AI is all the rage at the moment and is being applied to every facet of life. Everywhere you turn, AI is often staring you in the face. Head down to your favorite cafe, a new AI-generated image of the barista as Thanos snapping the stains off mugs hangs behind the urinal. You search for "Hot Wheels hubcap sizes" on Google and get a four paragraph AI summary.

A lot of folks are also being asked to dive into AI head-first and become productive at very high levels professionally without a whole lot of preamble. This can be difficult since AI-first workflows are a completely different paradigm and way of work. The mechanics of "doing the thing" became the arena of AI and you are now the conductor. The manager. The editor. The reviewer. For many, these mechanics are part of their professional joy. However, we must adapt to our new normal.

While I won’t be diving into the Brainstorm -> Plan -> Execute -> Review loop (or other synonyms, depending on the article) for effective AI use in the context of software engineering, I’d like to focus on something I’ve found helpful and effective for wrapping your head around AI and how to get what you want from it.

Prompt writing and building context is a skill unto itself. And a core one in the context of AI-first approaches and agentic workflows. If you cannot get a desired one-off outcome from AI through prompts and context engineering, you’re going to have a hard time layering the additional complexities for doing real work with AI.

Just like coding or labbing something for professional development, prompt writing and context engineering is something that requires consistent practice in a variety of situations. While I write a lot of prompts and do a lot of context engineering professionally, I also practice and refine these skills frequently. "How?", you may be asking.

Well, AI can be more than just business, serious research, and text overlaying Subway Surfers for social media $$$. It can be more than just practical. It can be fun. It opens up new possibilities for creation and expression that previously just weren’t possible. While there are downsides and controversies surrounding AI training and whether AI should be leveraged creatively, let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. When Pandora’s Box opens, you can either cower or reach inside. Personally, my feet are kicking the air and I swan dove into the depths of the abyss.

That’s all well and good but how do I get in on the action? Where’s the benefit for me?

Well, dear reader, the sky is the limit and the only restriction is your own imagination and ability to bend AI to your will.

Fun with pictures

Have you ever had an idea for a picture or scene that you think would be fun to send to your friend with a dog obsession? Have you ever thought "I would love to use this picture as my profile but I’d prefer to be a Jedi"? All this and more can be yours.

Now let’s suppose your friend had a dog. A rambunctious little guy who has taken to leaping from the couch so high and so far you’d swear he’s gonna hit the moon one of these nights. Don’t let your dreams be dreams! Through the power of AI, all things are possible.

Now suppose you don’t like Golden Retrievers. Maybe you like a nice Frenchie.

Now isn’t that cool. You could swap it for pretty much anything and send everything to the moon. You can also generate any kind of image, convert images between styles (e.g.: comic book style, Disney style), change text on images, generate memes.... Your imagination is your inkwell and AI is your awesome, though sometimes janky, quill. These capabilities are on your phone and this silliness both familiarizes you with AI and can bring joy and color into your and your loved ones’ lives.

But, there’s a lot more possible here than strictly goofing around.

AI for running

Let’s say you’ve been running for a bit. Your Strava is loaded up and you’re following a loose plan. Maybe you’re running two easy runs, one speed day, a long run, and a recovery run every week, each with varying intensities. You wake up one day and think to yourself, "I wanna run a 50K in 6 months". Ordinarily, you’d need to spend time researching how to go about it. You’d spend time accounting for sick days or missed training days. You’d spend time adjusting with your available routes and situation. You read an article and now you just have to adjust your training. You realize intervals aren’t your jam and you prefer Fartleks. Enter AI.

With AI, you can generate a structured plan very easily. Once the plan is set, making adjustments through conversations with AI is trivial. Making adjustments for sick days? Trivial. Ran a new PB and wanna adjust your plan? Trivial. Wanna track your workouts in a spreadsheet? AI will create one. Anything you’d wanna do is a brief text conversation away.

My experience with this has been very positive. Feeding in my recent PBs, average heart rates, normal elevation load, goals, and preferences allowed me to build a plan in minutes. We’re talking a focused training plan for a 50k complete with applicable strength training all in a convenient, annotated spreadsheet for tracking. I have had a couple sick days and some time off for Christmas which the AI (Claude in my case) handled perfectly. Tracking my fitness metrics in COROS and Strava shows marked improvements consistent with a quality training plan at my current training age that meets or exceeds previous more generic plans I was running (e.g.: Daniels’ Running Formula) as well as my attempts at more targeted training. As long as you keep your thread going (or summarize / pass context into a new one), you essentially have Kilian Jornet as the butler for your training plan. While the real Killian would probably never do this, AI will (happily).

Currently, a single cycle is all I’m running with. But, I am going to try a multi-year plan once my current one concludes and I get my race results. Needless to say, I’ll be guinea-pigging it up in the back half of 2026 and either touting the awesomeness of AI or finding myself a real coach.

Conclusion

These are just a couple of the ways I’m using AI personally to improve my life, do some professional development, and annoy / delight my loved ones. I’ve also had success scaling recipes, creating recipes from what I have on hand, and proofreading my writing. Truly, the sky is the limit here. AI is becoming more and more ubiquitous and learning how to engage with it and get benefits from it is likely to serve you well personally and professionally.