How Much Has AI Actually Changed Your Day to Day?

[Louis_Frolio]

Community, I'm genuinely curious: Describe your workday two years ago vs. today in a sentence or two.

I'll go first: then, I spent half my day context-switching between Drive, Sheets, Docs, and Slack just trying to find what I needed. Now, I vibe code small apps with friendly UIs that surface exactly what I need, when I need it. No more scavenger hunts.

The productivity gain hasn't been incremental for me, it's been profound. And that kind of shift compounds fast. So what does your before/after look like? Bonus points if the change surprised you.

Is this becoming the norm out there or am I further out on this than I think?

Please share your thoughts, I'm genuinely curious!

Cheers, Lou.

[Ashwin_DSA]

Two years ago, I was working in a Presales capacity.  My workday was often defined by a reliance on others (close to the customer) to provide customer context and a struggle with the hazy procrastination that comes from starting complex slide decks without a clear structure. Today, that friction has vanished. I now use AI as a non-judgmental partner to instantly synthesise client needs and generate initial frameworks that serve as a springboard for my own creative execution.

This shift also extends to my personal life, where I’ve traded calls to a handyman for real-time, photo-based DIY guidance that allows me to solve problems and explore creative ideas on my own..

[Louis_Frolio]

Love this — anything that clears the deck so we can spend more time with customers is a win.

[Kirankumarbs]

A couple of years ago, I used to hesitate a lot when it came to quick experiments or small spikes. I felt that even small tasks had to go through tickets, planning, investigation, and documentation. All of that takes time, so trying things quickly wasn’t always easy.

For example, investigating a performance issue in a microservice can mean collecting thread dumps, heap dumps, analyzing observability metrics, digging through logs, and sometimes refreshing your knowledge about newer JVM features or libraries. It’s quite a process.

Since generative AI tools came along, things have changed quite a bit for me. I often spin up a few AI sessions to help with research or analysis while I focus on building on top of that. It has made the whole process much smoother.

I also use these agents as assistants for quick checks, things like best practices, security concerns, performance bottlenecks, language rules, or even detecting potential PII in code using different skills or plugins.

To be honest, it feels like my productivity has multiplied. I’ve also started building small apps for myself whenever I need something, simple things like a todo app or a tax tracking tool, just because it’s now so easy to experiment and create.

Regards,
Kiran

[Louis_Frolio]

Kiran, this nails it. The biggest unlock isn't that AI writes code for you — it's that it collapses the friction between "I wonder if..." and actually trying it. Cheers, Lou

[Kirankumarbs]

Exactly! Sometimes i wanted to try out things but procrastinated due to a lot of manual work!

[Fabricio_Mattos]

At least five years ago, I spent a lot of time writing code for the data engineering area, and that's normal. We would review the code to check if everything was correct before putting it into production. It was fun, but it really took longer. Now, with AI-AI, everything is much easier. You don't need to type the code; it's done for you. You enter another phase, the verification phase, to see if that code makes sense, is correct, and is ready for production. Productivity has really increased a lot.

[Kirankumarbs]

Spot on! Another example could be the PR Review agent can block or highligh PII related info sneaking in! That was just an example bu there are endless possibilities!

[AskNate]

Great thread, Lou. I'll do you one better, forget two years ago, try two months ago.

Two months ago, I was occasionally using AI to help with writing or brainstorming ideas. Useful, sure, but still just a tool I'd pull out now and then.

Now? My AI assistant and I do everything together. Schedule audits, data analysis, drafting customer comms, building internal tools, answering complex questions across a dozen systems, all in real-time conversation. It's not a tool I use; it's a partner I work with.

The shift from "sometimes helpful" to "how did I function without this" happened almost overnight, and honestly, that's the part that surprised me most

[Louis_Frolio]

@AskNate , I tend to believe the brainstorming dimension may ultimately be where AI produces some of its greatest value. The ability to rapidly generate angles, surface adjacent possibilities, challenge assumptions, and accelerate early-stage ideation is already quite powerful.

That said, I have a serious question.

