An important AI announcement before getting into things:

You might remember the GenAI Productivity Upgrade I mentioned last week? We're already 60% sold out, which is either brilliant news for early birds or a proper wake-up call for procrastinators.

Inventium's 12-week GenAI Productivity Upgrade starts October 15 and it's the last program we are running until 2026. We will spill the beans on how the savvy folk are saving 40+ hours every month using AI like a pro, whilst everyone else is still getting sub-standard outputs from poorly thought-out prompts. With only a limited number of spots left and enrolments closing October 6, the snooze-you-lose brigade might actually lose out.

​Grab your spot before it vanishes because come Christmas, you'll either be the colleague everyone's secretly envious of (hello, 4-day work weeks) or the one still grinding away wondering how everyone else got so bloody efficient.

And now onto today's programming...

AI is supposed to make us smarter, but most of us are using it like a glorified cheerleader. We ask it to do something, it does exactly what we say without question, and we walk away thinking we're geniuses.

But the most valuable thing AI can do isn't agreeing with us - it's challenging us.

The cognitive laziness trap.

We humans are designed to be cognitively lazy. It's not a character flaw – it's survival. If we analysed every single decision and pattern, we'd run out of mental energy before lunchtime.

But here's where it gets problematic. When we're working on strategy, reports, presentations, or anything that requires fresh thinking, those automatic patterns can trap us in blind spots. And AI? It's been built to be helpful, which means it happily goes along with whatever pattern we're stuck in.

The result? We get work that looks polished but lacks the critical thinking that makes it actually valuable.

How to turn AI into your best sparring partner.

Stop asking AI to be your obedient assistant (which it does by default). Start asking it to be your devil's advocate.

The mindset shift: Instead of "AI, do this for me," try "AI, challenge me on this."

Practical prompts that actually work:

• "What am I missing here?"
• "What would my harshest critic say about this approach?"
• "Where are the weaknesses in my thinking?"
• "Is there a better way to approach this task?"
• "What questions would [specific audience] have that I haven't addressed?"

The key is being specific about what kind of challenge you want. Don't just say "critique this". Instead, tell AI exactly whose perspective you want it to adopt.

The perspective-taking hack.

Here's where AI is super useful: it can step into anyone's shoes if you give it enough context.

For customer insights: "I want you to be a busy working parent with limited time and budget. Review this article from their perspective – what would worry them? What would they want to see that's missing?"

For presentations: "You're the CFO who's been burned by overspending on innovation projects before. What questions would you ask about this proposal? Where would you see red flags?"

For strategy work: "You're a downstream user of this process. What problems would this create for your daily work?"

The more specific you are about the person's role, background, and concerns, the better AI gets at channelling their perspective.

The pre-test approach.

Before we had AI, getting feedback on ideas meant finding actual customers, booking meetings, and hoping they'd be honest. Time-consuming and sometimes unreliable.

Now you can run your ideas through AI first. It's not a replacement for human feedback, but it's infinitely better than launching something without any outside perspective at all.

The process:

1. Brief AI on your audience (their role, goals, pain points, past experiences)
2. Ask specific questions: "Where might they find this boring?" "What would seem too risky?" "What information are they missing?"
3. Refine your approach based on the feedback
4. Then go test with real humans, armed with much stronger material

Think of it as moving from cold to warm before you ever get in front of your actual audience.

Your action plan.

Stop doing this: Asking AI to create or approve your work without question.

Start doing this: Making AI your toughest critic before anyone else sees your work.

Today's challenge: Take something you're working on and ask AI: "What would my target audience find confusing, boring, or concerning about this?" Then actually listen to the feedback and act on the useful bits.

Don't accept every suggestion – AI doesn't know your context perfectly. But you'll be surprised how often it spots things you've completely missed.

The bottom line.

The real power isn't in getting AI to agree with us – it's in getting it to challenge us in ways that make our thinking sharper.

Stop letting AI be your yes-man. Make it your thinking partner.

Want to master other AI strategies like this? Our 12-week GenAI Productivity Upgrade starts October 15. We'll teach you how to move from basic prompting to creating AI agents that genuinely transform how you work.

​Secure your spot here. And we offer a 7-day money-back guarantee because we know this stuff works.

Cheers

Amantha

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