How gen AI can save your week

Sometimes you look at your work diary and immediately recognise in advance that one week in particular is probably going to feel more like an exercise in logistics and survival than usual. It’s not going to be your top week for reflection, rest or strategy, but you’ll make it work and it’s important. By Friday, though, you’re ready for a break and trying to write about what just happened as a largely hypothetical scenario to process everything and distract yourself from wanting your duvet.

What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?

Let’s be clear: I am not complaining. I’ve had a very fun week indeed – everyone at team Engine has – and I don’t deserve or want sympathy for being busy. It’s just been… particularly well-stacked. I started the week a bit tired only because I’d had a double birthday party weekend of nice food and enthusiastic karaoke. The BETT* awards took place – where Engine were finalists for AI that reduces teacher workload dontcha know, but we hate to brag… – then there were the many useful and fun tech events in and around BETT, involving a fair bit of back and forth across London and having to remember peoples’ names.

But then there was the normal, actual work with meetings, writing proposals, dealing with… stuff. Somewhere in the margins I also moved my mum in with me. But she brings cups of coffee right to my home-working desk, so that’s in both columns.

For most of my career, weeks like this have been great for networking and for reminding you why you get excited about your job. You can see the benefits and enjoy yourself. But it can also feel like lost time when you get back from your travels to find the same things on your to do list and an inbox of doom. You might be physically tired and loathe to sit at your desk since entering your ‘bad back’ era, you might just be out of capacity for the mental labour, especially if your introverted self has been made to talk to other people instead of having some quality alone time. What you mainly notice is you are putting off thinky jobs, and when you do them it’s taking longer. And you make more mistakes.

Except it’s been fine.

What made the difference?

I had help. Help that was smart, understanding, patient, and didn’t involve me just transferring the work to another colleague while I was out having a nice time. I had my private GPT and a few other assistants. They sorted me out in a few ways:

1. Generative AI writes faster than you – especially if you’re tired

When you're tired, you can draw a blank on the simplest things. Writing can be a real challenge. This week, as per, I had several documents and emails to draft, and I caught myself staring into the middle distance and not even focussing on the blank screen. The private GPT stepped in and provided me with initial drafts that I could then tweak and personalise. This saved me a significant amount of time and mental energy in my very limited pit stops at my desk. And it overlooked my sub-par prompting, which was more than usually lacking full stops.

2. AI can review your work and help you be your better self

One of the most frustrating things about being tired is the second-guessing. Is that the right tone? Is my argument coherent? Generative AI helped here too. I used it more than usual to review my work and reassure my tired brain. It caught errors I would have missed and suggested improvements, giving me confidence instead of draining my dwindling energy.

The joy of large language models (LLMs) and GPTs means they catch errors that your old friend the spell check missed. I once wrote an article about a council that went to press without anyone noticing I’d mentioned their erected members. Three different editors missed it because there was no red squiggly line. The AI would have worked out that I meant to say elected members…

3. No one has to be marginalised just because it’s slightly more work to include them

I had to organise a meeting between colleagues in different time zones. Normally, this would involve a lot of back-and-forth emails and a fair amount of mental gymnastics. The AI figured out what my GMT plan meant for someone on EST and made me a little table of options. Then we had a lovely chat with a tech team in Marbella… No one was left out just because we were a bit pressed for time. Scale that up and it’s about being able to work inclusively every single day – not just the day after that neurodiversity workshop you went to.

What’s next?

Generative AI has, for us, never been about replacing humans but about enhancing their capability, especially when we’re not at our best. Maybe brain fog has kicked in, maybe a health condition means you find some days harder than others, or maybe – just maybe – you’re a bit hungover but still possessed by an overwhelming sense of personal and professional responsibility to show up and get things done. We’re here for it, and so is AI (specifically, as ever, secure, bespoke, RAG AI – that’s our favourite).

*BETT, for the uninitiated, is the biggest education technology exhibition in the world. The UK EdTech market is huge, growing and globally significant.

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