Your first AI wins: five everyday tasks

When you finish, you can write a clear prompt for five common assistant tasks and check each result before you use it.

Win one: meeting minutes

A weak prompt: “Write minutes from these notes.” The tool will guess at the format, may invent owners, and may smooth over things nobody agreed on. A strong prompt: “Write minutes with three headings: decisions, action items with owner and due date, and open questions. If a name or date is missing, write ‘not stated’. Notes: [paste].”

What to check: compare each action item against your notes. Did the tool give a task to the wrong person? Did it turn a maybe into a decision? Fix those before you send. The tool saves you the formatting. You are still the one who knows what was really said.

Win two: replying to a scheduling request

Weak: “Reply to this email.” Strong: “I am an assistant to a department head. Reply in three sentences. Offer Tuesday morning or Thursday afternoon. Ask what the meeting is about. Keep it warm.” The second prompt gives the tool a role, a length, the real options and a tone.

Check the times, the time zone and the name spelling. Then read it aloud. If it sounds like a stranger wrote it, change a few words so it sounds like you. Your readers know your voice, and a message that sounds off can make them trust you a little less.

Win three: summarizing a long thread

You come back from leave and find a thread with forty messages. Weak prompt: “Summarize.” Strong prompt: “Summarize for someone who has not read it. Tell me what was asked, what was decided, what is still waiting and who owes the next step.” Remove private details before you paste.

The check here matters most. Open the thread and test two or three claims in the summary. If the tool says ‘Dana approved the budget’, find Dana’s message. Summaries can leave out a key objection or merge two people’s views. Use the summary to find your way in, not as the final word.

Win four and five: agendas and how-to guides

For an agenda, give the goal, the length, the attendees and the topics, and ask for time slots with a leader for each item. Weak: “Make an agenda.” Strong: “A forty-five minute budget review for four managers. Goal: choose between two options. Decisions first, updates last.” Check that the times add up to the meeting length.

For a how-to guide, describe the steps in your own words, rough and messy, and ask for a clean version for a new teammate. This is a quiet superpower. Writing down what only you know makes you easier to cover for and shows how much you do. Check that no step is missing, then add screenshots or links yourself.

Practice now

Take notes from a real meeting, remove names and private details, and run the strong minutes prompt. Mark every line the tool got wrong or invented.
Write a weak and a strong prompt for the same scheduling reply. Compare the two answers side by side.
Record one task only you know how to do, in messy bullet points, and ask the tool to turn it into a how-to guide. Ask a colleague whether they could follow it.

Use any AI assistant you have. Do not paste private, client or patient information into it.

Check yourself

1. Why tell the tool to write 'not stated' when a name or date is missing?

2. After AI summarizes a long email thread, what should you do?

3. What makes a prompt for an agenda stronger?

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Next lesson: Guardrails for administrative assistants

AI-drafted. Checked by an automated validator and a separate AI reviewer; a person has not read every lesson. Translations and tutor answers are AI-made. Found a mistake? Tell us. AI can be wrong. General information only, not professional advice. Not affiliated with any AI company named. Current University is not accredited.