6 Guidelines for AI Success in 2026

Your success with AI in 2026 won't depend on how many tools you know or how perfect your prompts are.

It will depend on how intentionally you choose to engage with AI.

Over the last year, I've noticed a trend. The ones who achieve immeasurable success with AI are not the ones with the most technical knowledge. They are the ones who approach it with curiosity and an open mind.

They understand AI is infrastructure. They optimize for flow instead of productivity. They have AI challenge their own thinking. And above all, they stay curious.

I've discerned my overall observations into 6 specific guidelines for success with AI in 2026. I've broken them down as follows.

Guideline #1: Treat AI as infrastructure

Become intentional with how you choose to engage AI.

It's still common practice to use it for one-off tasks. You use it when you think it'll help. It's still more of an afterthought in our process. I call this an 'AI-user' mindset.

I want you to adopt an 'AI-first' mindset.

An AI-first mindset means you consciously choose to embed AI into all your operations. It becomes part of your process, right from the beginning. AI becomes infrastructure.

When you treat AI as infrastructure, you stop asking "Should I use AI for this?" and start asking "How is AI part of how I do this?"

Guideline #2: Continuously re-evaluate your concept of time

What once took 3 weeks now takes 3 hours. What took 3 hours now takes 30 minutes. And with the next AI upgrade, it may only take 3 minutes.

This collapsing of time isn't entirely new. Mail became email became text. Cars redefined travel time. But the rate at which the time required for administrative and operational work is shrinking? This is new.

And it's going to keep shrinking throughout 2026.

Time is a human construct after all. Be open to your concept of time changing repeatedly.

Be curious about how your understanding of time changes. And be willing to expand your time container to accommodate these changes. What I mean by this is get accustomed to doing more and more in less and less time.

Once you believe that it's possible to create an asset that once took you five hours to now take you five minutes, you'll approach your work differently. You'll get to choose whether to take that reclaimed time and use it for something more meaningful, or stay in the comfort zone of the old timeline.

AI success in 2026 will require you to always be asking yourself: How could AI help me do this faster, better, easier, and with more joy?

Guideline #3: Start optimizing for flow

It's common practice to measure productivity by tasks completed or hours worked. People optimize for time.

But with AI, you'd be optimizing for the wrong thing.

With AI, you can instead optimize for something more profound: achieving flow state.

Dabbling with AI will give you a taste of what flow feels like. But when you work with AI regularly and fluidly throughout your day, you experience that rhythm repeatedly. You feel the momentum of ideas building, decisions clarifying, work moving forward without friction.

Once you've felt it enough times, you begin to embody flow state as a natural state of being. You start to recognize when you're in it. And you can start to map how to get there, and how to stay there longer.

It would be a shame if you simply focused on getting more done in less time. Instead, focus on achieving flow state faster, more consistently, and for longer periods of time.

AI success in 2026 will not solely be about getting more done faster. It will be about doing better work while feeling better doing it.

When you optimize for flow, all the other types of productivity you're seeking will follow.

Because the more time you spend in flow, the better quality your work. The better quality your work is, the more you enjoy creating it. You do more of what you're good at. And naturally, you get more done faster.

Guideline #4: Ask AI to challenge your perspective

AI (especially ChatGPT) will agree with you. It will validate your approach. It will affirm your biases.

This is the AI trap.

It feels good to be validated. You get a rush of dopamine when something tells you "that's a great idea", and then immediately maps out a strategy for execution.

But if you're taking AI's validation and running with it, you're missing its real value: Its ability to see patterns and perspectives invisible to the human eye. Its ability to show you a problem or a strategy from angles you hadn't considered.

AI won't give you this reality check by default. By default, it will keep you in a comfortable echo chamber.

And unless you know this is happening, you won't realize it. You'll allow AI to become your yes-man. You'll use it to get validation instead of using it to create better ideas.

At best, it's a missed opportunity. At worst, it's dangerous. It could go as far as jeopardizing your success in business.

After AI gives you an answer, ask it: "What am I missing?" Ask it to push back on your assumptions. Ask for the non-obvious answer. Make it challenge you.

AI success in 2026 will require you to get uncomfortable being constantly challenged in your thinking. But ultimately this will help you grow.

Guideline #5: Approach every AI interaction as an opportunity to learn

Every time you engage with AI, you're opening yourself up to learning something new.

You learn something about AI's capabilities, but also about your own.

You learn about AI's limitations, and also about your own.

Right now, we all teeter back and forth between two positions: student and orchestrator.

As a student, you're discovering what AI can do, where it falls short, and how you work best alongside it. As an orchestrator, you're directing AI with confidence, building systems, delegating tasks strategically.

The more time you spend as a student, the more opportunities you have to be orchestrator. But you won't feel comfortable orchestrating your own AI ecosystem until you've spent hours learning as a student.

2026 will be about moving back and forth between these two positions more fluidly. In constant search of an equilibrium. Where can you do more of what you're good at? Where can AI do more of what it's good at? And how can you both do less of what you're not good at?

The sweet spot is when you're doing the work AI can't do well, and AI is doing the work you don't do well.

AI success in 2026 will require you to stay curious. Treat every interaction as a chance to come closer to that equilibrium. To learn what works. To build a partnership with AI that serves to make you better at what you do.

Guideline #6: Identify and automate your most repetitive task

Look back at 2025. What task ate up too much of your time and mental bandwidth? Find it. Automate it with AI.

Or, if you've already done this, double down. Make the automation tighter. Make the process faster. Make it fully hands-off.

For me, the task I dreaded most as a copywriter back in 2020 was client call follow-ups. When I started using AI full-time at the end of 2024, this was the very first thing I automated.

I record every client call. Then immediately upload the transcript to ChatGPT. I use a saved prompt that pulls out key points discussed, what the client shared, suggestions I gave, and next steps. Within minutes, I send a professional recap.

That was 2025. In 2026, I'm doubling down.

Instead of manually dropping transcripts into ChatGPT and prompting it to get the information I need, I'm setting up a full automation. I'll drop the transcript into a folder, and the call recap will be automatically generated through AI automation.

I'll be offering this automation set-up to other service providers as well. Because if this task drained my time and energy, it's draining yours too.

AI success in 2026 will be about reclaiming your time for the work that matters. To do that, find your most repetitive task. Automate it. Then make that automation even better.

Putting It All Together

The underlying thread of these 6 guidelines is about encouraging you to approach your work differently.

When you treat AI as infrastructure, re-evaluate your concept of time, optimize for flow, openly encourage AI to challenge your perspectives, remain curious, and automate strategically—you're not just getting more done.

You're building a better relationship to work. One that's faster, smarter, and more enjoyable.

You'll have learned how to use AI to optimize for flow.

I'll be covering all 6 of these guidelines in depth at the AI Authority Power Hour on January 13th. This free 1-hour session is about positioning yourself for AI success in 2026. We'll be laying the foundation for how you can choose to work with AI this coming year.

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