VivaSync

• Tony Dong works three hours a day, seven days a week, and earns six-figures annually.
• He pays for tools like GPT-4 and Grammarly, which boost his efficiency.
• He's also preparing for a future in which AI could replace writers like himself.

In 2022, Vancouver-based freelance writer Tony Dong made CA$149,000 working about 30 hours per week. That's about $115,000 using the Bank of Canada's average 2022 exchange rate for USD, which was 1.30.

While it was a strong financial year, considering he'd only been freelancing since March 2022 when he quit his day job, he felt like he was hitting an earning cap.

"I was kind of stuck, and the choice was between working more hours and billing more or working more efficiently," the financial writer told Business Insider.

He didn't want to log more hours — meaning, he had to figure out how to produce more articles in the same amount of time.

Thanks to GPT-4 and other tools, Dong managed to increase his income by more than 50% in 2023 — he's on track to earn CA$238,000 (about $180,000) as of December 2023 — while working fewer hours. Insider verified his 2022 and 2023 income by looking at income summaries prepared by his accountant.

The 27-year-old works three hours a day, seven days a week, he said: "I work in the morning — there's usually two hours of non-stop writing and then another hour of miscellaneous work, anything from working on revisions my editor sent back or invoicing or working on client acquisition — and I'm done by noon."

Dong, who mainly covers exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and writes for publications like U.S. News & World Report, USA Today, and TheStreet, finds that strategies like turning off notifications and not checking email while writing boosts his productivity. Plus, he does other seemingly simple things like prioritizing sleep, eating well, and exercising consistently to get the most out of his work hours.

But he also uses three specific tools to do his job better and work more efficiently.

GPT-4

GPT-4 is OpenAI's most advanced system to date. Dong describes it as "Google on steroids" and he uses it during the early phases of his writing process to generate content outlines and consolidate research.

For example, say he's assigned an article on electric vehicle ETFs.

He'll start by asking GPT-4: "Tell me some of the most notable things going on in the EV space as of today," explained Dong, who likes to provide highly specific prompts. "If you enter that into Google you won't really get anything because Google isn't programmed to answer questions like that. GPT-4 is able to give me actual coherent sentence responses to a query like this."

It'll also generate links to its sources, so Dong can easily factcheck, he noted. Then, he'll ask for an outline with titles and subheads.

"Once that is done, I take over fully," said Dong, who cautions against using the tool to actually write articles. "It's still unable to write in a very analytical way in a tone that my readers can understand but, honestly, I think it's going to get there in a few years."

His process looks very similar to how it did in 2022 — he was also using AI tools last year. However, the major difference is that "GPT-4 has gotten much more advanced," he said.

Dong started using GPT-4 right after it was released, in March 2023, and says it's well worth the $20 monthly fee, a cost he writes off on his taxes.

"GPT-3.5 is what's available to everybody commercially. It's completely free to use and is great for everyday tasks," he explained, while GPT-4 is more for in-depth analysis. "If you're interested in making generative AI part of your job and help you with automation it's worth the $20 a month for GPT-4."

Grammarly

Dong also uses Grammarly, an online writing assistant, to help with tone and sentence structure.

"I save my editors a lot of time by feeding articles into Grammarly," he said. At the end of the day, "your job as a writer is to make the editor's job as easy as possible."

It does more than check your grammar, punctuation, and spelling, he added: "It suggests better-flowing sentence structures."

It's helped him write more concisely and with a stronger voice. He compares it to having your own speech writer that can correct your tone.

While anyone can sign up to use Grammarly for free, for Dong, it's worth paying $12 a month for the premium version.

Dragon Professional

Another tool that Dong pays for is a speech-recognition software called Dragon Professional. Instead of typing out his articles, he can speak into a microphone and the program transcribes his words into a document.

"I'm a fast talker, so as I talk, it's basically stream of consciousness on paper," he explained. "It picks up very well and understands sentence structure. And then I run it through Grammarly."

It was a one-time cost for Dong (Dragon Professional starts at $500). There are free options out there, but you get what you pay for (or don't). Microsoft Word, for example, has built-in speech recognition, "but it's not very good," he said. With Dragon, "you don't get the same errors," which makes the price tag worth it for him.

Setting himself up for a future in which AI could replace writers

Dong is preparing for a future in which AI can do exactly what he does — write clear, concise articles — by focusing on what it can't do.

"If you're a writer, one day if generative AI does become good enough to straight up replace you, what it can't replace is your personal brand," he said. "I am banking on the fact that people aren't reading my writing because they really like it. I'm hoping that they do, but I'm also hoping that they read it because they're used to my style, they like my personal insights, and there's a bit of familiarity and brand-name recognition of my personal byline."

He's making an effort to participate in webinars or make appearances on podcasts to build his brand. He has his first paid speaking gig in early 2024, he said, and is looking to land more of those for brand recognition but also to diversify his income.

Plus, Dong is always looking for more efficiency tools, he said: "I'm hitting another cap on my earnings. I can't get past the CA$23,000 to CA$24,000-a-month hurdle without burning myself out. And with inflation guaranteed to increase slowly over the long-term, if I stagnate here, I could be in a world of hurt a decade down the line, so I do need to find a way to remain resilient."

Watch: A New York Times bestselling author reveals how mastering typing has made him super productive

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