Is AI Worth Your Time Using it for Greater Efficiency with Kathy Serenko

Is AI actually worth your time—or just another distraction?

In this episode, Kathy Serenko breaks down how to use AI tools the right way to boost productivity, save time, and simplify your workflow without getting overwhelmed by every new tool out there. 

From practical daily uses to the biggest mistakes to avoid, this conversation gives you a smarter, more focused approach to AI.

Hit play and learn how to make AI work for you, not the other way around.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Are you ready to finally break free from overwhelm, procrastination, and burnout? If you're ready to focus on what truly matters and create momentum to reach and exceed your goals in business and in life, then this podcast is for you. Welcome to the Efficiency Advantage, the podcast where clarity meets action and purpose that fuels your progress. So here's world-class productivity expert and your host, Coach Julie.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Welcome to the Efficiency Advantage podcast. I'm Julie Shulam, your host, and I am super excited because today is the first episode that I have a guest with me. We are going to have a wonderful, wonderful learning opportunity with Kathy Serenko. Kathy is the founder of AI Efficiency Labs, where she helps leaders responsibly adopt and integrate AI into their organizations through employee training, governance, and policy development. She has trained nearly a thousand professionals in the practical application of AI tools for workspace efficiency. I think you are going to love what you are going to hear today. So welcome, Kathy. I'm so excited that you're here. Thank you, Julie.

SPEAKER_02 1:35

What a nice introduction. And I'm super proud that I'm your first guest. That's really exciting. Appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Well, thank you for being here. All right, we're going to dive right in because we're going to try to keep to the same time frame that my episodes are generally in. And I want to have people learn what it is that you are going to be sharing with us. And first tell us a little bit about your background and how are you equipped to talk about AI and why should we listen and trust you?

SPEAKER_02 2:09

That is a really good question. And it's one I've had to solve for myself because everyone's talking about AI. And then I'll be really honest and say that I thought people might not find me credible because I'm not a 24-year-old tech guru. And then I began to realize that the real differentiator is someone who can translate complex information into verbiage and concepts that other people can absorb and apply. And so I have a background in professional training. I was a corporate trainer for Capital One and another organization when I lived in Houston. And I've always found my way back to education. I absolutely, that is my passion. So when I started my business up again when I left corporate, I wanted to facilitate learning for adult learners. And my background is communication. And so AI, initially practical AI like ChatGPT, was a natural fit. And if I might add one more thing here, I had done professional writing in between in technical areas like additive manufacturing, robotics, and AI, which the pinnacle of my career was getting an AI article published by Forbes. I'm very still excited about that. But that was before Chat GPT became a thing. And so that all aligned so that I feel like I can come to people with the AI message.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Excellent. Well, you're definitely qualified to be talking about what we're talking about. And I, for one, am very grateful and very excited. So tell us a little bit about some of their the things that you recommend. Are there specific AI tools that you feel are best for everyday efficiency? After all, this is the Efficiency Advantage podcast.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Tell us about the recommendation, Jolie, is that people not run after every tool that comes out. You'll get links from friends and family and say, you've got to do this. This does grocery shopping and this does calendar management and this does image. And you can be running after a lot of tools when really I would say the best way to simplify is to focus on two to three tools max until you really get a handle on it. You might have some listeners who are very much more advanced, but they'll already be familiar with that. Personally, I love Claude, Anthropics Claude. Chat GPT is it's comparable, right? But Claude has really, in my opinion, pulled ahead in its ability to really make work more efficient. So that's my number one. And I now love pairing Claude Chat with Claude Cowork. We might not have time to talk about that, but that's a really my favorite recommendation right now.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yeah, go ahead and talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Okay. It has made all the difference. And I want you to know I've been using ChatGPT and other platforms since it came out. And you really learn by doing. I can give tips, but you're going to learn the most by doing. But Claude Co-Work is a desktop app that you download. So the difference is Claude Chat is working online, right? You're working through the cloud, whatever. Don't have all my IT. I'm not an IT expert. I'm an AI content person. So Claude Cowork, you actually download onto your computer and it stores information on your computer into your download or your local drive. So it takes a little bit of time just to realize to get the two working cohesively. But once you do, I go back and forth between the two all day long because Claude chat is fantastic for writing and language, and Claude co-work that as well. But organization, it's just fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Oh, this is very exciting. Okay. You give you giving me some new things to start working on because I'm that person that's kind of stuck on just one. And okay. I've been a nerve, I've been nervous about going to a different AI. So this is uh inspiring. Thank you. I enjoy knowing more. Tell me a little bit about you, kind of alluded to using Claud or AI for for various things. What kinds of tasks or what kinds of productivity things in particular could people integrate AI, you know, or I guess I should say, how can they use AI in their lives in order to make things simpler and more productive in their lives?

