Over the past year, almost everyone I speak to has tried AI in some form.
Most have used ChatGPT. Many have tested a handful of tools and workflows.
On the surface, it looks like adoption is happening everywhere. But when I ask a more specific question, whether any of this has genuinely changed how they work or make decisions, the conversation usually slows down.
People hesitate. They think about it. And more often than not, the answer is no. That gap between widespread use and real impact is what I want to explore here.
Once you look closely, the pattern becomes fairly obvious.
Most people haven’t changed the work they do. They’ve just found a faster way to produce the same things. The same reports, the same meeting notes, the same briefs that were already unclear before AI entered the picture.
AI ends up accelerating whatever already exists.
The shift that actually changes things isn’t learning new tools or better prompts. It’s learning to pause before you use them.
Before asking AI to do anything, it helps to ask a few very basic questions yourself. They’re not clever, but they’re surprisingly powerful:
Why does this task exist at all?
What decision is it meant to support?
What would a genuinely useful outcome look like?
Most tasks fall apart under that level of scrutiny. And that’s exactly the point.
When those answers aren’t clear, AI has nothing solid to work with. It will still produce something fluent and polished, but it won’t move the work forward in a meaningful way.
When those answers are clear, AI becomes far more useful. Not as a replacement for thinking, but as a way to test it, structure it, or move it along.
What I’ve noticed is that the people getting real value from AI aren’t the ones with the most tools or the fanciest setups. They’re the ones who redesigned how they work first and only then decided where AI actually fits.
AI didn’t fail everyone else.
It simply exposed where clarity was missing.
If you want to make this practical rather than theoretical, here’s a simple way to try it this week.
Take one task you normally hand straight to AI. Before writing the prompt, write three short sentences for yourself:
why the task exists
what decision it should help someone make
what “good” would actually look like
Then give that context to AI and see how different the result feels.
In most cases, the change is immediate. The output feels calmer, more relevant, and easier to trust. Not because the tool suddenly became smarter, but because the thinking behind the request did.
If there’s one thing worth remembering about AI right now, it’s this: faster work isn’t better work if it’s still unclear work. The real leverage comes from clarity first and automation second.
Where has AI helped you move faster without really helping you move forward?
This kind of practical, real-world thinking is what I focus on inside ConfigurAI. Not chasing every new release, but making sure the work itself is worth amplifying.
More next week.
Tooling for Trust: Building Your Seatbelt for the AI Era
It’s not hackers that worry me most.
It’s good people, smart, careful people, pasting client data into an AI tool because they just needed something done faster.
AI risk isn’t about headlines. It’s about inputs, what we feed the machine, knowingly or not.
And in this new world, you’re only as safe as your rules.
That’s why I built the AI Risk & Policy Toolkit, not to make anyone paranoid, but to give every business something they’ve never had before: a seatbelt for the AI era.
It doesn’t turn you into a compliance lawyer. It helps you stay confident while your team experiments, creates, and automates.
Inside, you’ll find:
Leak Mapping Worksheet – to spot where your data quietly slips into third-party tools.
Tool Vetting Checklist – five questions to test whether an AI tool deserves your trust.
AI Policy Templates – clear, editable rules you can drop straight into your team handbook.
Quarterly Review Sheet – a simple ritual to stay proactive instead of reactive.
The moment you write it down, panic turns into process.
That’s the point. You protect your business before you ever need protection.
If this sparked something in you, come say hello on LinkedIn; that’s where I share the deeper lessons, tools, and systems behind ConfigurAI.
For the human side, the messy experiments, reflections, and moments that shape the work, you’ll find that on Instagram.
And if you want to see how it all connects, the business, the story, the mission, it’s all at orgesameli.com
Because what we’re building here isn’t just about AI.
It’s about making technology feel human again
Thanks for reading,
See you next Tuesday with more ways to cut the busywork and get your time back.
Orgesa Meli
P.S. It would mean a lot if you forward this to someone who’d benefit. I’m building a community of people who want to work smarter with AI, not just a list of names. Subscribe to my community here.
