This AI Prompt Cheat Sheet Solves 4 of Work’s Big Everyday Problems
Use your digital assistant to draft documents, make meetings more productive, brainstorm ideas, and more.
Stop Philosophizing About AI. Start Deleting Hours From Your Week.
Everyone’s preaching that AI will change everything. Cool story.
When you’ve got 80 unread emails and a hard deadline, you don’t need a TED Talk—you need five dead-simple ways to make an hour of drudgery disappear in ten seconds.
Copy, paste, profit. Works in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Copilot—whatever.
1. Writing (emails, memos, reports)
Never write a first draft again.
Prompt:
“You are a [your job title] with 15 years of experience. Write a [email/memo/report] to [audience]. Tone: [professional yet warm / direct / apologetic / excited]. Subject line included. Exactly [150–300] words. Must highlight these three points only:
• [point 1]
• [point 2]
• [point 3]”
Boom. Professional copy in 8 seconds.
2. Post-meeting action items
Stop reading 40-page transcripts like a chump.
Paste the transcript and use this:
“From the text below, produce ONLY these three things—nothing else:
1. A markdown table: Action Item | Owner | Deadline
2. Bullet list of unresolved questions
3. A crisp 8-word follow-up email subject line”
You now have a perfect task list before the Zoom window closes.
#### 3. Research across your own files
Turn AI into your private analyst that actually knows your company’s numbers.
(Use Claude Projects, ChatGPT with file uploads, Gemini with Google Drive, or NotebookLM—whatever your company allows.)
Prompt:
“Using ONLY the uploaded documents, answer this:
What’s the biggest discrepancy between the Q4 2024 revenue forecast in the budget deck and actual Q1 2025 marketing spend in the P&L?
Explain in three bullets with exact document names and page numbers.”
Hours of cross-referencing → 20 seconds.
4. Brainstorming (that doesn’t suck)
Stop staring at a blank Miro board.
Force the AI to be your devil’s advocate first.
Prompt:
“I’m considering this new feature: [one-sentence description].
Before giving any positive ideas, you must:
1. Act as a jaded power-user and list the top three reasons they’ll hate it.
2. Act as my cheapest competitor and explain exactly how you’d copy and crush it in 90 days.
Only after those two steps, give me three killer, benefit-focused names and taglines.”
You’ll get ideas that survive contact with reality.
5. Bonus meta-prompt (the one that rules them all)
When you’re not sure how to prompt, use this prompt about prompting:
“Here’s my goal: [describe in plain English what you need].
Write me the single most effective prompt I should copy-paste into [tool name] to get the best possible result in one shot. Make it extremely specific, include output format, and prevent hallucination.”
Steal these five. Use them tomorrow morning.
Watch your to-do list shrink while everyone else is still “learning prompt engineering” on YouTube.
You’re welcome. Go delete some work.