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Yeah, I feel like the AI tools that are out there now have reached a point where they truly can do that. And I know you are the efficiency guru, so I'm sure that some of the things I'm going to say align with what you tell people. But the important part is it doesn't create the skill within them. It's a tool. So all the things you teach about whatever time management, all of those things are still habits we as humans have to form, but we can use AI to support. And you are talking to not to overuse the term, but probably a very ADHD adult worker. I have a lot of trouble with organization. So I'll start with one of my favorite new tasks with Claude Cowork. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

I have taken a long list of things that came off my calendar, and I have created a rolling task list. So I it took me time initially to load everything in, but I have this whole list, and now every day I can go in and update it. That's okay. What I really love about it is I then say create a weekly sprint for me. And that's just a term that that I use.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Um and it just means take everything I have in this whole list and prioritize it based on the criteria I've already given you. I need to focus on revenue. So I've got this, this, this, and this categorized as revenue. When you prioritize for the week, make sure I'm dealing with revenue first. Because if people are procrastinators like me, we check every email, we do over social media, and then maybe at the end of the day, we think, hmm, I didn't really do anything to address my revenue. So those weekly sprints have been fantastic for me. That's my number one.

unknown 9:31

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Okay, that is right now. So exciting to hear about. Well, now I want to go try that. That sounds awesome.

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Summarizing long documents, like just things you want to get done quickly. Meeting notes, preparing for a meeting.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:51

If I be very transparent before I was going to do this podcast, I told Claude, I'm going to be doing a podcast with someone who focuses on efficiency. What questions, what topics do you think she will most want to know about? So that it prepared me. So just little tips like that.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

I agree. And I use AI all day long, constantly for everything. And I do much like you just said, I'll just put some information in. I at one point put my entire website in and asked AI to pull out the top keywords or pull out missing, knowing what I do. What's what more do I need to say? Or how can I consolidate these things that I've got way too much verbiage on and make that more concise. So yeah, it saves so much time. But thank you for saying that it doesn't replace the need to understand how to manage time and how to be thinking, because we still need to do those things and understand the concept behind it. And then you can use AI to make things better in a way or faster and more clear, more succinct.

unknown 11:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

And that's what I love about it too. It's a huge, huge time saver. And for people who I work with, that is a real essential component of life is to make things easier and be more productive.

SPEAKER_02 11:35

Start with the low-hanging fruit. Don't try to attack everything. So I would say if you can't use it at work, use it at home. You will be amazed at the time you can save there. So that can take some pressure off.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Oh, absolutely. I I love it for getting ideas started. So, you know, that sometimes has been really helpful for me since I write my blog and posts frequently. Sometimes I'm just stuck for an idea. And I was like, what would be a good theme or something I can talk about?

SPEAKER_02 12:11

What's trending right now? What's the what's the way that would catch people's attention on this? This is fantastic for brainstorming. Anything. Any, any, you want to plan a birthday party, you want to write a blog, you want to whatever you want to do. When I when I worked on my company name and rebranding, I did a lot of brainstorming with AI to come up with what I wanted. But I stayed in control, and that's the point that we need to emphasize. There are risks that people don't always know about the use of AI. And so I always say approach it with complete curiosity and caution. Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Love that. You mentioned risks. What are the risks that we should be aware of when using the AI tools? And is becoming too dependent on one of them an issue?

SPEAKER_02 13:03

I think overdependence and blind trust. So I'll address the blind trust. Um if if you people aren't familiar, there's something called hallucinations. AI hallucinates or fabricates information. If you notice, if you've used ChatGPT, does it ever really say, Julie, I don't know the answer to that?

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Not when I think it should. I noticed it seems to be overly positive and enthusiastic. You know, it's great of an idea, chat.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

Yeah, really challenge it to be objective. But more than that, it's important just at the basic level to know that an AI tool is a predictor. So it's a language model predictor. Think of it as a high-speed exponential application to your smartphone. When you text, when you speak a text and you say, dang it, that smart that, you know, text correct. This is what AI is doing as well. It is filling in blanks and it is predicting based on its training. And so the risk is everything it writes looks polished and is plausible. It doesn't give you things that you're like, are you kidding me? That's ridiculous. No, it gives you things that sound really good and sound correct even when they're not. So that's hallucination.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

And how can we tell when something is a hallucination or or legitimate?

