1. The setup checklist
Before any prompt works well, get these in place. Tick them off:
- A free ChatGPT.com account, signed in on your work laptop
- A free Claude.ai account too. Both. Stop arguing about which one is better, you'll use both.
- Connect Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace in Claude (or use Connectors in ChatGPT). This is the single biggest unlock in this whole kit.
- Pin both apps to your taskbar / dock. If you have to search for them every morning, you'll forget to use them.
- Block 30 minutes Monday morning in your calendar called "AI workflows". That's it. The habit is what wins.
2. Five prompts you'll use this week
Open ChatGPT or Claude. Paste in one of these, replacing the bracketed bits with your stuff. These are not generic. They are written to land.
Prompt 1: Reply to a confusing email
You are my email writing assistant.
I received this email below. I need to reply.
Tone: professional, warm, slightly direct.
Length: short. 6 sentences max.
Write 3 different reply options, ranging from:
1. Most agreeable
2. Polite but pushing back
3. Firm but not rude
Email I received:
[paste the email here]
Context they need to know:
[1-3 bullet points about your situation]Prompt 2: Turn meeting notes into actions
I'm pasting in raw notes from a meeting. They are messy.
Pull out:
1. Decisions made (one line each, who decided)
2. Action items (assign to someone if obvious, otherwise mark UNASSIGNED)
3. Open questions (what's blocking progress)
4. A 4-sentence summary I can email to the team
Be ruthless with what's noise. Cut filler.
Notes:
[paste raw notes]Prompt 3: Make a long document scannable
I'm sharing a long document below. I have 5 minutes to understand it.
Give me:
1. A 3-sentence executive summary
2. The 5 most important specific facts (with the sentence they came from)
3. Anything that contradicts itself or seems suspect
4. The single question I should ask after reading this
Document:
[paste document]Prompt 4: Draft a doc from your messy bullets
Turn these bullets into a coherent [memo / proposal / one-pager / brief].
Audience: [who is reading this]
Tone: [direct / formal / persuasive]
Length: [target word count or page count]
Constraint: do not invent any facts I haven't given you. If a section needs a number I haven't provided, write [INSERT METRIC] in square brackets.
Bullets:
[paste your bullets]Prompt 5: A sharper "what should I do" prompt
I'm trying to decide between [option A] and [option B].
Constraints:
- [constraint 1]
- [constraint 2]
- Time horizon: [days/weeks/months]
- What success looks like: [1 sentence]
Don't just list pros and cons. Walk me through:
1. What I'm secretly optimising for that I haven't said out loud
2. The 1 question I should answer before deciding
3. Your actual recommendation, with confidence level (high/medium/low)
4. The cheapest small experiment I could run this week to learn more
Be direct. Don't hedge.3. The daily rhythm (7 minutes a day)
Just three checkpoints. Do them and you'll be the AI-fluent person in your team within 6 weeks. Skip them and you won't.
- Morning, 2 min: open ChatGPT. Paste your meeting agenda. Ask "what should I have answers ready for?"
- Mid-day, 3 min: draft one email through AI before sending. Compare what you would have written vs what AI proposed. Pick the better one.
- End of day, 2 min: ask "summarise these 12 messages I missed today, flag anything urgent". Paste your Slack/Teams.
That's the kit. Want the rest?
The full More AI Skills course teaches workflows, prompt frameworks, integrations and the project setup that turns this from "neat" into "you save 10 hours a week, every week, forever".
See the course →