Plan: one move up one level
Practicum for Chapter 5, "Five Levels of New Usefulness." Version: 2026-06-11. Time: 25 minutes.
Do not try to change your whole career. Choose one task for the next 90 days.
1. The task
| Field | Answer |
|---|---|
| Task | |
| Current level | |
| Next level | |
| Why this task | |
| Which outcome should change |
2. Transition map
| Transition | First move | What to check in one month |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 1 | Hand machine work to the machine | The result arrives faster, but still goes through a human check |
| 1 to 2 | Stop delivering unchecked work | You have three to five criteria for what "correct" means |
| 2 to 3 | Build a workflow | You know the agent, the human, the data, and the handoff where things can break |
| 3 to 4 | Take responsibility | You have named the metric and the person who owns it |
| 4 to 5 | Turn the solution into a system | The result can be reproduced without its creator's daily involvement |
3. My move
| Time frame | What I will do |
|---|---|
| In the next seven days | |
| In 30 days, I will check | |
| In 90 days, the task should look like this |
4. Example moves
| Situation | Move up one level |
|---|---|
| A specialist uses AI to produce reports faster, but nobody reads them | Move from 1 to 2: agree on the criteria for "this report helped someone make a decision" |
| A manager collects status updates from ten sources by hand | Move from 2 to 3: an agent prepares a draft, and a human checks the handoffs and exceptions |
| A business owner receives a draft tax return from a service | Move from 1 to 2 or 4: decide who checks the risk and who is responsible to the tax authority |
| A team repeats the same manual check every week | Move from 4 to 5: turn the check into a checklist, template, or tool |
5. No polished imitation
The plan does not count if:
- you wrote a new prompt but did not change the checking criteria;
- you made the output faster but did not make the outcome clearer;
- you passed the risk to the model;
- you called it a system, but it does not work without you;
- you do not know how you will tell whether it is better in one month.
Final formula
One level. One task. One quarter.
One honest move per quarter gives you four moves a year. Few people climb this ladder faster.