Take Up AI Like a Hobby. Your Career Will Thank You.
By Mitchell Schuckman, PCC | Founder, The Schuckman Group
A few months ago I gave a presentation at PwC New York. One of the things I said was that every professional services person in the room should make AI a personal hobby. Something you pick up on your own, out of curiosity, with no one grading you.
I expected a polite nod and for everyone to move on. What I got instead were several people pulling me aside to say that framing had genuinely resonated. That surprised me. I assumed most everyone was already playing around with it. I overestimated. Many people approach AI cautiously, waiting to feel less intimidated before they start. That's exactly backwards.
The Analogy That Actually Fits
Most people don't pick up the guitar to play Carnegie Hall. They pick it up because they have an interest, because it's satisfying to get a little better each week, because it gives them a new way to appreciate music they already love. Over time, something changes. The instrument stops feeling foreign. You understand what's hard and what isn't. You can hear it differently, and appreciate what real skill looks like.
That's what I'm asking of AI. Fluency in the way a hobbyist gets fluent. By being curious, experimenting, and slowly gaining confidence.
I currently use all four primary AI tools: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot. I play with them, compare them, contrast them. I listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos, read subreddits, and ask the AI itself how to use it better. None of that makes me a technology person. I'm genuinely not. But it makes me someone who isn't rattled by the conversation, and in professional services right now, that matters more than people realize.
The Real Edge Isn't Technical
Here's something that has surprised me. AI doesn't reward technical fluency nearly as much as it rewards knowing what you want, thinking strategically, and knowing how to communicate well.
When I led the pursuit team at PwC, I was fortunate to be able to visualize a clear picture of the end product before we started. I could see the entire proposal, the executive summary, the presentation deck in my mind before a single word was written. My job was to find the writers and designers who could build what I had in my head. Over the years I found my favorites, the ones who could take a rough description and return something close to the vision, and I leaned on them hard. If any of them are reading this, they know who they are, and they're probably smiling.
That ability to visualize the end state turns out to be exactly what AI rewards. But it goes beyond prompting. The real leverage comes from bringing clear vision and strategic thinking to the collaboration: your knowledge of the client, your instincts about what it takes to win, the stories, the data, the context, the competitive angles. Communicate it clearly to AI, and AI does the heavy lifting. The winning proposals my team and I would take days to create, I can now develop in hours.
And here's the bonus. Getting sharp at this, learning to describe what you want and giving direction that creates impact, makes you better at working with the people around you too. Turns out, learning to talk to a machine makes you better at talking to people.
What You're Actually Building
The goal isn't to become the most AI-savvy person in the room. It's to not get rattled when technology evolves and business changes. And today, everything is changing rapidly.
In professional services, the people who adapt best won't be the most technically sophisticated. They'll be the ones who started early and stayed curious. Taking AI up as a hobby is how you stay in that group. You learn what the tool is good at and what it isn't, on your own schedule, without pressure, with your own work as your test case.
If you're already there, go deeper. Try new tools. Compare platforms. Find someone doing the same and compare notes.
Start Somewhere. Start Now.
Pick one thing you do every week and try it with AI. One document. One recurring task. Get better at describing what you want and thinking about the direction you can give AI to get you there. Somewhere along the way it stops feeling awkward.
The professionals who figure this out on their own terms, out of curiosity rather than necessity, are going to have a real edge.
Not because they became experts. Because they got comfortable.