How to start using AI at work: where to begin

Why one task, not "learning AI"

Most people who try AI at work open a chat, ask something general, get a general answer, and stop. The people who keep using it found one job it does well for them. In the largest early field study, a customer support team given an AI assistant resolved 14% more issues per hour on average, and newer staff 34% more. The gain came from the job they did every day, not from learning about AI in general.

You're also not early. Microsoft and LinkedIn's 2024 survey of 31,000 people found that 75% of knowledge workers already used AI at work. Most of them started with one small task.

How to choose your first task

Write down what you did last week, then score each item. A good first task has all four:

• It repeats. Weekly or more often, so the effort of setting it up pays back.
• It takes a while. At least 20 minutes, so saving half of it matters.
• You can check it fast. You'd spot a mistake in two minutes because you know the subject.
• It isn't secret. You can do it without pasting customer names, salaries or passwords. See what not to paste.

Good candidates: a weekly status update, notes from a meeting turned into actions, a first reply to a question customers often ask, a job post, a summary of a long document you were sent. Poor first candidates: anything legal, anything with numbers you can't recompute, anything going straight to a customer unread.

A worked example

Illustration: a made-up business. Maya runs operations at a 15-person bakery wholesaler. Her list for last week had nine items. Three scored on all four: the Monday delivery summary for the owner (40 minutes), answering "can you deliver on Saturday?" emails (about ten a week), and writing up the Thursday supplier call (25 minutes).

She picked the supplier call write-up. Her first request was "summarize this call", and the answer was a vague paragraph. Her second was a brief:

The draft needed two fixes. Over the week she ran it on three calls and timed it: 25 minutes became 9, fixes included. That's her first use. Next week she tries the Saturday-delivery replies.

Your first five days

1. Day 1: list and pick. Write down last week's tasks, score them on the four points, pick one. Time it once without AI.
2. Day 2: open a free account. ChatGPT or Claude; either is fine for this. Check your company's rules on AI first, if it has any.
3. Day 3: brief it. Say who the result is for, what a good one looks like, how long, and give one past example with names removed. Ask it to ask you when something is unclear.
4. Day 4: fix and note. Correct the draft, then tell the AI what you changed and why. Save your brief in a note so you don't rewrite it.
5. Day 5: time it. Compare with Day 1, fixes included. Keep it if it's faster and you'd send the result.

What to do after the first week

If it worked, you now have a brief you paste every time. That's the next thing to fix: people who keep pasting the same instructions end up with five slightly different copies. How to stop pasting the same prompt every time shows the next step. If you're not sure which AI to stay with, ChatGPT vs Claude for work compares them on everyday tasks.

Not sure which task to start with? The AI skill below asks you about your week and ranks your tasks by how much time AI could save on each, so your first try goes to the right one.

Questions

What is the best first task to give AI at work?

One you do every week, that takes you 20 minutes or more, where you can check the result yourself in two minutes: a status update, a meeting summary, a reply to a common question. Skip tasks where a wrong answer is costly and hard to spot.

Do I need to pay for ChatGPT or Claude to start?

No. Both have a free plan. Pay once you use it every day and keep running into the free plan's limits, or when your company needs a business plan for its data.

How do I know if AI is actually saving me time?

Time the task once without AI before you start, then time it with AI for a week, including the time you spend fixing the draft. If the fixed draft takes less time and you'd send it, keep going.