AI + Context · Originally published
10xed My Income in 3 Years: How Context Training Works
Teach AI the job you actually have through goals, voice, standards, examples, and the world the work belongs to.
By Makeda Boehm
Ten times the income, inside a job
For nearly two decades, I've been in the workforce as an employee. I like working with interesting people on interesting problems.
I 10xed my income in three years, and it happened inside a job.
People ask me about that more than almost anything else I've done. So no, this isn't only a founder thing. It's a working-human thing.
I also see the limit clearly. When you're handling large clients or initiatives that touch thousands of people, it still takes a team. That isn't something one person does alone, even with AI employees.
That's why the professionals who get good at AI become rare. They don't only make themselves faster. They help the whole team understand the work, the technology, and the judgment required to use it well.
Building a business isn't the only valid path to more options. If you're in a role that pays you well, with people you like, working on problems that interest you, you are not behind.
Thriving in the season you're in is a strategy, not a consolation prize.
Context Training applies to founders, professionals, and teams because every useful AI system needs to understand the world where its work will be used.
Teach AI the job you actually have
Most people open a chat, ask a question cold, and wonder why the answer is technically fine but unusable without a lot of editing.
Pasting in a job description would be a real step up. But a job description is still only the beginning. It describes what the role was advertised as, not the job you actually have.
It doesn't name the person whose approval unblocks the work, the format your director prefers, the history behind a sensitive project, or the sentence you always cut before you hit send.
AI needs five kinds of context before it can do useful work in a role:
Goals
Not only the company's mission. What are you personally measured on this quarter? What do you want next? An AI that knows you're trying to move from doing the work to leading it will make different suggestions from one that thinks you only want tasks finished faster.
Voice
How do you actually write at work? Give it at least three things you really sent. Those examples teach more than a list of adjectives.
Standards
What does “good” mean on your team, specifically? Include the length people actually read, the level of detail leadership expects, and what gets a document returned for revision.
Examples
Show the strongest version of each recurring work product. One excellent weekly update teaches more than a paragraph describing what a weekly update should be.
The world the work belongs to
Who else is in the room? What is the team judged on? What constraints, relationships, and history shape the decision?
This is the part almost everybody leaves out. It often separates output you can use from output you have to rewrite.
Your judgment is the asset. It is also the thing nobody wrote down.
Two choices will save time. First, this is curation, not accumulation. Dumping every document you own into a chat can make the signal harder to find. Choose the strongest, most current example of each thing.
Second, keep the foundation in files you control, not buried inside one company's chat history. Roles change. Tools change. Employers change. A foundation you own can move with you.
One thing to do today
Find the last three things you wrote for work: an email, status update, proposal, Slack message, or another real example.
Paste them into the AI you use with this instruction:
“Study how I write: my tone, how I open and close, how direct I am, what I lead with, and what I avoid. Write a profile of my professional voice and standards, addressed as instructions to an assistant and under 400 words.”
Review the profile, correct what it missed, and save it as the first page of your role foundation.
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