Your daily AI workflow

The real win isn't individual tricks — it's a workflow you keep. In this final lesson, we'll design three reusable prompt templates for the tasks you repeat every week, and build the habit that makes reaching for AI as natural as reaching for a search engine.

Template 1: Email drafts

Here's a template you can copy and reuse every time you need to write an email:

"Draft an email to [recipient]. Context: [what's this about, 1-2 sentences]. Tone: [professional/casual/friendly]. Key point I want to make: [the main thing]. Keep it under [100/150/200] words."

Example in action: "Draft an email to my manager. Context: I'm requesting two days off next week for a family event. Tone: professional but warm. Key point: I've already arranged coverage with the team. Keep it under 100 words."

You get a clean draft in 10 seconds. Read it, adjust anything that doesn't sound like you, and send. Total time: under 2 minutes for an email that would have taken 10.

Template 2: Document summary

"Summarize this [document/email thread/article] in [3/5/7] bullet points. Focus on: [decisions made / key facts / action items]. Keep each bullet under [15/20/25] words."

Then paste the document below the instruction.

The focus area is the key part — it tells the AI what kind of summary you want. "Decisions made" gives you a different summary than "action items" even from the same document.

Template 3: Brainstorming

"I need ideas for [what you're stuck on]. Context: [what you've already considered, any constraints]. Give me 10 options. Make at least 3 of them surprising — things I wouldn't think of myself."

The "surprising" instruction is the secret weapon. Without it, AI brainstorming produces obvious ideas you've already thought of. With it, you get at least a few angles you genuinely hadn't considered.

Making it stick

A workflow only matters if you actually use it. Here's how to build the habit:

The trigger: every time you open a new email, document, or blank page, ask yourself: "Could a template handle the first draft?"

The action: paste your template, fill in the blanks, run it.

The reward: the 10 minutes you just saved. Spend them on something you actually enjoy.

After one week of this, you won't need to think about it. Reaching for AI will feel as natural as reaching for a calculator when you see numbers.

Course complete

You've gone from "I have no idea what AI is" to "I have three reusable workflows and I understand why they work." That's the foundation everything else builds on.

If you want to go deeper — understand how models actually work under the hood, what tokens and context windows are, why hallucinations happen — take Understanding LLMs. It's the next course in your learning path.