Book 1 · Chapter 4: Writing With AI

• The quick win (under 2 minutes)Copy

  Write a short email to Sarah Chen confirming our meeting Thursday at 3pm in Conference Room B. We'll be reviewing the Q2 budget forecast. Remind her to bring the updated vendor list. Friendly and professional.

• The hard oneCopy

  I need to email a client, Marcus Thompson at Greenfield Industries, who's frustrated because our deliverable was five days late. The delay was caused by a vendor issue on our side: our data provider had a system outage. I don't want to throw the vendor under the bus because we need to maintain that relationship. Marcus is a long-term client (3 years) who I have a good relationship with, but this is the second delay in six months and I can feel his patience running thin. I need to: acknowledge the delay head-on, take responsibility without going into vendor details, propose a concrete plan to prevent this from happening again, and offer something to make it right (maybe a discount on next month's invoice or expedited delivery on the next project). Tone: professional, warm, sincerely apologetic without groveling.

• Turning notes into structureCopy

  I need to write a monthly project status report for my VP. Here are my raw notes from the past four weeks:
  
  - Sprint 14 completed on time, delivered user authentication module
  - Sprint 15 ran two days over, database migration was more complex than estimated
  - Hired two new developers (started March 10), both ramping up well
  - Client demo on March 22 went well, they approved the design direction
  - Budget is tracking 8% over forecast due to the extra contractor hours for the migration
  - Sprint 16 starts Monday, focused on payment integration
  - Risk: the payment gateway API documentation is outdated and we might hit surprises
  
  Format: executive summary at the top (3-4 sentences), then sections for Progress, Budget, Risks, and Next Steps. Keep it under one page. My VP is data-driven and hates filler. Give her numbers and actions, not narrative.

• The document summaryCopy

  I uploaded our vendor agreement with DataStream Inc. I need to review it before our renewal meeting next Tuesday. Summarize the key terms: contract length, auto-renewal clause, pricing structure, termination conditions, and any clauses that limit our ability to switch vendors. Also flag anything unusual or potentially risky.

• The proposal skeletonCopy

  I'm writing a proposal for a mid-size manufacturing company that wants to upgrade their inventory management system. They have 3 warehouses, about 500 SKUs, and they're currently tracking everything in spreadsheets. Their pain points are: frequent stockouts, no real-time visibility, and their warehouse manager spends 10 hours a week on manual data entry. We're proposing our cloud-based inventory platform at $2,400/month. Give me a proposal outline with section headers and 2-3 bullet points for what each section should cover. Include a section on ROI that quantifies the time savings.

• The pitch deck outlineCopy

  I'm presenting to potential investors about our SaaS product for small restaurant chains. We have 47 paying customers, $18K MRR, and we're raising a $500K seed round. Give me a 12-slide pitch deck outline with a title and 3 key points for each slide. Start with the problem, not our solution.

Tells that scream unedited AI prose. Cut them and your writing sounds like you again.

• Furthermore

  AI loves this transition. No human says it out loud. Just start the next sentence.

• Additionally

  A filler transition. Cut it and the reader still follows.

• In addition

  Same tell as "furthermore." Real people don't write like this.

• Moving on to the next point

  Nobody talks like this. Cut it; the next sentence stands on its own.