Utilizing A Commute
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Have you ever thought about how best to utilize your commute? Many of us travel by car, train, or airplane to service clients or meet career responsibilities. The recent advances in technology and artificial intelligence have broadened our capabilities for utilizing a commute to our advantage.
Let’s dive in on a few successful ways I have leveraged AI and technology to get work done in the uncomfortable commute environment. There are plenty of instances where you should choose to decompress during the work week – listen to the latest episode of your favorite podcast or watch that episode of a show if possible. On the flip side, there are plenty of days when you may be energized with new ideas or ready to make strides on a project but are slapped with that hour commute. This roadblock can easily be sidestepped with a number of tools that come with templates, can record voice to text, and even sync with the cloud to be ready for you upon arrival to your destination.
Breaking these tools down by levels of automation might help you choose what works best for your industry or typical commute. A low level of automation utilizes pen & paper or a word processor ready to be backed up electronically. A medium level of automation could record a voice session and convert it to a text ready version to be filtered later on. A high level of automation would take the complex process of organizing notes and feeding them into a language model to automate work or create artwork.
At the lowest level of automation with the most time and accessibility, utilize old school project management with new school capabilities. For long commutes with access to electricity and internet, investing in a powerful tablet that caters to travel could unlock that unused potential. If funding for a workstation is not realistic for you, consider a highly organized journal devoted to a specific goal. Moleskine journals work best for me when on the go or out in nature where I do not want to bring an expensive device. You can take notes and scan them in for a complete electronic version once you get back in the office.
A medium level of automation can be utilized when accessibility is low but a commute is long. Voice recognition has come a long way and can be an amazing tool when stuck in traffic during your driving commute. Microsoft 365 subscription has a great voice recognition tool integrated in Word that can be combined with templates. A simple Bluetooth connection and phone microphone can pick up your voice session with about 90% confidence. While there will be a few errors, a Word native spelling/grammar check can fix those up when back in the office. Unlocking the ability to make progress on projects during your commute can be a huge advantage on those days the creative juices are flowing. A small investment into these tools can give you accessibility throughout your routine travels.
A high level of automation is best for short commutes with no accessibility. Creating a list of items or parameters to feed the latest multi-model (Chat GPT 4.0 at the time of this article), can give you an edge on making progress in poor commute environments. Tools like this can do the heavy lifting for components of projects, even if you are not confident in using AI entirely. Providing strict inputs for AI tools can give you great results for thumbnails, AI generated images, or even copy itself. Testing with AI will give you a huge advantage as options improve over the next few years. While you may see a bit of chatter in your feeds lately about AI, I strongly suggest jumping into testing to see if you can benefit from having it as part of your routine workflow.
If you have tips for getting work done around a commute schedule, please share it! I would love to hear what works for you. As always, I really appreciate you taking the time to read through the posts and hope they provide you with a new perspective on utilizing technology. See you next edition!
-P.F.
