Four weeks in, and the question we get asked most on jobs is still the same one. Not "what can AI do", but "what can it do for me, today, without me signing up to anything". So that is what this week is again. Ten new things, each one you can try in about two minutes.
A few are genuinely new. Document scanning landed in the ChatGPT phone app in the first few days of October, and Android phones picked up a trick for remembering where you put things. The rest are the sort of tips that will still work next year, which matters more.
If you are starting from scratch, read AI for absolute beginners first and then come back.
1. Scan the pile of paper with your phone instead of the printer
The ChatGPT app can now scan documents properly. Open the app, tap the camera, then the three dots, then Scan. Photograph page one, then page two, and it stitches them into a single PDF you can attach to a message or ask questions about. It has rolled out on iPhone first, so if your Android app does not have it yet, take ordinary photos instead and attach them all at once.
Either way, the useful bit is what you type after:
"This is a four page insurance renewal. Tell me what has changed from a standard policy, what my excess is, and anything I should ring them about before I pay it."
Receipts for the accountant, a warranty you need to email, three pages of a quote. The scanner in your pocket is better than the one in the study.
2. Paste three things you have written and tell it to copy you
This is the single biggest improvement most people can make, and almost nobody does it. AI writing sounds like AI writing because you never showed it what you sound like. So show it. Find three emails or texts you are happy with, paste them in, then:
"These are three messages I wrote. Copy the way I write. Same sentence length, same level of formality, same habits. Now write me a reply to the message below."
Keep that in your standing instructions and every draft from then on sounds more like you and less like a brochure. Older readers tend to notice the difference immediately, because most AI defaults to a chirpy American register that nobody in Australia actually uses.
3. Work backwards from the date, not forwards from today
Forward planning is where good intentions go to die. Backwards planning gives you a date for each thing and shows you straight away if you have already left it too late.
"My daughter's engagement party is on 14 November and I am doing the food. Work backwards from that date and give me a list with a day against every task, including the things that have to be ordered early."
Works for a BAS deadline, a house move, a tender, a trip. The moment it tells you something should have been done last Tuesday, you know where you stand.
4. Make it write the spreadsheet formula and tell you where to put it
Most people fight spreadsheets by hand because asking feels like admitting defeat. Describe your sheet in plain words instead.
"Column A has dates, column C has the amount, column D has the job type. I want a cell that totals only the amounts where the job type is 'callback' and the date falls in this financial year. Give me the formula and tell me exactly which cell to paste it into."
Say whether you are in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers, because the formulas differ slightly. If it fails, paste the error it gives you back in and ask for the fix. Two minutes beats twenty minutes of guessing.
5. Ask your phone to remember where you put the passport
New on Android this month. If you have a recent Android phone with Gemini, you can tell it where you have stashed something important and it files that away for you, with a photo if you add one, so you can ask for it later.
"Remember that I have put the passports and the birth certificates in the grey folder on the top shelf of the hallway cupboard."
Then in March, when you need them: "Where did I put the passports?"
Spare keys, the Christmas decorations, the box with the router in it. Anything you hide so well that you then hide it from yourself.
6. Get it to check the form before you submit it
Government and insurance forms are designed by people who will never have to fill one in. Photograph or paste yours before you send it.
"This is the form I am about to submit. Tell me which fields I have left blank, anything that looks inconsistent, and the most common reason these get sent back."
It will not know the specific rules of every Australian agency, so treat the answer as a second pair of eyes rather than gospel. Even so, catching a blank field before you post something beats finding out six weeks later.
7. Turn the long page into just the steps
You wanted to know how to do one thing. Instead you got an eleven minute video, or a web page with three ads and a life story before the instructions.
"Here is the page I found. Strip out everything except the actual steps, numbered, in order, with nothing else. Tell me if any step needs something I would have to buy or download first."
Same trick works for a manual, a council website, or a recipe that opens with somebody's holiday in Tuscany.
8. Do the pricing maths out loud, then check it
Small business owners guess at their numbers far more often than they admit. Talk it through instead.
"I charge $120 for a job that takes an hour on site. Add 25 minutes of driving, 10 minutes of paperwork, fuel, and the fact that one job in ten gets cancelled. Tell me what I am really earning per hour, and what I would need to charge to actually make $90 an hour."
Then check the arithmetic yourself, because this is exactly the sort of task where AI sounds confident and quietly drops a number. The value is in it laying out every assumption, so you can argue with the ones that are wrong.
9. Build the shopping list the way the shop is laid out
Small thing. Saves a lap of the supermarket every single week.
"Here is my list. Reorganise it into the order you would walk a supermarket, fruit and veg first, then deli, then packaged goods, then fridge and freezer last. Group anything I can buy in one spot together."
Same idea for packing a car, loading boxes into a storage unit, or getting your tools into the ute in the order you will need them.
10. Point the camera and let it tell you what you are looking at
Gemini Live can look through your camera and describe what is in front of it while you talk to it. Google has been extending this specifically for blind and low vision users, with guidance that helps you aim the camera at the right thing. It is rolling out, so you may or may not see the newest version yet, but the basic camera conversation already works on most phones.
Open Gemini, start a live conversation, turn the camera on, then just ask:
"What am I pointing at, and what does the writing on it say?"
Brilliant for a fuse box, a plant you cannot identify, a medicine cabinet you are trying to tidy, or the back of a TV with eleven identical sockets.
Two things not to do this week
Do not paste anything private into a chatbot. No tax file numbers, no bank details, no passwords, no Medicare numbers, no credit card numbers, and nothing that belongs to somebody else. If you are scanning a document under tip one, black out or crop those fields first. These services keep your conversations, staff can review them in some cases, and they are an account that can be broken into like any other. If you think an account of yours has already been compromised, here is what to do if you have been hacked.
Do not trust a number, a date or a phone number without checking it. AI is confidently wrong often enough to matter. Prices, opening hours, phone numbers, deadlines, legal obligations, medication doses, warranty terms. If being wrong about it would cost you money or hurt somebody, go and verify it on the official website or ring the actual business. Tip eight is the clearest example of this, because the reasoning can be perfect and the sum still wrong.
Start with number two
If you only do one thing from this list, paste three of your own emails in and tell it to write like you. Everything else on this list gets better once the output stops sounding like a robot wrote it, and it takes about ninety seconds to set up once.
Back next week with ten more.
Stuck on something that is not an AI problem at all, like a laptop that will not start or a printer that has stopped talking to the network? Book a HelloTech technician and we will come to you.