SPEAKER_02 14:32

That's a really tough thing. There are lawyers who are getting um fined for taking court briefs that have fabricated information. It's just was$110,000 this week against two lawyers. It's a huge problem. So the thing, the why did that happen? Because it looked correct. They wouldn't have brought something to court that didn't look correct. The key here is that verifying what AI gives you is not the same as the old-fashioned proofreading. Proofreading, you caught things, you know where the errors might be. You could double-check facts. Here, you have to really do a little bit more homework on the front side. I don't know how much you want me to get into that, or if you want to talk about the overdependence because they're both issues.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

No, I understand. And I I know from my own work, many times I will write something and I'm stating something as a fact, as data, and I will ask AI to give me a citation. Last night it just did the same this for me. And then I go check those citations to see if that really exists. One of them came up, error, doesn't even exist. And I called out B AI on it. I said, hey, this didn't come up with anything. This is not an actual location. This didn't work. And I said, Oh, you are right. I am so sorry. Like, well, yeah, should have thought of that the first time, but of course.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

You and I would go to something on Google. We would read actual articles to learn information. AI tools like ChatGPT don't go and index knowledge. Like you might think, it's not like they're looking through an encyclopedia or existing knowledge, they've already been trained. Sometimes their training ended, and so they don't have access to the most recent information. Research is one of the biggest areas of risk. So my recommendation would be: if you have a study on efficiency that you really love, bring that resource in and tell Chat GPT to work from that resource.

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Oh, that's a nice idea. So go the other way around.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

The other way around. You will continue to get fabricated citations.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Love that. Thank you for that. All right. Well, I'm gonna use that one. All right, let's let's wrap this up. This has been so helpful and so wonderful. How about if you give us maybe a handful of really great ways to start using AI that would make us more productive, whether that be work-related, personal, just a handful of ideas of ways that people can really make good use of it, especially if they're not super pro at it.

SPEAKER_02 17:41

So these are going to roll right off the top of my mind. We'll see how effective they are. Go for it. I think the calendar sprint is great. And I think if you look at your day ahead and you know that you have meetings, create those questions or summaries or talking points ahead of time. Use a note taker online. If you're on Zoom, that would be something like Fathom or Zoom Notaker. It's going to give you back a great solid review and action points. You can that way you can follow up with the person. So it's sort of a trail. Start with preparing for the meeting and then let that follow through instead of starting at the email endpoint. I would say, too, let's say at home, grocery shopping, meal planning. You know, I put in one time I wanted X amount of carbs and X amount of protein in my meal with as few ingredients as possible. Give me a meal plan for, you know, lunch and dinner. Fantastic. Give me a grocery shopping list based on that. So thank you for end instead of individual tasks.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

Right. I actually did that exact one. I I put in all my dietary restrictions, and I actually had it create a protein shake for me so I didn't have to use protein powders. Nice. You know, that that it checked all the boxes and I tried it and it worked and it was delicious.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

And that's more trustworthy, right? There's so much fact out there about protein and all. I feel, and it's not going to harm you or or your business credibility if it makes a mistake. So those are very low-risk applications.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

Yes. It's really, I find it fun to use as well as so helpful. And it has really reduced the amount of time I spend on certain kinds of tasks that with as well as good, I should say, as good of an outcome or better than I would have gotten otherwise. So I would agree. It works out great. This is so wonderful. Kathy, thank you so very, very much for sharing your amazing wisdom on this topic. How can people reach you if they would like to contact you personally?

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Well, my website's a great starting point because there's a contact form there and there's also a resource page so people can download things that might be useful at no cost. And the the website is ai efficiencylabs.ai. It's okay if I share that again, it's a little different. So AI, the word efficiency labs.ai. And one other thing I'd say your readers might enjoy. I do a monthly email that is not sales at all. It is here is a task you can use AI for five easy steps to accomplish this task or four steps for this. So it's really hands-on practical tips.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

And I will validate that because I received that newsletter and it is always full of really excellent information. So thank you so much. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Efficiency Advantage podcast. I want to thank Kathy for being on the show today. And if you have any questions you want to bring up to me, please know you can go to askcoachJulie.com and Julia spelled J-U-L-I. And I would be happy to answer any questions you have in the arena of productivity and in any capacity. And if you are not a subscriber, please subscribe, and then you'll be the first to know when the next episode goes live. Thank you again and have a productive day.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

So that's it for today's episode of The Efficiency Advantage. Head on over to Apple Podcasts iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing. To win a private VIP day with Coach Julie herself. Be sure to head on over to the EfficiencyAdvantage.com and pick up a free copy of Coach Julie's gift and join us on the next episode.