Using AI to leverage tasks
We all have the same number of hours in a week. If we are working with tasks with a leverage factor of 1x - then our output is capped.
The typical example is trading time for money. Selling an hours work, and then doing an hours work. This has a leverage factor of 1x.
Leverage is the process of putting in the same input, and getting a larger output.
How to increase leverage?
Naval Ravikant lists four different ways of increasing your leverage above 1x:
Content
A simple example of this is training and onboarding content. You write this once, and then it can be viewed forever by any number of people simultaneously. Compare this to onboarding each person one by one and the leverage factor is large!
AI is great at writing content and summarisation. Give it the context of your business and it can help you create the onboarding you need. Companies like Synthesia not only have AI video production for text -> video, but you can add in variables to replace people’s names to make the videos even more personal.
Code / automation
In a previous post I wrote about $1 tasks and how to remove them. They usually have a leverage factor of 1x. Writing code and using AI we can automate systems so that we are expanding our time. For example writing personal emails as part of a sales outreach has a leverage of 1x - you can only write one email at a time. But using AI carefully you can write personalised, individual sales emails in bulk - massively increasing your leverage.
Collaboration / team
Hiring a team can increase the leverage over doing the work yourself. Hire 4 people and you have a leverage of 4x over doing the work yourself. AI agents are also helpful here, giving them tasks and then doing a final check before signing off its output.
If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far, go together - Proverb
Capital
Not related to strategy/productivity Naval’s final leveraged activity is capital:
Investing money to make more money. Once invested you do not need to do any more for the investment, and you can invest in multiple areas simultaneously.
Summary
- We all have the same number of hours in a week
- Tasks with a leverage factor of 1x are the least leveraged activity
- Look at the tasks in your week and see if using one the leveraged approaches (content, code, collaboration) can help you increase your leverage