A simple way to test an AI tool before you adopt it
A short, repeatable check for deciding whether a new AI tool deserves a place in your workflow, or just your bookmarks.
New AI tools show up every week, and most demos look impressive. The useful question isn’t whether a tool can do something clever once. It’s whether it makes a task you already do noticeably better, week after week.
Pick one real task
Choose something you actually do regularly, like summarising a performance report or drafting variations of ad copy. Testing on a made-up task tells you how the tool behaves in a demo, not in your work.
Set the baseline first
Time the task the way you do it today and note the quality of the result. Without a baseline, “it feels faster” is the only evidence you’ll have, and feelings are easy to fool.
Run it a few times, then decide
One good result proves very little. Run the same task a handful of times and check the outputs for mistakes you’d have to fix. If the corrections cost more than the time saved, the tool isn’t ready for that job.
Keep the tools that pass, drop the ones that don’t, and revisit in a few months. They improve quickly.