Journey With AI: GAIN – GAP – GET

1. My Journey With AI

I got into AI because a friend told me to, yo know 😂

It was 2023, my gap year.

I was having dinner with my closest crew friends I have known for over 20 years.

One of them teaches AI at university, has a PhD in data.

I told them: ” I am on my own now. I am in charge. The wheel is in my hands. Any idea or advice?“

She looked at me and said: “Tommy, you need to learn AI. Things are about to change fast.”

That conversation changed my direction.

2. THE GAIN

Honestly, it was a rough start. The 2023 tech just was not there yet.

I used chatgpt & other AI tools for video productions.

The videos I produced barely scraped 10k views (10x lower than the my normal work), & the engagement was just terrible.

It was so silent indeed.

From my experience in agency & corporate, that if I would build something for the long haul, there were no shortcuts.

A skill that mattered. A foundation that mattered. That’s the matter (Tommy Nguyen)

If AI becomes a crutch before I build my own muscle, I lose the foundation.

Losing that is not a price I would take.

So 2024 was my training year:

• That year, I used AI mainly for learning & research.
• For actual writing, I went manual. Over 200 short-form copies on TikTok, written by hand, one by one.
• Practicing structure, tone, rhythm.
• Building the skill the slow way.

It was not until 2025, when my manual writing was pulling in solid organic results of 4 to 5 million views a year.

That I finally integrated AI back into my actual production pipeline.

The difference was night and day.

It came with practice & personally I like it, even if the trade-off is losing the competition for views initially.

3. THE GAP

Every magic has a dark side, even with AI.

Faster execution means more tasks pile up. When you move faster, more tasks show up.

More-tasks mean more-iterations.

My iteration cycles jumped to 2x-3x what they were during corporate days.

I was doing more, learning more, & of course burning out more.

It does sound illogical but it is true.

The speed that felt like a superpower started feeling like a treadmill.

The iteration cycles became so aggressive that they outpaced my busiest days in corporate life, leading straight to burnout technically.

And I noticed something else across my industry. People started trusting AI outputs way too quickly.

I saw some tiktok or social media post about my job or industry and think:

“This problem is not that simple. It is easier said than done”

Later I found the term for it: the Productivity Perception Gap.

AI makes you feel like a problem is handled.

The truth is that if neither you nor the AI have lived through that problem, you cannot see the hidden variables.

So you ship a solution, and then you spend twice the time fixing what you missed.

The real lesson: speed without judgment creates more work, not less.

3. THE GET

Here are 3 things I want you to take away from my experience (after agency, corporate & with SME/startup):

• First, build your core skills before leaning on tools. Imagine one day AI are not there, the boosters are not available for you, what should you do?
• Second, do not fall for the illusion of solved problems. You might think the job is done, but you will end up creating a bigger mess to clean up later.
• Third, protect your energy. AI tools don’t have feeling but you do. It doesn’t feel tired but you will. So, please rest well.

TOMMY nguyen (H.Thinh)