This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Mark Briggs , a Seattle-area executive AI strategist and author, explains why your “personal operating system” needs an upgrade and how to use AI to put more time back into your day.
- Mark shares practical tips for turning scattered notes into a useful knowledge base, solidifying your “digital junk drawer” into AI-powered tools that can provide insight.
- He explains how assigning AI assistants to specific individuals—whether it’s your boss or a coworker—can shape the feedback and guidance they provide.
- We also talk about using AI to stop procrastination, generate follow-ups, and flag the “most obvious objection” to your ideas.
- And for fun, we play a round of “Bot or Not,” trying to tell the difference between a human coworker and an AI assistant’s BIOS.
Wait a second, what happens to human executive coaches in an AI world? Mark answers this question by pointing out that while coaching apps already exist, the responsibility of having another person in your eyes is something that AI can’t replace.
Listen below or subscribe on any podcast app, and keep reading for podcast discussions and Mark’s recent geekwire columns.
Put your notes in one place: Stop scattering your thoughts across Google Docs, Evernote, paper notebooks, and sticky notes. By bringing them all together in one platform, AI lets you summarize, connect ideas, and gain insights you would never find on your own.
Ask the AI for the “most obvious objection”: Before you send a proposal or share an idea, have the AI tell you what the pressure will be. Mark uses this trick to see blind spots and strengthen his work before others point them out.
Create a bossgpt: Instead of waiting for feedback from your manager, train a custom GPT on their style and priorities. Use it as a test bed to test your ideas and get instant responses that reflect how your real boss might react.
Use AI to generate meeting follow-ups: At the end of the meeting, ask three questions: What did we decide? Who is responsible? Who else needs to know? Share the answers with your team to build accountability and use the outcome of the meeting to create institutional memory.
Related: Harness the true value of meeting AI by building an “LLM in Management”
Summarize your progress: At the end of a project or review period, ask your personal AI to analyze your collection of notes and meeting transcripts. Mark does this with six months of his client notes to find “key areas of growth,” and has even asked the AI to summarize his entire year of work to identify opportunities for the coming year.
Related: Take note in 2025: Why the new year is the time to revolutionize your personal organization
Challenge your team to rewrite their job descriptions: Instead of just encouraging general learning, give your team a specific mission: find AI tools to automate the boring parts of their jobs so they can focus on the work that requires unique people skills.
Related: Reflections from the Web Summit: What business value do people bring in the age of AI?
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Audio editing by Kurt Milton.
