How I 3x'd my output without doubling my hours

I ran two 2-day onsites this month, solo.

Mar 13, 2026

We talk a lot about how AI makes us faster. But, most of what I see out there is theoretical. A lot of people talking about the potential of AI. Not a lot of people showing you what it actually looks like in practice. I’m semi guilty of this, too.

So let’s get tangible.

Over the past month, I delivered two intensive workshops for my team. I have another one coming up. Each one required a custom plan, original materials, facilitation guides, material preparation, and real-time adaptation between days.

I’ve done many of these in my career. They’ve taken extensive planning and support.

This time: I did all of it by myself. And I think I did it really well.

When I stepped back and looked at what made these workshops work, I realized the answer was two very different things.

The first is what AI helped me do: how it let me operate at a capacity I didn’t think was possible for one person.
The second is what AI could never do for me: the facilitation craft I’ve been building for years that made the actual time in the room productive.

AI CANNOT DO IT ALL. But you do need it to be a better facilitator.

What AI helped me do

A year ago, running even one well-produced two-day workshop solo would have buried me. Creating materials from scratch, running it, processing everything that happened on day one, and then rebuilding materials for day two, overnight, while still having energy to run it? Daunting stuff.

So here’s how I did it by myself with an AI tech stack.

The Stack: Claude + Granola

I primarily used two tools: Claude and Granola. I also used Wispr to dictate. That’s it.

To give you a sense of what changed, here’s what producing a single two-day workshop used to look like for me:

Building the agenda and session plan from scratch: 2-3 hours.
Creating facilitation guides, handouts, and printed materials: another 3-4 hours.
Synthesizing day one and rebuilding materials for day two: another 2-3 hours, partly because I’d be deciphering sticky notes in other people’s handwriting.
Then post-workshop summary and action items: another 2-3 hours.

That’s 10-13 hours of logistics work per workshop before you count the time in the room. With my AI stack, each of those steps takes less than an hour including creation and editing.

The whole thing comes in under 4 hours.

That’s 10-13 hours, down to 4 hours.

How I did it

Granola became my starting point. Before I built a single agenda, I used Granola to record the conversations that shaped the vision for each workshop. Using recorded meetings enabled me to connect the dots between disparate conversations, to go back and pull out the threads, and put together a clear vision for each workshop.

Claude became my planning partner. Once I had the vision and the goals, I brought everything into Claude Cowork to produce material output. Claude helped me move at a pace I’ve never experienced. Not because it did the thinking for me, but because it was able to collate all my raw materials and package everything I’d spoken out loud into a clear plan.

Then here’s what would happen every day:

I used Granola to record every single session.
Each night, I’d take everything from the day (the Granola recordings, my handwritten notes1, the observations I jotted down) and feed it back into Claude.
Then I’d create a package: a summary of what happened to adapt materials for the next day.
Every single morning, I walked into the room with a fresh facilitation guide, updated handouts2, and a plan that reflected what actually happened the day before.

The time reduction was not a marginal improvement. It was a fundamentally different way of operating.

The Bonus: I Got to Participate

Here’s the thing about facilitation: it’s really hard to facilitate AND participate. You’re managing the room, watching the clock, reading body language, adjusting on the fly. There’s very little space left to actually be in it.

This setup changed that for me. Because the logistics were handled so efficiently, I could be more present. I could contribute my own perspective instead of just holding space for everyone else’s.

All in all, I ran two really well-produced, well-run two-day workshops by myself. No co-facilitator, no assistant, no production team. Just me, Claude, Granola, and a printer. And I have a third one on deck.

But here’s the thing.

The tools got me to the room prepared. But they didn’t make me good once I was in it.

That’s something AI could never do…

What AI could never do for me

AI can make a lot of things easier but it can not emulate or teach me how to be a better facilitator.

The craft of facilitation, the actual skill of being in a room with people and holding space is (still) entirely human.

And it took me years to build.

There’s no single thing that made me a better facilitator. It was a collection of experiences that shaped how I do it well.

Teaching at Cornell Tech

A few years ago, I taught product management at Cornell Tech for a year. At the time, I thought I was there to teach students.

[insert cliche lesson] —> Turns out, they taught me just as much.

Standing in front of a room of opinionated graduate students forces you to be clear. You can’t hide behind slides. If your explanation doesn’t land, forty pairs of eyes will tell you immediately. Teaching gave me my foundational facilitation reps. Those reps showed up in every single one of those workshops.

Coaching: Trusting the Container

My coaching practice changed me in ways I didn’t expect. I got into coaching because I loved the work. Not to build a business, but because something about holding space for someone else’s growth lit me up. But the deeper lesson from coaching wasn’t about asking good questions. It was about trust.

In coaching, you learn to trust the container. You’re not there to be smart or impressive or to prove your value. You’re there to serve the person in front of you. And that means getting your ego completely out of the way.

That mindset shift was massive for facilitation. When I stopped needing my clients to validate me, , everything changed. My clients got richer conversations and I saw better outcomes across the board.

Improv: The Secret Weapon

And then there’s improv. I started taking improv classes a couple of years ago and I didn’t expect it to fundamentally rewire how I show up… everywhere.

But it did.

Improv teaches you to listen. Like, actually listen.3 It teaches you to build on what someone says instead of redirecting to your agenda. “Yes, and” is wildly underrated in professional settings. When a participant says something unexpected in a workshop, my improv brain kicks in and I can roll with it. Some of the best moments in these workshops came from unscripted detours that I had the instinct to follow rather than squash.

Improv also taught me to be comfortable with silence. To not rush in and fill every gap. That’s harder than it sounds, trust me.

The Whole Picture

Teaching gave me reps. Coaching taught me to trust the space. Improv gave me confidence. Claude and Granola gave me capacity.

None of these things alone would have been enough. But layered together? They made me the kind of facilitator who could run three two-day workshops in a month and feel like each one was genuinely great.

AI tripled my efficiency. That’s real. But it only mattered because I had spent years building the skills that no tool can replicate: facilitation.

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