Paint + Pipette

A blog on the art & science of creative action.

Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Try This Now to Build AI Muscles

You’re probably getting fat on AI content: bingeing podcasts, hoarding newsletter tips, saving Twitter threads... While it feels productive, all that consumption is just giving you a knowledge sugar high. And like any sugar high, it’ll crash—leaving you with exactly zero new capabilities.

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Guest User Guest User

Your AI Task Force is Missing the Point

Undisputed "Beyond the Prompt" fan favorite Jenny Nicholson drops by to share some insights from her adventures helping folks innovate with AI. Important lessons for any leader looking to unleash their teams with this transformative technology.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

AI’s Secret Weapon: Your Humanity

A funny thing happens when humans interact with AI—they start talking like robots. This is tragic. It's the very humanity that we often unwittingly withhold that guarantees lackluster output. To revolutionize your output with GenAI, revisit your own humanity.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Scrape Your Knees: Why Falling is Essential to AI Mastery

Most folks’ biggest mistake in collaborating with AI is expecting to get things perfect right out of the gate. But learning to use AI is just like any other motor skill: you’ve got to fall in order to create new neural pathways. Here, I share some insights on falling forward, productively.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Unlock AI's Potential: Your Journey from Fear to Fun

It’s been 21 months since my book Ideaflow was published, and unexpectedly — catalyzed by the launch of ChatGPT just one month later — the period that many authors described as a victory-lap book tour was transformed into a front-row education in a thrilling new world, reshaping not just how I work, but how I think.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Beware Prompt-Hoarding

If you are to succeed in your quest to realize the gains promised by GenAI enthusiasts, you must regard every quick and easy prompt pack with skepticism. “The Ultimate Prompt Guide” promises to bestow a wizard-summoning ability with a blue-pill-like ease. No, you will not know Kung Fu after downloading that prompt pack.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Declare an AI Recess

One critical reason folks in organizations aren’t imagining radical new applications of GenAI is, their imaginations aren’t stimulated. My recommendation might fly in the face of convention, but it’s been demonstrated highly effective in both this AI-moment and in times past.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

If AI Hasn't Made You Giggle, You're Not Pushing Hard Enough

For all the existential angst spilled regarding AI on the news, there's one danger I haven't heard get much attention. It's not the threat of sentient machines or the loss of jobs—it's the risk of AI disappointing us, not because of its limitations, but because of our own.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Practice in Community

Want to accelerate your pace of learning? Join a community of practice. We learn much more amongst fellow-learners eager to share insights from experiments conducted in radically different contexts.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Commit An Epiphany

Inside every single human being lies the potential to discover hence-unknown possibilities, to have an epiphany. My mission in life is to teach others the tools that turn that seemingly-magical moment into a methodical, repeatable reality.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Reflect on Experiments

Steve Martin’s reflection routine as a fledgling magician gives a masterclass in learning through experimentation: if you don’t reflect, you can’t connect the dots in unexpected ways.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Set Boundaries

John Cleese argues convincingly that, while we can’t guarantee that creativity will yield to our invitations, yet blocking time and space for it to emerge is essential.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Be Vulnerable

Jake Karls, co-founder of Mid Day Squares, flips the “perfectionist” script. Here he shares his unexpected formula for crafting deeply engaged fans.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Prioritize Learning

The single-most important decision I make weekly is to shed the “teacher’s cap” and put on the student’s. The only way to continue to inspire is to seek inspiration, myself.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Endure Rejection

A recurring theme on the road to creative mastery is how we (wrongly) perceive those who are successful as having never struggled. The truth is, many endured rejection.

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Jeremy Utley Jeremy Utley

Don’t Multi-Task

Stanford Professor Clifford Nass studied hundreds of students to explore what distinguished self-proclaimed “multitaskers” from the rest of us. His conclusions, and their implications, won’t surprise you.

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