How much I use AI

I didn’t plan to rely on AI this much. It just slowly became part of how I work, think, and learn. At some point I tried to quantify it, mostly out of curiosity.

Rough numbers: around 60% of my work involves AI, about 20% shows up in everyday life questions, and maybe 40% of how I learn new things now goes through it.

Those numbers overlap, obviously. This isn’t a spreadsheet. It’s more like a map of where it keeps showing up.

Work — ~60%

Most of it is not what people expect.

I’m not asking AI to “build the whole thing.” It’s more like having something that helps me move faster between steps: structuring thoughts, rewriting parts, checking approaches, filling gaps when I get stuck.

Sometimes it’s as small as rephrasing a paragraph or naming things better. Other times it’s helping me think through architecture or edge cases.

The biggest shift is momentum. Instead of pausing when I hit friction, I can usually keep going. AI becomes a kind of buffer between “I don’t know” and “good enough to continue.”

But it only works if I stay in control. If I stop understanding what’s happening, the quality drops fast.

Life — ~20%

This part is quieter, but it’s there.

Quick questions, comparisons, small decisions. Things I would’ve googled before, or asked someone about, or just left unresolved.

It’s not about big answers. It’s about reducing small frictions—figuring something out faster, getting a second perspective, or just not overthinking a simple choice.

I don’t rely on it blindly here either. But it’s often the first place I check.

Learning — ~40%

This is probably where it changed things the most.

Learning used to be more linear: find resources, go through them, try to connect the dots yourself. Now it’s more interactive.

I can ask follow-up questions immediately. I can go deeper where I don’t understand something. I can reframe the same concept from different angles until it clicks.

It feels less like consuming information and more like shaping it around what I need.

There’s still value in original sources, of course. But AI compresses the feedback loop in a way that’s hard to ignore.

What this actually means

The percentages aren’t the point.

What matters is that AI is no longer a separate tool I “go to.” It’s more like a layer that sits across everything—work, decisions, learning.

Some days I use it more, some days less. Sometimes I ignore it completely on purpose, just to think things through on my own.

I’m not trying to maximize usage. I’m trying to use it where it genuinely helps, and step away where it doesn’t.

It’s not replacing how I think. But it’s definitely changing how often I get stuck—and how long I stay there.