From AI-Skeptic to AI Tinkerer in 2 Hours and £18
...or Why am I doing this?!
Hey there 👋,
I’m learning how to use AI to make my work (and life) easier and richer. But not behind closed doors. I want to learn in public. I’ll document every experiment, share the wins and the flops, and invite you to tinker alongside me.
I'm calling this project Tinker w/ AI because I'm not the guru with all the answers. I'm tinkering, trying things out, breaking stuff, and keeping the bits that work. It's playful, a bit messy, sometimes vulnerable, but genuinely useful.
Confession: I resisted AI for ages…
…because AI felt more like a hassle than help: vague answers, generic advice, spending too much time trying to get something useful. You know that moment when you hand a task to a junior teammate, they miss the brief, and you end up doing it yourself because it’s quicker?
Then I saw another product manager’s workflow and the penny dropped:
Treat the LLM like a teammate
Load mountains of context. Set up a project space and feed in the right docs.
Give crystal-clear instructions. Goals. Tone. Constraints.
Let it handle the grunt work. You polish the final 20 %.
That’s when I realised I was treating LLMs like mind-readers: magical tools that should “just know.” Just like that junior teammate: if I don’t invest patience, context, guidance, and expectations, they’ll miss the mark. Put the work in early, and the payoff compounds fast.
I tried it. £18 for Claude Pro, two hours of tinkering, and I had an 80%- finished strategy doc, work that usually takes 5–6 hours. That single "aha" moment flipped me from sceptic to tinkerer.
Why I’m doing this in public
After 20 years in product, I know I learn fastest when I explain it to someone else. And too many product people are paralysed by AI overwhelm, waiting for the perfect tool or framework.
Forget perfect.
Start tinkering.
With Tinker w/ AI I’ll share bite-sized experiments, honest results, and practical frameworks that turn AI from buzzword into business value. Not “how to write a clever prompt,” but how to ship faster, cut meeting drag, and protect deep-work time.
What AI tool or workflow are you most curious about right now? Let me know, I might test it next.
Let’s tinker. Together.
Ady,
Tinkerer in Residence
PS: If you know someone who’d enjoy this journey, please forward this email to them. The more curious minds tinkering, the better!
Awesome post!