Useful AI tips.
Every week.
Plain-English, practical, 3-minute reads for professionals who want to use AI at work without the hype. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
The 5-Minute AI Audit: Is Your Workflow Actually Saving You Time?
Most people start using AI tools with enthusiasm, then quietly fall back to old habits. This week: a fast self-audit to check whether AI is genuinely working for you — or just adding friction.
Why the drift happens
Three months into using AI tools, most professionals have 2-3 workflows that genuinely save time and another 5 they tried once, got mediocre results, and quietly abandoned. The problem is they never figured out why it didn't work — they just stopped.
The fix is a quick audit. Not a big project. Five minutes. Right now, if you like.
The 5-minute AI audit
Open a blank doc or note and answer these four questions honestly:
1. What do you use AI for right now? List every task, even if it's just occasional. Don't filter.
2. Which of those actually saves you time vs creates more work? Be honest. Some AI outputs take longer to fix than doing it yourself.
3. What work task do you dread every week? That's probably your best AI opportunity — one you haven't explored yet.
4. What's stopping you from using AI for that dreaded task? Usually it's not knowing how to prompt it, or fear the output will be wrong.
Take your dreaded task and describe it to your AI tool in one sentence. Then ask: "What's the best way to use AI to help with this task? Give me 3 specific approaches with example prompts." You'll almost always get at least one idea you hadn't thought of.
The rule that changes everything
AI should make you faster at tasks you already do well — not replace your judgment. If you're spending more time editing AI output than it would take to write it yourself, the prompt needs work, not you.
Stop Writing Emails From Scratch. Here's the 3-Step AI Email System
The average professional writes 40+ emails a day. That's 3-4 hours of your week on correspondence alone. This issue: the exact 3-step system to cut that in half using any AI chatbot — no special tools required.
Why most people get bad AI emails
They ask AI to "write an email about X" with no context. The result is generic, wordy, and sounds nothing like them. They spend more time editing than writing. They give up.
The issue isn't the AI — it's the prompt. Good email prompts have three parts.
The 3-part email prompt formula
Part 1 — Context: Who are you, who is this to, what's the relationship, what's the situation?
Part 2 — Outcome: What do you need to happen after they read this email?
Part 3 — Constraints: Tone (formal/casual), length, anything to avoid.
The tighten pass
Once you have a draft you like, run this second prompt: "Shorten this by 30% and remove any filler phrases. Keep the core message and tone."
This single step turns a decent AI email into a great one. Most AI first drafts are 20% too long.
Pick the most tedious recurring email you send (meeting recaps, status updates, follow-ups) and build a reusable template prompt for it. Test it three times this week. By Friday you'll wonder why you ever wrote it from scratch.
AI at Work: What's Safe to Type, What Isn't
One of the biggest blockers for professionals using AI at work isn't skill — it's uncertainty about what they're allowed to share. This issue covers the privacy basics every desk worker needs to know.
The core principle
Public AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini on free/personal plans) process your input on external servers. Most providers say they don't train on your data by default, but your organisation's data governance policy may have stricter rules.
Before you paste anything into an AI tool at work: would you be comfortable if your manager read exactly what you typed? If yes, proceed. If not, pause.
Generally safe to share
Generic task descriptions ("summarise this type of document"), your own writing that doesn't contain confidential information, publicly available information you're researching, draft ideas that don't reference specific clients or deals.
Generally not safe to share
Client names, personal data, financial figures, HR information, legal matters, contracts, anything marked confidential, passwords or API keys, medical information, or information covered by NDA.
Replace specific names, numbers, and identifying details with placeholders before pasting. "Client ABC signed a contract for $X" tells AI the structure without revealing confidential data. You get the same quality output with zero risk.
What to do at your organisation
Check whether your employer has an AI usage policy. Many larger organisations now have approved tools (often Microsoft Copilot within M365) where data stays inside the company's environment. If your company has one — use it.
Meeting Notes in 90 Seconds: The AI Workflow That Changed How I Work
Meetings are time thieves twice over — once when you're in them, and again when you spend 20 minutes writing up notes afterwards. This week's workflow eliminates the second theft entirely.
The old way
You leave a meeting, open a doc, stare at your scattered notes, try to remember what was actually decided, write up action items that are missing key context, send an email recap that half the team ignores. Sound familiar?
The AI meeting notes workflow
Step 1 — During the meeting: Open your notes app and type key points as bullet fragments. Don't worry about grammar or completeness. Just capture: decisions made, who said what matters, actions mentioned, anything unclear.
Step 2 — After the meeting (takes 2 minutes): Paste your messy notes into your AI tool with this prompt:
Step 3 — Review and send. Spend 60 seconds checking it's accurate, then send. Done.
If your meeting tool records transcripts (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet), paste the full transcript instead of your notes. The AI summary will be significantly more accurate and complete — and you don't need to take notes at all.
What changes when you do this consistently
People stop saying "wait, what was decided in that meeting?" Your action items actually get done because they're clearly documented. And you leave every meeting feeling 10% less exhausted.
Welcome. Here's the One Thing That Actually Matters About AI at Work
First issue. No fluff. Just the one insight that separates people who get real value from AI from those who don't — and it's not about which tool you use.
The mistake everyone makes
Most people approach AI tools as search engines. They type a question, get an answer, feel mildly impressed or mildly disappointed, and move on. They're using AI as a lookup tool, not a thinking partner.
The ones who save hours a week treat AI differently. They give it context.
Context is everything
Compare these two prompts:
❌ "Write a project update email"
✅ "Write a project update email to my manager. The project is a website redesign. We're on track for the June deadline but the design phase took longer than expected. Tone should be professional but confident. Keep it under 150 words."
Same AI tool. Completely different output. The second one you can send. The first one you'll spend 10 minutes editing.
Every good AI prompt has: WHO you are (or who the output is for) + WHAT you need + WHY or the context + any CONSTRAINTS. That's it. You don't need to be a "prompt engineer". You just need to give AI enough to work with.
Your first action this week
Pick one repetitive writing task you do every week — a status update, a client email, a report section — and build a template prompt for it using the formula above. Test it twice. Adjust. Save the prompt somewhere you'll find it.
That single saved prompt will pay back the 10 minutes it takes to create it every week for the rest of your career.
What's coming
Each week we'll cover one practical use case: meeting notes, research, email, decisions, reports, automation. Always with a real prompt you can copy and use immediately. No theory. Just what works.
Get the next issue in your inbox
Useful AI tips every week. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.