This essay, recounted in first‑person style and refined for clarity and conciseness, originates from a conversation with Jessica Camilleri‑Shelton, a 35‑year‑old copywriter and content creator living in the United Kingdom. She described in detail how her career trajectory, working habits, and even elements of her personal life have been profoundly altered since she incorporated artificial intelligence into her professional routine roughly two and a half years ago.
Jessica’s daily schedule is demanding and complex, shaped by the numerous professional commitments she juggles simultaneously. She operates as a freelance copywriter and content writer, while also designing educational material with the goal of teaching others. Alongside fulfilling client commissions, she is in the process of establishing her own business dedicated to guiding professionals on how to “future‑proof” their careers through the strategic use of AI. This balance requires not only technical proficiency but also careful time management and strategic vision.
The measurable results of her approach have been striking. Within a six‑month period, Jessica managed to double her copywriting income while paradoxically reducing the number of hours she spends directly engaged with client work. She repurposed the equivalent of two full eight‑hour working days per week—time that was once devoted entirely to copywriting—toward cultivating her business foundations and expanding her presence on social media channels. Furthermore, she strategically employed AI tools to optimize her TikTok content by scripting and planning posts, allowing her to grow an audience of 20,000 followers in just eight weeks. These figures illustrate, in tangible terms, how integrating technology into a workflow can yield both financial and creative dividends.
For Jessica, effectiveness with AI stems not from indiscriminately relying on technology but rather from discerning the “superpower” that each AI model possesses and applying it in the right domain. She has identified five tools in particular that conserve her time, energy, and money, reshaping the way she approaches professional and personal challenges.
**1. ChatGPT as a multi‑faceted assistant and coach**
Among these, ChatGPT holds a central role. Jessica subscribes to the Plus plan, investing $20 per month. She uses it as a digital personal assistant to help structure her days, arrange tasks according to urgency, and develop achievable schedules with built‑in buffer times to prevent fatigue or constant context‑switching. One of her go‑to prompts involves instructing ChatGPT to ask clarifying questions, categorize her obligations, and then output a clear and pragmatic daily structure. In addition, the model highlights tasks that could be omitted, delegated, or automated. This makes Jessica’s work more streamlined and gives her a sense of direction at moments where her to‑do list feels overwhelming.
Beyond logistics, she relies on ChatGPT as a creative partner, engaging in brainstorming sessions for business ideas and strategies. In more personal contexts, it assists in planning vacations, compiling recipes, and even organizing her investment portfolio. Perhaps even more transformative is the role it has played in helping her overcome procrastination. Previously, large projects felt daunting and insurmountable. Now, she prompts ChatGPT to break intimidating goals into sequential micro‑tasks, only revealing the next step after she confirms completion of the previous one by responding with “done.” This incremental guidance helps her bypass inertia. Moreover, when motivation lags, she can ask ChatGPT to play the role of a mindset coach—offering encouragement or a bracing push forward. She credits this application of AI as instrumental in building her business while continuing freelance work.
**2. Claude as a collaborative writing partner**
Although Jessica admires ChatGPT’s capabilities, she finds that Claude often surpasses it in generating writing that feels authentic, compelling, and stylistically polished with comparatively less prompting. Depending on her immediate needs, she alternates between the Pro subscription tier at $17 per month and the higher‑capacity Max plan at $100 per month. Claude proves especially valuable when scripting social media videos, constructing striking narrative hooks, or developing her weekly business newsletter. Her typical workflow involves providing Claude with the rough seed of an idea, along with past newsletter editions, and directing it to recreate her voice and tone while weaving together disparate concepts into a coherent draft. She further instructs the model to request personal anecdotes so the resulting content feels infused with her individuality rather than sounding generic.
Compared with her abilities three years ago, this AI‑augmented workflow generates writing of significantly higher quality, demonstrating how these tools can actively enhance creativity rather than replace it.
**3. Perplexity for targeted research and fact‑finding**
Though used less frequently, Perplexity holds a pivotal niche in her toolkit. Unlike ChatGPT and Claude, this system functions primarily as a research hub. Jessica taps into it to locate authoritative and up‑to‑date information for her social media posts, newsletters, or broader business planning. When she determines a focus for a newsletter article, she leverages Perplexity to provide relevant materials supplemented with reliable citations. This ensures that her audience receives accurate, properly referenced content, strengthening both her credibility and the educational value of her writing.
**4. Fathom for client engagement and accurate records**
In her freelance life, Zoom calls with clients occupy a considerable chunk of the workday. These conversations demand full attention if meaningful relationships and clear agreements are to be built. However, attempting to take detailed notes simultaneously can be distracting and counterproductive. To resolve this, Jessica employs Fathom, a tool that records meetings, produces precise transcripts, and synthesizes the content into clear summaries and action items. This eliminates the need to sift through lengthy transcripts afterward in search of tasks, preserving hours while ensuring that essential client expectations are captured and acted upon efficiently.
**5. Canva, extending far beyond traditional design**
While many know Canva as a simple graphic‑design tool, Jessica uses the Pro edition, costing $120 annually, in ways that amplify her efficiency across multiple projects. Its design features—such as automated resizing and background removal—accelerate the production of professional visuals. More intriguingly, she integrates it with ChatGPT to generate initial design concepts, giving her a creative starting point that she can refine. Additionally, Canva Sheets, which merges AI with data organization, enables her to plan comprehensive social media strategies: from visually engaging posts to captions, links, and publishing schedules. By removing the paralysis of the blank page, Canva has become not only a design support tool but a structural backbone for her content planning.
**Maintaining boundaries in a world of expanding AI tools**
Despite AI’s expansive integration into her life, Jessica is careful to preserve boundaries. She recognizes AI as a permanent fixture in professional and personal spheres, but she uses it selectively and responsibly. For instance, she refuses to input confidential or overly sensitive details, and while AI might provide comfort or motivational nudges, she firmly avoids substituting it for genuine mental health care from qualified professionals. Moreover, she never treats outputs as unquestionable but subjects them to her scrutiny, contextual judgment, and creative overlay.
She acknowledges that innovations in AI are emerging at a dizzying pace, overwhelming for those trying to keep track of developments. Her advice is to narrow one’s focus: instead of attempting to master every possible application, newcomers should concentrate on one or two areas aligned with their professional aims—whether that be large language models like ChatGPT, generative tools for images and video, workflow automation systems, or digital agents. Even partial mastery of selective tools can produce immense results, as evidenced by her own dramatic transformation.
Jessica’s reflections illustrate both the excitement and the practicality of AI adoption: it can open up new income streams, recover significant amounts of time, and reduce the mental burdens associated with modern work. By pairing discernment with experimentation, she shows how embracing just a handful of well‑chosen tools can alter the trajectory of a career and foster growth not possible through traditional methods alone.
Do you have an experience of integrating AI that has shifted the way you work or earn a living? If so, the publication invites you to share your own story with the reporter at tmartinelli@businessinsider.com.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-tools-doubled-income-save-me-fifteen-hours-each-week-2025-9
