My Aha! Moment with AI

Confessions of Digital Project Manager in 2025

I’ve always considered myself a bit of a techie — an eager early adopter of cool gadgets, note-taking apps, task-tracking tools, and digital gizmos.

However, since the release of AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022, I have been more of a skeptical observer. Sure, curiosity led me to play around with ChatGPT and I was duly impressed with the magical outpouring of coherent text that made me wonder if I’d ever need to write anything myself ever again. But to me, the LLM’s chatbot interface felt like the more intelligent, older sibling to the SmarterChild bot from my AIM days. A super powerful plaything. Something to marvel at, not yet ready to change the way I interact with the web or impact my day-to-day approach to work. (And frankly, I had an air of snobbish superiority that I was a college student back when I had to do my own research in the library stacks, craft an essay’s outline, and write the darn thing myself.) By the end of 2024, I knew that others were using AI tools to benefit their “productivity” but believed that I was too much of a layman to benefit myself.

All the while, the AI revolution continued apace. The digital tools I use daily began incorporating AI features that at first feel clunky, sometimes useful, but never quite fulfilling that “revolutionary” promise. These first-generation AI features felt like fluffy investor-pleasers meant to demonstrate that “Company A is taking AI seriously.” I, Digital Project Manager, never quite figured out how any of the tools/features/integrations/gizmos could be incorporated into my work day as a productivity enhancement. Cool, Gemini can draft an email response… like, same – that will take me 2.5 seconds and not cost $5K in carbon emissions. So, I figured I’ll sit back and wait for this all to continue developing.

AI Tools at Viget

Meanwhile at Viget, we have kept a keen eye on AI developments and asked how we can complement our work with the best AI tools available. Our #ai-update and #ai-share channels in Slack are a repository of useful articles on prompt-writing, threads on the latest model releases from this or that AI company, and (as ever) the silly ways that normies on the internet are generating funny images and videos for our collective amusement.

And it’s not just been talk. Viget convened a cross-disciplinary AI Working Group to define official company policies around AI usage, evaluate new tools, and identify opportunities for incorporating AI workflows into our own processes. One of those opportunities proved to be one of the best policy developments in my career so far: the new AI stipend that Viget debuted at the start of the year. We each receive $20 a month to subscribe to an approved (and growing) list of AI tools. This changed my mindset. No longer a plaything, AI tools are a work-sanctioned experiment. The question became: what do I subscribe to?

My Aha Moment with AI Tools: Perplexity

By Q1 2025, the number of useful AI tools was almost mind-numbing. I began using the free version of many PM-related tools. For instance, I considered subscribing to a tool called Fathom, which can “join” my meetings, transcribe the entire conversation, create the official Meeting Notes, generate action items, and more. Fathom feels like having a junior PM on the call, releasing me to guide the conversation and keep the agenda on track. Extremely useful and genuinely impressive. But I did not subscribe to Fathom.

I finally had my “aha” moment with AI when I was introduced to Perplexity by a fellow project manager, Maria Taborda (my work wife). In Perplexity’s own words:

“Perplexity AI is an advanced AI-powered answer engine and search platform designed to provide accurate, trusted, and real-time answers to any question you ask. Unlike traditional search engines that return a list of links, Perplexity delivers direct, concise responses, complete with citations to reputable sources, making it easy for users to verify information or explore topics further.”

Maria showed me an example of how she prompted Perplexity to search the depths of Akeneo documentation and create a step-by-step guide for the niche task she had to perform. Normally, wading through an enterprise software tool’s Documentation Center (a name that should live in a dystopian project management fever dream) is a tedious task that often leads to half-answers and the need for another coffee. But in a flash, Perplexity searched 23 live webpages, including official Akeneo documentation and other third-party nerd forums, understood the exact process that needed explanation, and compiled accurate step-by-step guidance that revealed itself, word by word, like the secret answer to your life’s most intractable problem. Aha!!! Now I could see how web-search-first AI products could make my work easier, faster, and more efficient. Perplexity is not a junior PM note-taker; it’s my PhD sidekick, ready to project-manage the living daylight out of any problem that needs a solution. The power of Perplexity is amazing, but it is the nature of the product that made me go, “Ahhhh, I see now.”

Gemini Sucks: Product Design Still Matters

For the longest time, I conceived of AI tools as a supplement to all of the other digital tools that we use in our day-to-day work. I couldn’t figure out where in the toolbox an AI should live. Not writing emails, not showing me where that file lives in Drive, not as a half-baked note-taker.

The “aha” was realizing that Perplexity was a replacement, not a supplement. For my entire digital life, Google has been my go-to website for searching on the internet. Because duh, Google is my lyf3. It’s the doorway to the internet. But suddenly it feels like an artifact in 2025. I remember the realization in February: Aha! — anytime I have the instinct to search something on Google, replace the search with a prompt on Perplexity. And besides, the slow rollout of Gemini features in Google Search has felt intrusive, mentally cluttering, and visually offensive. All the easier to switch to an elegant AI web-search product built as such.

Perplexity is a visually coherent search-focused AI product based on the now-familiar wizardry of generative AI’s unfurling of text that reveals Internet truths otherwise hidden behind each link listed on a traditional Google Search Results page. No more clicking hyperlinks and perusing articles to not find exactly what you’re looking for. Bing bop boom! Perplexity analyzes, synthesizes, cites, and solves. And since it’s an AI-first web search tool, it is a coherently designed product that is usable and easy to like.

Go Forth and Exploreth

I finally found the tool that could be easily integrated into my workflow and make me more productive. And now I’m hungry to experiment with more AI tools – to see how this or that company’s latest model or product or buzzy feature could make me more efficient, productive, and effective. But also, to see how the role, responsibilities, duties, and day-to-day tasks of a project manager will adapt to these powerful tools. Will I ever take my own meeting notes again? Will I have to write my own follow-up emails? Does competency in my role now require effective prompt writing? 

What I know for certain: the digital tools we use may change, but our standards for delivering the highest quality work for clients will not. These tools must be guided with the digital project expertise that I as a Project Manager have honed across project types throughout my career.

But wow, this is a wild frontier. What a time to be alive!