I studied accounting and finance and ACCA, and it was brutal, especially because I had zero background in it. But I came top of the course, ahead of people who worked at KPMG and EY. It wasn't talent. It was method.
I went straight to the answer
In a revision kit you get the questions and the answer key. Everyone spends twenty minutes staring at the question, scratching their head, trying to find the answer. The problem is they don't know what they don't know, so it's haphazard.
I skipped that. I went straight to the answer key and spent my twenty minutes understanding the solution instead. Anything I didn't get, I threw at ChatGPT: "Where does this £57 come from? What does this line mean? Quiz me. Let me explain it back to you."
By the time everyone else had attempted the question once, I'd already learned it two or three times over.
"But doesn't AI make you dumber?"
There's research, from Harvard and MIT, suggesting AI can reduce people's cognitive abilities. And it can. But it's on the user. It's on you, and the way you use it.
Imagine you hire someone brilliant, a graduate from every top school, who knows everything. If you delegate all your thinking to them and just copy whatever they hand you, your own brain stops working. It's a muscle. Don't use it, and it wastes away.
But if you debate them, challenge them, make them explain, then it's a meaningful discussion with an expert for about £20 a month. My rule of thumb: you can paste into ChatGPT, but never copy out of it into anywhere else.
Know what you want before you ask
One more thing. When I open it, I decide first what I actually want. Today I just want validation, don't give me advice. Or, give me advice on this. I always know which. For people who don't, it's dangerously easy to be swayed and badly influenced without even noticing.
The takeaway
AI is the most powerful learning tool we've ever had, but only if you stay the one doing the thinking. The tool is only as clear as you are.