookLM to do this and fed it relevant articles, reports, transcripts and notes over time. The AI evolves with us, becoming a specialist thought partner. Here’s an article I wrote on this recently.
It becomes a long-term intellectual environment.
Building persistent AI spaces to support strategic reflection and scenario planning is a profound shift in the use of generative AI. Instead of asking AI for quick answers, we’re asking it for deeper, connected thinking.
3. Analysing ongoing projects using meeting transcripts
We’ve all left a meeting thinking, “Did we actually decide anything?” AI fixed that for us.
We now upload meeting transcripts and project documents into an AI chatbot and it clarifies:
- decisions made
- risks emerging
- next steps
- conflicting assumptions
- who owes what
- deadlines
We then take it a step further and ask AI to analyse those transcripts against project plans and our strategy to make sure we are on track and to help plan the next meeting.
Harvard Business Review reports the average professional spends nearly 18 hours a week in meetings. Without analysis, that time compounds complexity. Using AI in this way, for us, has reduced confusion, increased accountability and made every subsequent meeting sharper.
4. Reverse engineering success from past projects
This AI hack changed everything for us.
We fed past proposals, campaigns, client wins and successful internal projects into a deep-thinking AI. We asked it: “What made this work?”
It surfaced patterns we had never formalised:
- a structure we kept instinctively repeating
- emotional tones that resonated
- timing patterns
- common stakeholder expectations
- stylistic consistencies we never articulated
We turned these into playbooks for future work.
Harvard’s research on reflective practice shows that reviewing past work and codifying success criteria is one of the strongest predictors of long-term performance. AI compresses that reflective cycle from months to minutes.
5. Analysing our calendar by energy, not time
We fed our calendars into a deep-thinking AI and asked it to analyze meeting types, frequency, topic patterns, stress points, recovery windows and creative output.
It generated an “energy map”:
- When we are best for deep work.
- When we are cognitively drained.
- When we make poorer decisions.
As a result, we redesigned our schedules around human energy, not clock time.
Aligning our organisational workflows with our human cognitive rhythms has been a huge help. This is one of those times technology made our work more human, not less.
6. Automating workflows
Small teams can drown in meta-work. The work that keeps the work coming. Checking inboxes, forwarding files, updating spreadsheets, nudging people, moving documents.
We used AI automation tools such as Google Workspace Flows, Streak and Zaper to connect:
- calendar
- drive
- docs
- task systems
For small teams like ours, time isn’t a resource; it’s the oxygen we need to survive. These automations give us more of it.
7. Brain Dumping
This might be the simplest but most powerful hack on the list.
Whenever the mental load spikes, we dump every thought, decision, worry and half-formed idea into an AI chat. Then we ask it to:
- structure the chaos
- identify decisions we’re avoiding
- build a plan
- summarise key priorities
- flag missing context
AI becomes a low-friction facilitator that helps us to reflect, especially on days when mental noise threatens progress.
8. Extracting insights from email patterns
Email is a window into our working habits, albeit a blurry one. AI again helps us to sharpen the focus.
Now that Google Gemini allows us to perform deep research on our emails, we use it to analyse:
- when we write our most thoughtful messages
- response times
- recurring topics that drain capacity
- sentiment patterns
- workload bottlenecks hidden in inbox volume
AI-driven analytics are helping us understand what we write and how we work. It’s self-awareness at scale.
9. A diverse AI “team”
Here’s one of the most creative things we’ve tried.
We created AI personas based on different cognitive styles, for example analytical, optimistic, risk-averse, creative, systems-thinking and detail-focused. We present ideas to this “virtual panel” and ask them to critique, question or extend the thinking.
Of course, this isn’t the same as asking an actual diverse team, but it allows us to get a quick sense check on cognitive diversity, on demand. This system lets us run our ideas through multiple viewpoints before they ever hit the real world.
10. Turn documents into audio
Finally, the simplest hack that creates the biggest time advantage: we have our documents read aloud to us.
The new Google Docs listen function lets us get to grips with a document as a natural, human-sounding voice reads it aloud to us.
During commutes, walks or slower mornings, we absorb strategy docs, reports or long emails in audio form. We find that listening is sometimes easier than reading, especially when energy dips.
For small teams juggling multiple responsibilities, this transforms dead time into learning time.
AI that reveals clarity
Across all ten hacks, there is a pattern. AI didn’t magically reduce our workload.
It reduced our cognitive load by:
- making decisions easier.
- making planning clearer.
- making thinking more structured.
- making reflection faster.
AI is helping us to hold the complexity, so that we have the capacity to keep hold of the creativity.
For us, the work hasn’t become easier. We’ve just become better equipped to think about it. That, more than any automation, is what’s transforming my business.