Do you think these tools can truly replace the highest form of brainstorming — that big blue sky, non-linear, exponential style of thinking that seems to come so naturally to a small number of exceptional minds? I am thinking here of people who do not simply iterate on existing ideas, but who seem to reframe the problem itself and open entirely new conceptual pathways.

In other words, can AI eventually match that level of generative thought, or will it remain strongest as an amplifier and thought partner for human thinkers operating at that level?

I am genuinely curious how you see that boundary evolving.

Cheers, Lou.

[jade_lauzon]

Then:  When learning and building I would search for resources, watch multiple videos, read documentation, and try to build out the connections in my brain.  Confusion, blockers, and troubleshooting would be spent with a large investment in time and frustration with an eventual workaround or work through.  Then chatbot AI came and I learned how to engineer prompt and kept documents of prompt which help me by answering questions and building connection helping to remove long standing blockers.  However, I was still physically performing brainless and repetitive tasks that took time to execute and were done while on the phone or watching tv.  

Now:  I use AI still to build knowledge and connection but, it is better, and I am better.  I now have skills to customize and formalize my repetitive asks.  AI has tools and many of those repetitive tasks can be completed with a couple of clicks and in parallel.  I can now spend my time asking for what I want, refining the results, and adding my improvements.  Easier tasks are allocated to the "can a skill be built to do that list" and I focus on adding value.  From a different perspective there is also a new appreciation for human value that has joined the AI appreciation.

[Louis_Frolio]

Great feedback, @jade_lauzon.

Your line, “I now have skills to customize and formalize my repetitive asks,” really jumped out at me. Honestly, that has probably been the single biggest benefit of AI for me so far.

There are so many little things that need to get done every day, and a lot of them are repetitive enough that they should be automated or at least streamlined. That is where I have seen a real payoff. I have freed up hours in my day, and that time can now go where it matters most: focusing on our learners, who are the true beneficiaries of the fabulous training we deliver.

Lou

[jamesl]

Two years ago I was mostly using AI via chatbots like ChatGPT for knowledge lookup or research, which I still do today. The difference now is that the AI coding tools have become so good that I can perform any manual computer/desktop task more efficiently, but also create net new projects and apps that would have been unthinkable previously.

I haven't ventured much into the world of automated agents, claws, or teams of agents and sub-agents running 24/7, but perhaps that's knowledge work is headed for all of us who sit in front of screens all day. You should have an agent post this question every month (or less?) to see how people's AI usage and responses evolve 🙂 

[Louis_Frolio]

Thanks for sharing, @jamesl  I really like your idea of posting this question every month. I think there is real value in that kind of recurring prompt because it gives people a chance to reflect, compare notes, and keep the conversation moving.

That said, there is also a Gen X part of me that feels like I should do it manually and keep a human hand in it. To me, part of community spirit is the human engagement itself. That human touch matters. It is not just about getting the post up, it is about the intention behind it and the connection it helps create.

It also makes me think about the balance we need to maintain with AI more broadly. AI is incredible for so many things, and I am clearly a fan, but I also think we need to keep reminding ourselves how important real human connection is. That part should not get automated away.

Lou

[Ale_Armillotta]

Hi @Louis_Frolio . Nice question 😉

Two years ago, I was already using AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot, but mostly as thinking partners to explore ideas and reason through the best solution. Before that, everything was manual: I spent hours searching through documentation, forums, and error messages with no real support.

Today, tools like GitHub Copilot and Claude feel like trusted developer teammates. They help me move faster, reduce repetitive work, and focus more on design and problem-solving. This is also true in my Databricks work, where AI and Claude skills are making development much smoother. In fact, these days I’m building my own skills to speed up the creation of agents with the Mosaic AI framework combined with LangGraph.

One of the biggest wins for me is documentation and README generation, which used to be heavy, boring, and very time-consuming. At the same time, what I’m realizing more and more is that experience still matters a lot: AI can accelerate execution, but hands-on knowledge is what helps you catch mistakes, challenge weak outputs, and avoid problems the model may not fully understand.