3 Small Steps to 10X Your Productivity with AI This Week

Every week, another CEO declares they’re all in on AI.

Shopify. Duolingo. Fiverr. The memos are piling up. While only the boldest make headlines, I can tell you from conversations behind the scenes: this is happening everywhere.

Founders and executives are retraining their teams. They're rewriting workflows. They're buying bulk orders of The Experimentation Machine to get everyone on the same page.

Their message is the same I have been sharing for two years:

AI isn’t going to replace you. But someone using AI will.

The good news is you don’t need to be a technical wizard to stay relevant. You just need to be the kind of professional who learns fast, adapts faster, and starts experimenting right now.

Here are 3 small steps you can take this week to become a 10X professional.

1. Replace One Workflow with an AI Workflow

Pick one repetitive task you do every week—writing meeting notes, responding to customer emails, sourcing leads, updating documentation—and replace it with an AI-augmented workflow.

Not sure where to start?

• Use ChatGPT or Claude to draft email responses and auto-summarize threads.

• Try Magical, Bardeen, or Zapier AI to automate scheduling or form entry.

• Use Notion AI to auto-tag, prioritize, or summarize project notes.

The key isn’t doing everything with AI. It’s integrating AI where it actually saves you time. 10X professionals master this by iteration—not theory.

Matt Mireles, founder of TalkTastic, realized just 96 hours before launch that he had no customer support workflow in place. Instead of hiring a team or setting up traditional chat software, he built an AI-first system using Typeform, ChatGPT, Claude, and Zapier.

It transcribed messages, generated personalized responses, and created bug tickets—fully automated, in under four hours. Customers loved it. One even said: “This deserves to be a product of its own.”

That's what a 10X workflow looks like: fast, lean, and built for scale from day one.

2. Create a Personal Learning Lab

Treat your career like a startup: build your own Experimentation Machine. This week, schedule 1 hour to explore a new AI tool or workflow—not because it’s trending, but because it solves a real problem you care about.

Here’s a mini-experiment template to follow:

• Hypothesis: "I think [Tool X] will help me write faster proposal drafts."

• Test: Use it on your next real deliverable.

• Result: Was it faster? Better? Repeatable?

This is exactly how C16 Biosciences approached building their company. Their early team used scientific methods—hypotheses, experiments, and rapid iteration—to figure out which customers to target, which pain points to address, and how to deliver their synthetic palm oil product. Instead of guessing their way forward, they ran a disciplined learning process. You can do the same on a personal level—just smaller in scope.

Run your life like a startup. Test. Learn. Adapt.

3. Make Yourself Un-Replaceable with Insight

Tools are table stakes. What separates a 10X professional from an average one isn’t tool use—it’s insight generation. AI can summarize data, but you still need to explain what it means. AI can write a blog post, but you still need the idea worth sharing.

This week, challenge yourself to write down:

• One key learning from a customer conversation

• One insight from recent data

• One hypothesis about where your market is going

In my classroom at HBS, we’ve uploaded all case studies and lessons into a custom chatbot called ChatLTV. This effectively gives students the answer to any question I could ask about the content. So instead of quizzing them on facts, we jump straight to analysis. Every student starts on third base—and our discussions are focused entirely on strategy, insight, and decision-making. These are the most important skills of the AI era.

If you want to stand out, don’t just be the person who knows the answer. Be the one who knows what it means—and what to do next.

This shift isn’t coming—it’s already here.

The smartest professionals I know aren’t waiting for AI to get easier, cheaper, or “more ready.” They’re moving now. One workflow. One experiment. One insight at a time.

Becoming a 10X professional doesn’t mean doing everything all at once. It means doing something this week to work smarter, not just harder.

If you’re leading a team through this transition, that’s exactly why I wrote The Experimentation Machine. It’s a roadmap for building, learning, and scaling in the AI era. Grab a copy—or get one for your whole org—at www.jeffbussgang.com/embook