3 AI Tools That Make Me More Productive Every Day

At first, I was really skeptical of AI in terms of using it as a creator, and in some ways, I still am. I think people are going to abuse it to their own detriment, but that's something we'll cover later on. However, I recently discovered three AI tools that have significantly increased my productivity as I do this YouTube/content creator thing. By integrating them into my content creation business, I've been able to accomplish more stuff in less time, which has been especially helpful as I am trying to do more stuff all the time here in 2023 to build my empire, as it were.

The first tool is probably the simplest and most well-known use of AI as sort of a word or copy generator for various writing tasks. Although I am a video creator now by profession, I also have a background in writing. I have an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and experience teaching at different colleges and universities. The creative writing thing, as well as literature, and I have found ways to use AI to write more efficiently. Not to get AI necessarily to write for me, but it has helped me script about 90% of all my videos, which I then read from a teleprompter.

Notion, the platform that I use to organize all my different projects, recently launched an AI component that I have found really helpful for writing scripts. If you ask Notion, Bing AI, or ChatGPT, or anything like that to write a script for you, no matter what you do, the draft that's generated is really often generic and can be inaccurate if you're not super specific about what you're looking for. I use it sometimes as a starting point or to give me some bullet points to create a more focused and accurate script. I write the script myself, and then I go back and run the script through Notion’s AI for proofreading and to improve the writing, which it does. It often makes me less wordy than I usually am.

This process has saved me a lot of time, especially compared to long turnaround times when I worked in publishing back in the 90s and early 2000s. This thing that I just described, going through ideation, then writing a draft, and then having it proofread and edited and all that kind of stuff, that's a job for three or maybe four people, and it would take all day to get through one draft. But here I am, using AI to get all of that stuff done for me. Now, is it as good as it could be with other humans? Maybe not, but I can't afford other humans, so the AI is helping me quite significantly in getting this done.

Another way that I've started using AI just recently is to generate bullet points for content that I'm going to create on a true crime YouTube channel and podcast that I’m going to start, as well as a music history channel. While I know the stories that I'm going to tell, gathering all the information for that content can be really time-consuming, and you have to go through all kinds of different things. So when I ask it, "Hey, give me the bullet points of this, that, or the other thing," I can tweak those bullet points, look up a couple of things if I need more information, and just use them as the raw material to create short videos, long videos, podcasts with that information there in front of me, and it doesn't take me days to do that research.

Notion’s AI costs $ 10 per user in addition to Notion’s subscription fee. While this can be expensive for folks who have multiple people on their teams, I currently just use a free Notion plan because it's all for myself, so I pay the extra $ 10. I'm also starting to test Bing’s AI for writing tasks. Bing is free and I'll report back later if I find that Bing does anything differently or better than Notion's AI.

Another way that I get things done more quickly now, and this is a huge one, is that when I film a video, I'm left with 15 to 20 minutes of raw video footage where I start and stop, try different deliveries of different things that I'm saying, add things, and take things away. I usually cut that down to 8 or 10 minutes of content or less. This process usually takes me two-plus hours just to get that rough cut down, and then I can start doing more editing.

Recently, I started using Gling, which is an AI tool recommended by my friend Mark Ellis. Gling basically takes that raw footage, and you can tell it to take out pauses and silences, as well as starts and stops and different takes, and crunch it all together. It actually makes all the cuts look nice, and I end up with a final cut file that I can open where all the cuts are there, and I can adjust things as I want to. I can cut things out. It's not always 100% right, of course, but it does get me 90% of the way toward having a finished rough cut of my video, which has cut my first edit time down to 30 minutes or less. Hence, I can get these things done much more quickly.

The third tool I’ve started using is called Munch. It is a web-based AI that you can sign up for at a cost of $ 49 a month. They give you one trial video, and then it's $ 49 a month, which is expensive. But what it does is take a long-form video you upload and then sort of does its little spin cycle and spits out like eight or so possible pieces of content that you can use in short form. I’ve been struggling to figure out how to do short-form video while doing my long-form video and all that stuff. I’ve tried a bunch of ways. You’ve seen some shorts here on YouTube, and I’ve wanted to do more with TikTok and Instagram but haven’t quite figured out how to do it yet. Munch takes that long-form video and cuts it up, and once you get the pieces, you go through and watch what it suggested. You can edit it some if it started a little bit late and you want to go back or chop it up a bit more yourself. Munch pulls out and puts in the captions if you want to do that. There are just a lot of different options you can use with it. I’m going to try it out for a couple of months and see how it does. I do want to grow on other platforms, as they say.

AI has made it a lot more possible than it would have been, say, last year. So it's pretty interesting. Like I said, I didn't necessarily trust it in all realms of creativity. I think many people are going to abuse it, and I’ve already found some websites using AI to write their stories, and it’s pretty obvious. I think those people will get more content out initially, but then they will see that it’s just not going to get the engagement. If you're smart about how you use it and understand how you work, AI can kind of be an entire editorial team that you can use to your advantage.

That’s what I’m doing to get more stuff ready to go than I have ever been able to before. Hopefully, this has been a helpful article for you to know a little bit about how I do the work that I do and use AI. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below. If you have any suggestions on other stuff I should check out, let me know in the comments as well. My name is Jason, sometimes known as the JTL, Painfully Honest Tech. Tech so honest it hurts. Until next time, I’m out.

Keywords

AI Tools
Productivity
Content Creation
YouTube
Notion
Bing AI
Gling
Munch
True Crime
Music History
Writing
Scripting
Video Editing

FAQ

Q: What is the first AI tool mentioned in the article? A: The first AI tool mentioned is Notion's AI, used for writing scripts and proofreading to enhance productivity.

Q: How does Gling help in video editing? A: Gling takes raw video footage, removes pauses, silences, starts and stops, and different takes to create a rough cut, significantly reducing the initial edit time.

Q: What is Munch, and how does it assist in content creation? A: Munch is a web-based AI that takes long-form videos and breaks them into short-form content, aiding in creating content for platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

Q: How much does Notion's AI component cost? A: Notion's AI component costs $ 10 per user in addition to Notion's subscription fee.

Q: What are the primary uses of AI in the article? A: The primary uses of AI mentioned include generating and proofreading scripts, creating bullet points for content, editing video footage, and breaking long-form videos into short-form content.

Q: Does the author trust AI for all creative tasks? A: No, the author remains skeptical about AI in all realms of creativity and believes it can be abused, though it has been beneficial for specific productivity tasks.