The mindset shift
Most people use AI as a magic answer machine. That\'s the least valuable way to use it. The highest-leverage move is using AI as a first-draft machine — AI writes the 6/10 version, you polish it to 9/10 in a quarter of the time it would have taken to write from scratch.
Your new workflow for anything written: AI drafts → you edit → done. Not "AI writes, I publish" (dangerous). Not "I write from scratch" (slow). The middle path.
Task 1: Emails
Paste this into ChatGPT:
"Draft a reply to this email. Tone: professional, warm, 80-120 words. I want to [what you want]."
Then paste the email.
20 seconds later, you have a draft. Edit in 30 seconds. Send. Total: 50 seconds for what used to take 5 minutes.
Task 2: Meeting summaries
Option A — if the meeting was recorded/transcribed: paste the transcript to Claude and ask for "a 150-word summary with decisions, action items, and owners."
Option B — if you took rough notes: paste them to Claude and ask the same. Even messy bullet-point notes become clean summaries.
Task 3: Status updates
Dreaded weekly status report? Paste a brain-dump of everything you did this week, then prompt: "Turn this into a professional weekly status report with sections for: Completed, In Progress, Blockers, Next Week. 200 words max."
Task 4: Research summaries
Use Perplexity for research with citations. For a topic you need to understand quickly:
"Give me a 500-word briefing on [topic]. Include key people, recent developments, and 3 sources I should read for more depth."
In 45 seconds you have what would have taken 30 minutes of Googling.
Task 5: Spreadsheets
ChatGPT and Claude both understand Excel/Google Sheets formulas. Paste your data structure and ask for a formula.
Example: "I have a column A with dates and column B with sales amounts. Give me a formula that sums sales only for the current month."
They\'ll give you `=SUMIFS(B:B, A:A, ">="&EOMONTH(TODAY(),-1)+1, A:A, "<="&EOMONTH(TODAY(),0))` and explain how it works.
Task 6: Document review
Got a 40-page contract to review? Upload to NotebookLM or Claude and ask specific questions:
— "What are the payment terms?"
— "Are there any penalties for early termination?"
— "List all the dates/deadlines mentioned."
You still read the full document for final sign-off — but now you know where to look.
Task 7: Writing long-form content
Blog post, report, article. Don\'t ask for it all at once. This workflow works:
1. "Draft an outline for a 1,500-word article on [topic] for [audience]."
2. Edit the outline to match your brain.
3. "Now draft section 1 based on this outline."
4. Polish section 1.
5. "Now draft section 2 using the same voice as section 1."
Section-by-section, the quality is dramatically better than one-shot.
Task 8: Pre-meeting prep
Before a meeting you\'re dreading: "I have a meeting with [person] about [topic]. Their likely position is [X]. Give me 5 questions I should ask, 3 objections they might raise, and my best responses to each."
Takes 30 seconds. Makes you look 10× more prepared.
15 ready-to-use work templates
We built a companion library of 15 copy-paste prompts covering everything above — emails, meeting summaries, status reports, research briefings, 1-on-1 agendas, performance reviews, even "turn my rant into constructive feedback." Organised by category with a copy button next to every template.
Your weekly audit
At the end of each week, ask yourself: "Which tasks did I do this week that I could have had AI draft first?" Write them down. Next week, try AI-first on those specific tasks. Track the time saved.
Most people report saving 5-10 hours/week within 30 days of this habit.