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Use Human-Centered Strategies & AI to Boost Your Value
No doubt we have to earn more at this time
A true story right after the Asian crisis:
I learned the importance of having a proactive mindset while collecting a payment from a client in . What he said was an eye-opener.
Walang pambayad ang mga empleyado kapag July, kasi kaka-tuition lang para sa mga estudyante, at ang bonus ay sa Pasko pa.
In 2025, as economic and environmental shifts challenge Filipino households, a proactive mindset that leverages technology and AI is crucial for generating multiple income streams to prevent the scenario described above. Lessons from the Asian crisis of , and past 'financially dry months' (beginning July with the typhoon season) highlight the enduring importance of preparedness and adaptability [1][2].
Earning with human-centered strategies and AI
There is a temptation to add more part-time jobs and work harder, but the smartest path in the AI era isn’t about doing more — it’s about doing it with:
- purpose,
- balance,
- and leverage.
Filipinos are known for their resilience - a human skill recognized in AI industry circles as irreplaceable. Add
- resilience to a purpose-driven attitude,
- with love for God and family to balance,
- and AI to leverage,
and more Filipino MSMEs and AI-powered professionals can earn and make the nation achieve upper middle-income status before the end of the decade. This is "#TrainingForNationBuilding" by the DTI's PTTC-GMEA in the works [3][4].
Human skills, Energy management, Polywork, & AI
This blog post introduces a human-centered framework combining:
- Irreplaceable human skills [5]
- Energy management (Loehr & Schwartz) [6]
- Polyworking [7]
- and AI as your leverage and amplifier, not replacement [8]
Irreplaceable human skills for the AI Era [9]
Besides resilience, 7 high-impact skills are still hard to automate. Skills such as:
- empathy,
- strategic decision-making,
- adaptability,
- trust-building
- emotional intelligence
- ethical judgment
- brand storytelling
These high-impact skills include:
Skills for AI Interpretation and Contextualization
- Strategic decision-making helps synthesize AI responses with long-term goals and the human context in mind
- Adaptability is a skill to let you evolve in your use of AI tools so that you can shift strategy as AI technology changes with its rapid advancements
- Ethical judgment is a skill that ensures your responsible use of AI aligns with human values, fairness, and social impact
- Emotional intelligence is a skill that helps you sense when decisions based on some AI-generated data conflict with team morale or the actual human needs of your team
Skills for Collaborative and Entrepreneurial Roles
- Empathy is that skill that builds client and MSME team trust; it enables better communication and conflict resolution (considering smooth interpersonal relationships important in Filipino culture)
- Trust-building skills turn your clients into future sales relationships and/or make your team members into repeat collaborators for future tasks (both essential in remote and freelance setups)
- Brand storytelling can add stronger narrative power that AI still cannot match because of nuance and contextual cues only inside members of a small business and its customers can understand; it is a skill vital for marketing, sales pitches, and personal brand portfolios
How does Energy Management fit in? (Loehr & Schwartz Study)
Energy management has an advantage over time management. Time is finite and is gone when spent. But human energy is renewable when managed well. With a human-centered skills strategy, you can manage your energy well and function to perform at your best. It involves learning to alternate between stress (effort) and recovery (rest) - an oscillation concept developed by Loehr & Schwartz. When you manage stress and recovery well, you can use your peak hours for high-value tasks. And high-value tasks are the ones that bring in the more valuable income streams [10].
How can you apply energy management in your daily work?
- Structure your day more around energy levels, not just time
- Use rest and recovery to fuel creativity and problem-solving
- Actively seek to minimize emotional and cognitive cost by aligning tasks with energy levels
Result: You get more done with more reserves of physical energy, positive emotional energy, and focused cognitive energy. You also produce spiritual energy from activities that align with your values and balance your work and life.
How does Polywork fit in
Polywork, engaging in multiple overlapping roles or income streams from flexible project-based work, is rising due to economic necessity, enabling individuals to monetize diverse skills across industries and clients. This model allows for the creation of complementary roles that mitigate income risk, build resilience, and expand professional exposure to better-paying opportunities [11].
How can you leverage AI in Polywork?
- You can speed up delivering your professional or business services in writing, coding, or research
- You can explore more AI responses from a diverse selection of job-related fields without deep expertise and apply it to your creative or analytical tasks
- You can use suggestions on energy management to choose what fits your professional life
- You can avoid overstacking yourself with work by applying more automated tasks and preventing burnout
Human skills, energy management, polyworking, & AI in combo
When human skill is combined with smart energy management in polywork that leverages AI capabilities, you:
- Add valuable and complementary roles that produce income streams
- Protect your health and build necessary reserves of energy
- and you future-proof your career with financial resilience to set up a contingency fund [12]
Link all together to boost your value & add income streams
- Human insight + AI drafting = high-value multimodal content
- Human direction + AI analysis = smarter ethical decisions on accurate data
- Human relationship + AI support = higher trust and faster CRM delivery
Harness the power of human skills, smart energy management, and AI-driven polywork to significantly boost your value and unlock diverse income streams. This strategic approach empowers you to gain complementary roles, protect your well-being, build energy reserves, and responsibly future-proof your career in the evolving digital landscape.
GEN AI image of five working professionals working online as a team
