A Plain Memo
If you think AI power users are smarter, watch this — Four habits separate them, all learnable
If you've watched someone get something brilliant out of an AI tool while you got back eight hundred words of corporate sludge, the reflex thought is that they're smarter than you. The evidence says they're not.
Two large studies — OpenAI's enterprise data on 1 million+ business customers and Microsoft's survey of 31,000 workers across 31 countries — converge on the same finding: what separates AI power users from everyone else isn't intelligence, technical skill, or a prompt-engineering trick you missed. It's four learnable behaviors. This memo walks through what they are, why the gap compounds week over week, and the five-second moment that tells you which side of it you're on.
ℹ️ AI voice disclosure: This episode uses an AI-generated voice (ElevenLabs). The host is a pseudonymous byline persona (Reid Conlin).
In this memo
Sources
- OpenAI, *The State of Enterprise AI 2025*:
- Microsoft + LinkedIn, *Work Trend Index 2024*:
- Brynjolfsson, Li & Raymond, *Generative AI at Work* (QJE 2025):
- METR, *Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Developer Productivity* (2025):
- BCG, *AI at Work 2025: Momentum Builds, but Gaps Remain*:
- Google + Ipsos *AI Fluency* study (via Fortune, Feb 2026):