Coming to AI on My Own Terms
I’ve been slow coming to the AI party. It took me a while to learn about AI and understand its capabilities.
Early on, I came up with a basic rule: I always develop my own ideas and write my first draft without AI, then use it to improve my work in the editing phase.
I was concerned when I saw others using AI to do their creative writing. I wanted to do my own writing, not have a machine string together predictive text that looked like human writing but wasn’t. (See More than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI, by John Warner.)
I knew that if I saw an AI-generated first draft of a blog post first, it would unduly influence what I produced. It would hinder my creativity.
I started with a free ChatGPT account, but eventually I subscribed and began regularly using it to help edit blog posts after I’d written the first draft.
Why I Switched to Claude
Recently, I switched from using ChatGPT to Claude. I started experimenting with Claude and found it to be a better fit for me than ChatGPT.
I’ve learned a lot about using Claude from David Sparks, who writes about Apple productivity at MacSparky.com. He has been experimenting with using Claude Cowork to do what he calls “donkey work.” He’s been producing deep dives and videos in MacSparky Labs on these topics.
I found that Claude gives me more reasons than ChatGPT does for editing suggestions. It seems to fit better with how I think, and I was intrigued by the capabilities of Claude Cowork: accessing files and apps, then reading and modifying them if desired.
Another factor I liked was that Claude tells me what it’s doing while it’s working in the background, so I know what it’s doing. It asks me good, clarifying questions.
Three Ways I’m Using Claude
I don’t consider myself an expert on using AI. I’ve just learned to use it in ways that work for me.
So what have I used Claude for?
1. Helping to Edit Blog Posts
After I write my first draft, I ask Claude for suggestions on the headline and section headings. I suck at creating headlines.
Claude gives me multiple options and tells me what it suggests I use with reasons for that. Sometimes I agree. Sometimes I don’t.
I also ask Claude to read my post and make suggestions for improvement. Some suggestions are useful enough that I’ll rewrite sections to incorporate them.
In addition, I use Claude to check for any topics I should address but haven’t, or to see what I’ve missed. Again, the suggestions are sometimes very helpful and sometimes not.
2. Organizing 100+ Blog Ideas with Claude Cowork
I recently ran an experiment in which I asked Claude to organize my blog ideas. I had over 100 blog post ideas in each of two separate documents for my two blogs, but they were just one long list in each document.
I gave Claude Cowork access to my blog post idea documents and asked it to read them and reorganize my blog post ideas into logical topics of its own.
Claude Cowork created subject topics and then moved the appropriate posts under the topic headings while preserving the links to the supporting documents.
For example, it grouped posts about technology and tools, knowledge management and note-taking, and productivity and time management into separate categories.
Claude Cowork turned what were unwieldy lists into documents with topic areas and post ideas listed. It’s much more useful and approachable when I review my ideas to identify what I want to develop into the next post.
It still needed a bit of human discretion to move some posts under different topic headings than where Claude first placed them.
However, this is a good example of a “donkey work” job that would likely have taken me a couple of hours. Instead, Claude Cowork did it in a few minutes.
3. Building a Workshop Outline From My Own Writing
I’m planning to present a one-hour workshop on retirement transition for an online community. Previously, I created a Claude project and loaded all my Retirement Reinvented blog posts to date into it.
Inside the Retirement Reinvented project section, I asked Claude to read all of my posts. I told it I was going to do a one-hour workshop on retirement transition, with time for questions at the end. I asked it to construct a suggested outline for the workshop.
In a few minutes, it produced a comprehensive outline. I was amazed at the product. It was a logical, well-organized outline using my language and even stories I’d used in my posts.
Since it used my writing as the resource, it read as though I had written it. It didn’t add any additional materials or ideas. It took my material from multiple posts and blended them into a practical workshop outline.
Keeping Human Creativity at the Center
I think the key to maintaining human creativity is to point AI to your creative work as the source for reorganizing your material for different purposes, or help with editing material you’ve created.
For me, the foundational principle is that AI doesn’t write the way humans do. It creates a product that looks like human writing, but isn’t. Machine-generated predictive text isn’t thinking, considering, dealing with emotions, struggling with expression, etc.
A friend suggested I should have first drafted the initial outline for the workshop, and then asked Claude for suggestions.
This is the process I use when writing my blog posts to ensure I’m not overly influenced by Claude’s first draft.
However, this situation was different. I’d already created the original material, and I asked Claude to reorganize that material into an outline for a workshop.
I wasn’t asking it to create a workshop on a topic using its own resources. I don’t see a violation of my human creativity in asking the AI to reorganize my created material for a specific purpose.
Of course, anything created by AI needs human review and independent judgment applied.
What’s Next
I’m looking forward to trying more experiments with Claude, particularly Claude Cowork.
I think we’re on the verge of having AI assistants that can do the administrative work that eats up my time. It will give me more time to do the uniquely human creative work.
If you’ve been hesitant about AI — like I was — I’d encourage you to start small.
Write your own first draft, then ask an AI tool to suggest improvements. See how it feels. You might be surprised by how useful it is to stay in the driver’s seat.
The creative work is still mine. AI just helps me do more of it.
AI Note: I wrote this blog post myself, using my own words and thoughts for the initial draft. I used AI only to suggest headlines, section headings, images, and text improvements.
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