How to Use AI at Work and in Your Personal Life

There are two common mistakes you’re probably making using AI in your personal and professional life. This is coming from Nici Sweaney, founder of AI Her Way, a consultancy guiding companies through how to strategically implement AI to refine their workflows and gain a competitive advantage.

The first mistake is using AI like Google, asking it to suggest a restaurant or an e-mail template for a sticky situation. But Sweaney says that’s not where the real value is. What you should be using AI for is to delegate tasks like how you would to a real person.

“AI models are trained to think through tasks,” she says. “So instead of treating them like a search engine, we need to give them proper context — who we are, what we do, what the goal is and what we expect.”

The other mistake is thinking, “I don’t like AI” or “I don’t trust it” and avoiding it altogether. Ironically, Sweaney’s stance is that if you’re hesitant about AI, you have more of a moral and social obligation to engage with it.

“AI isn’t a static tool,” she says. “It evolves based on the way we use it. The more diverse voices, ethical considerations and real-world corrections we put into these systems, the better they become. If you care about where AI is heading, you need to be in the room.”

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Sweaney says a good way to approach AI is to imagine you’re giving instructions to a bright but inexperienced 17-year-old work-experience kid. It works best when you guide it with clear, detailed instructions.

“The best results come when you treat AI not like a search bar, but like an assistant you’re training to work for you,” Sweaney says. “When you understand how to use it properly, it stops feeling overwhelming and becomes the most powerful tool in your corner.”

So what are some practical ways to use AI in your personal and professional life? Sweaney shares her tips here.

How to Use AI in Your Personal Life

First up is how to use AI in our personal life. If you’re not using it to offload some of the invisible work in your life, particularly tasks women face in a non-patriarchal society, you’re making things harder for yourself.

“AI can be really impactful on personal lives, especially for women juggling work, kids and everything else society expects us to do,” says Sweaney. “As a mum of four who runs a business, I’ve found that AI’s greatest personal benefit is lightening the mental load.”

Some ways Sweaney uses it in her personal life and suggests you do it too:

Travel Planning

“AI planned my recent Europe trip with my sister, factoring in our interests, personalities and timeline. We took a stunning scenic train ride because AI suggested it. It ended up being a highlight of the trip.”

Meal Planning and Grocery Lists

“AI plans my meals, generates grocery lists and even finds recipes my kids can cook themselves,” says Sweaney.

Birthday and Holiday Planning

“It creates shopping lists and party invitations complete with AI-generated images of my kids as superheroes, puppy daycare managers or whatever the theme is for that year. AI even calculates how much food I need for grazing platters at events.”

Airbnb Hosting

“We rent out our house over Christmas, so I get AI to generate a room-by-room prep list with a timeline, which I then delegate to my family.”

Wardrobe Planning

“I used to be an impulse shopper, but now, twice a year, I upload photos of myself, my Pinterest board, budget and favourite stores into AI. It then designs a capsule wardrobe, so I only shop twice a year. Everything mixes and matches and I always feel put together.”

Beauty and Styling

“I upload photos of my face and ask AI to analyse my skin tone, suggest makeup colours, hair colours and outfit tones that boost my confidence.”

Household Budgeting and Wealth Planning

“AI analyses our bank statements — in private models for security — and flags where we’re overspending. It also suggests smarter ways to budget. It even models early retirement strategies for me and my partner.”

Tutoring a School Subject

“My daughter needed help with Year 5 Maths and English, so I set her up with AI tutoring sessions that explained concepts at her level and gave her practice exercises.”

Helping Start Side Businesses

“AI helps my kids brainstorm side business ideas, map out steps and even create simple branding for their projects.”

How to Use AI in Your Professional Life

When it comes to ways AI can help us in our professional lives, well, how long is a piece of string? The best way to think about how AI in your professional life is: if you can describe the task to AI, there’s a good chance you can delegate it.

“A lot of people still think of AI purely as chatbots or large language, but AI assistants, for example, act like human executive assistants,” Sweaney says. “They can manage schedules, follow up on reminders, track to-do lists, book meetings, retrieve old files and even summarise key information across different platforms.”

There are also AI workflows and agentic AI, where multiple AI systems work together to complete complex tasks. Essentially, entire divisions of work can be handled by AI agents collaborating behind the scenes. It’s easy to see why simply having an AI tool to help you isn’t enough.

“Right now, early adopters have an advantage, but AI is becoming so ubiquitous and frictionless that soon, everyone will be using it. The real difference won’t be whether you use AI, but how you use it and what you use it for.”

Some ways Sweaney uses AI in her professional life and how you can can too:

Marketing

“AI helps generate content ideas, structure social media campaigns, draft copy and repurpose long-form content into bite-sized posts,” says Sweaney. “It refines customer messaging, analyses audience engagement and optimises email marketing campaigns.”

Operations and Finance

“AI can handle finance modelling, revenue forecasting and even analyse bank statements to flag unnecessary expenses. AI-assisted budgeting helps us identify savings opportunities and make smarter financial decisions.”

Customer Service

“AI chatbots and automated workflows manage inquiries, book appointments and personalise customer interactions, reducing response times while maintaining high-quality engagement.”

Create Company-Specific Internal Automation

“In my business, we have AI-powered automation that joins all our online meetings and generates meeting notes. Without us lifting a finger, the action items from the meeting are extracted and added to our CRM. Tasks are assigned to the right team members. Our thoughts are summarised into a client-ready email. And everything’s logged into our internal knowledge base so our AI assistant can update us later.”

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