AI isn't just for the people at the top

Hi, I'm Alexandros Reïzos.

I've always been a tech geek. As a kid I'd open up TVs, computers and other people's phones, and end up being the one who fixed them: I need to understand how things work. Over the years that obsession moved to processes, so much that it sometimes pulled me away from my own job. There's a reason for that, and it has a name, but that story deserves its own post.

I've spent more than 15 years in digital marketing, between London and Barcelona, at startups, SaaS and tech companies, B2B and B2C. Now, thanks to AI, technology, processes and simplification finally fit together.

We all know it. And a lot of us are scared

Nobody needs convincing that AI matters. What you feel in the air is something else: fear. Fear of being left behind, of your job no longer making sense, and that once again the real winners will be the usual ones: big tech, big companies, the people at the top.

I'm not going to tell you that fear is baseless. The big players are going to make a lot of money from this. But that's only half the story, and it's not the half I care about most.

The other half: this is for you too

For the first time, a technology this powerful is within anyone's reach. You don't need a team of developers or a big budget. Any professional or company can now do things that, until very recently, seemed reserved for a select few.

A simple example: the time we lose to repetitive tasks. Two studies suggest it's far more than we think:

• In a Smartsheet survey¹, over 40% of workers spend at least a quarter of their week on manual, repetitive tasks, and nearly 6 in 10 believe they could save 6 or more hours a week by automating them.
• Asana's Anatomy of Work Index², covering more than 13,000 workers in seven countries, found we spend 60% of our time on "work about work": chasing status updates, switching between apps, redoing what someone else already did.

Even if it were only five hours a week, that's about 230 hours a year: almost six full working weeks, per person. And today you can win back much of that time with tools that cost little or nothing.

And that's just the beginning. The really exciting part is what you do with that time, and with all the doors that open.

What makes the difference is who jumps in

This wave won't wait for anyone. But it isn't reserved for anyone either. The difference won't be who you are or where you work, but your willingness to learn and experiment. And the sooner you start, the bigger your head start.

That's why pleko exists (in Ancient Greek, it means "to weave"). And that's why I'm starting this space.

What's coming

Here I'll write about:

• How AI is changing the way we work and relate to each other.
• What jobs will look like a few years from now, and how to get ready to make the most of it.
• Real experiments: what I try, what works and what doesn't.
• Concrete ideas and tools so people and companies can make the most of AI, starting today.

No hype, and no trying to sell you anything. Just what I'm learning, explained as clearly as I can.

This is only the beginning. And it's not just for the people at the top.

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Sources

1. Smartsheet, "Automation in the Workplace", 2017.
2. Asana, "Anatomy of Work Index 2021", Sapio Research survey of 13,123 workers, 2021.