If AI feels like one more thing you have to learn, you’re not alone. Every week there’s a new model, a new feature, a new tool, and someone telling you you’re using it wrong. For a busy sports executive, that’s not exciting. It’s just another item on the mental to-do list.

I don’t think that’s the right way to approach it.

Start with the work that’s already on your plate

You don’t need to understand everything AI can do. Look at what’s already filling your week and ask a simpler question: where would this actually help?

If you regularly review long reports, prep for meetings, write updates, research partners, or turn conversations into next steps, start there. Not with the newest tool.

A hockey example

Say you run partnerships for a hockey team. Every Monday you review several active sponsorships, pull notes from different people, figure out what’s still outstanding, and prep for partner calls that week.

You could keep opening a blank chat and typing “summarize these notes.” That helps a little.

The bigger move is setting up a system that already knows which partners you manage, what each deal includes, what you look for in a weekly review, and how you want risks flagged. Then Monday prep just happens. AI stops being something you remember to use and becomes part of how you work.

That’s the difference.

Don’t create a separate “AI job”

If using AI means learning a platform, testing endless prompts, and figuring out what to do with the output, it defeats the purpose. The best use cases eventually feel like part of the job, not an extra activity next to it.

The goal isn’t “I need to find time to use AI on this.” It’s “this is just how I do this now.”

The setup matters more than people think

Most frustration comes from treating AI like a blank box every time. New chat, explain the situation, explain your role, explain what you want, fix the answer, repeat next week. That’s exhausting.

Give it context once – your role, your partners, what a good result looks like – and you stop rebuilding the relationship every time. That’s when it starts feeling less like another tool to manage and more like something that actually helps.

The short version: stop asking “what else should I learn about AI?” and start asking “what part of my week should be easier than it is?” That’s usually a much better place to start.