Ahead with AI #3: Create infographics, let AI interact with your surroundings, and more
Apply AI in 5 minutes every Sunday: 3 prompts, 2 ways to use AI, 1 key insight
Stay ahead of the curve by turning AI from something you read about into something you use.
In today’s Ahead with AI:
Prompt: tailored activities to refill your energy tank
Prompt: discover how to streamline your workflow with AI
Prompt: step outside the situation to gain clarity
How to: turn any idea into an infographic with Gemini Canvas
How to: use ChatGPT on your phone with camera and screen share
Key insight: how to get better AI outputs through iteration
3 prompts to kick off your week
There are endless ways to use AI, but many of them slip by because we never think to ask. Here are three to try this week with your favorite model. Add your own context so the answers are useful.
These are ready to go, but if you want prompts tailored to your own needs, try my Prompt Generator.
I. For you: Tailored Activities to Refill Your Energy Tank
Based on everything you know about me, recommend five specific activities I could do this weekend to help me relax, recharge, and experience genuine enjoyment.
For each recommendation, explain:
Why it fits me specifically (my patterns, preferences, tendencies).
What emotional benefit it offers if I fully engage.
How I should approach it to ensure it delivers meaningful, replenishing impact, not just shallow feel-good distraction.
Prioritize activities deeply tailored to my personality, not generic self-care tips. Focus on what’s proven to help someone like me unwind and refill their emotional tank & energy effectively.
II. For work: Discover Automation Opportunities in Your Workflow
Considering everything you know about my work from our entire chat history and memory, give me 10 impactful ways I could be using AI to improve my workflows that I haven’t yet thought of.
Look for tasks I do too manually, things that could be automated, or areas where AI could cut friction or speed things up. For each idea, explain why it fits me, what it would replace or improve, the concrete outcome I could expect, and the potential ROI (time saved, effort reduced, or results amplified).
If you’re unsure about some parts of my workflow, ask clarifying questions before suggesting.
III. For perspective: Step Outside the Situation
I’m facing this situation that’s bothering me: [add context]. Help me take some distance from it by having a conversation with me.
First, restate what’s happening as if you were describing it about someone else, not me. Strip out my emotions and assumptions. Then pause and ask if that feels accurate.
Next, guide me through reframing by asking how I’d advise a friend in this position, how my future self might see it looking back, and how a neutral outsider might interpret it. Let me respond at each step before you share reflections.
Finally, work with me to surface 2–3 constructive ways I could respond, based on those outside perspectives. Don’t just hand me answers, build on my input and help me think it through.
Constraints: keep it practical and balanced. Don’t just validate me, challenge me to gain clarity and distance.
2 ways to put AI to use
AI isn’t measured by what it promises, but by what it does. Here are two ways you can put it to work this week.
I. Turn any idea into an infographic with Gemini Canvas
This guide shows you how to create an infographic based on content in a canvas with Gemini AI.
How it works:
Log in or sign up to Gemini, start a new conversation, and select Canvas.
Add your prompt with the content you want to turn into an infographic.
Once the Canvas is created, click Create in the top right corner and select Infographic.
Refine it with prompts if needed, or click Add Gemini Features in the bottom right corner to make it interactive.
Share the link with others once you’re happy with it.
Where it’s useful:
Turn long documents or reports into clean, shareable visuals for your team
Create quick infographics for presentations, blog posts, or social media
Simplify complex ideas into skimmable graphics for clients or students
Estimated time:
5 minutes
Cost:
Free plan available (with limitations)
II. Using ChatGPT mobile app to ask about your surroundings or screen
This guide shows you how to use the ChatGPT mobile app to ask questions about what you see with your camera or what you share from your screen.
How it works:
A) Talk about what you see (camera vision):
Open the ChatGPT app on your phone, enable Advanced Voice mode.
Tap the camera icon. Point at the thing you want to ask about.
Hold to speak. Ask a specific question. Example: “What is this connector and where can I buy a replacement?”
If you want sources, say “cite sources” or “show me where you found that.”
Ask follow-ups. Move the camera closer if it needs more detail.
B) Share your screen (broadcast)
Open the ChatGPT app on your phone, enable Advanced Voice mode.
Tap the three dots. Choose Share screen. Start broadcast.
Navigate to what you need help with. Example: a chart, email, doc, settings screen.
Ask questions out loud.
Stop broadcast when you are done. The text chat will keep a transcript you can reuse.
Where it’s useful:
Meetings on the go: get quick reads on charts, docs, or emails before you walk in
Troubleshooting: show error messages or settings and ask what to try next
Shopping and product checks: scan labels, parts, ingredients, device ports
Learning and translation: capture a page, whiteboard, sign, or menu and ask for a plain-language summary or translation
Content prep: sanity-check slides, outlines, emails, or social posts from your screen
Home tasks: identify plants, tools, cables, or food items and ask for care, usage, or recipes
Estimated time:
5 minutes
Cost:
Free plan includes voice and vision with limits.
1 key insight
One idea, lesson, or finding I found useful (or thought-provoking) enough to share.
I. Get better AI outputs through iteration
AI rarely nail it on the first try. The trick is not to rewrite your whole initial prompt from scratch, but to zoom in on where it drifted from your ask.
If a section feels off, look back at how you phrased that specific part in your prompt. Did you leave room for interpretation? Was your instruction too vague or too broad? Rephrase just that one piece and feed it back in.
You can also use feedforward: instead of only correcting mistakes after they show up, add instructions that anticipate those edge cases. For example, if it tends to skip structure, remind it up front: “Make sure the answer is broken into steps”.
Iteration isn’t random trial and error. It’s a cycle of spotting the gap, refining the ask, and rerunning until the output actually matches what you wanted.
Your turn
Tried any of these (or something else with AI) this week?
Hit reply or drop a comment to share how you used it. I love hearing how you’re putting this into practice.
PS: I might feature your example in a future issue.
From the notebook
In case you missed these, here are a few of my recent deep dives:
How I build an AI Personal Assistant that works 24/7. A few examples of it at work:
How you can use AI to optimize your personal life and free time, shared in my guest post for
’s AI SupremacyHow I use AI to write my deep dive articles, shared in this guest post for
’s Write10xBetter prompts = better results. I showed how side-by-side outputs prove this (30x better in some cases). Then I built a tool so you can make prompts that work without overthinking it.
Catch up on past editions of Ahead with AI here.
Work with me
Consulting: I’ll help you integrate AI into your workflow and create systems that save time, reduce friction, and scale your results. If you’d like to explore working together, just hit reply.
Paid partnership: I’ll promote your product to +2,700 AI-curious readers, through either direct ad placements or hands-on tutorials and workflows.
This newsletter is packed with actionable ideas...I especially love the prompts for reflection and workflow optimization.
Appreciate how practical this is. Iterating on prompts and combining AI vision/voice with tools like Gemini Canvas really turns abstract ideas into actionable insights in minutes.