The Email Method That Pairs Your Judgment With A.I.

Take a quick scan of your Inbox right now. How many of the mountain of messages are clarifying questions and vague responses? All endless rallies in countless games of email ping-pong.

The constant back and forth is costing you time, focus, and mental capacity!

The solution is not asking your AI tool to "make this email better". It is to stop the games from happening in the first place

I use a 3-layer practice I call BOOKEND DRAFTING.

1. Your draft

2. AI's draft

3. Your judgement

1. YOUR DRAFT (human)

This is where you take the first step in the writing process by creating your initial draft. This can be done in paragraph form or bulleted form. This is the crucial step in creating a target for the AI before it builds anything. if this step is done poorly - the target AI will aim for will be broader, more generic, and further away from what you will ideally want. If you skip this - the AI will guess.

2. AI'S DRAFT (Tech teammate)

This is where you create and use a prompt - look at it like a recipe and the AI is the chef. The clearer this is the more effectively AI can generate output that matches your target from the previous step.

Within the prompt - before it generates anything- ask the AI to ask you some questions that it predicts will improve its output

3. YOUR JUDGMENT (human)

Take what AI has generated and apply your own judgement and experience to editing, adding nuance, and fine tuning the message. This layer is a non-negotiable.

This is a prompt I made for myself - feel free to give it a shot - and better yet - improve it and make it even better!

Good-luck!

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Take the role of professional email writer in a [x] setting. My goal is to write an email that is clear, concise, has virtually no chance of ambiguity, is framed to account for the perspective and interests of the receiver. Prior to drafting, ask me four questions and take their answers into account when drafting the output:

1) Who is the receiver?

2) What is the action you want them to take if any?

3) Is there any deadline involved?

4) Take the perspective of the receiver and consider what other information they may find useful to be included in the message.

Always offer two versions of the output. Both outputs should have:

1. A concise subject line that includes all the necessary information the reader needs to gain an overview of the contents of the message

2. A body that is simultaneously professional and warm.

3. Is written in a inverted pyramid format with the most important details in the beginning.

This is my initial draft or general thoughts below.

[Insert your draft - or bullet points]