5 Ways To Get Started With AI At Work

A practical guide to using AI like a pro (even if you're just getting started)

AI is not just for engineers or tech companies. If you're sending emails, making decisions, building presentations, or drowning in research, AI can help you get faster, clearer, and more strategic. The key is knowing where to start, what tools to use, and how to give the right instructions.

This guide walks you through five ways to build practical AI skills at work. You'll learn how to audit your daily tasks for opportunity, prompt like a pro, and use free tools to take the busywork off your plate.

1. Conduct a Personal AI Opportunity Audit

Before jumping into tools, take a step back and identify where AI can actually help you. The goal is not to automate everything. It’s to get back time and energy by offloading the right kinds of tasks.

Start by reviewing your daily and weekly activities and looking for work that is:

Repetitive or Pattern-Based

Tasks you do often in a similar way, like:

• Writing follow-up emails

• Creating meeting agendas or debriefs

• Drafting onboarding guides or internal FAQs

• Compiling weekly reports

AI can handle repeatable formats quickly and consistently.

Time-Consuming, But Not Strategically Valuable

Think of work that takes a lot of effort but doesn’t require your expertise, such as:

• Note-taking in meetings

• Summarizing documents or Slack threads

• Converting spoken ideas into polished content

• Rewriting content into a different tone or format

These tasks are perfect candidates for automation or AI assistance.

Information-Heavy

If your job involves reading, summarizing, comparing, or organizing large volumes of information, AI can drastically accelerate your workflow:

• Extracting insights from a 30-page white paper

• Comparing product features across competitors

• Sorting survey results by theme

• Translating complex research into plain language

Strategic, But Stuck

AI won’t make your decisions, but it can help you explore more options and identify blind spots:

• Mapping tradeoffs between two product launches

• Generating potential customer objections and responses

• Stress-testing a new pricing model

• Drafting a pros-and-cons list from different team perspectives

How to Run Your Audit:

1. Track your tasks for 2–3 days in a notes app or spreadsheet. 

   • Or if you’re feeling ambitious, create your own no-code Task Tracker.

2. Group similar activities (communication, planning, research, writing).

3. For each one, ask:
   

   • Could I give this to a smart intern with examples and instructions?

   • Would automating or enhancing this save meaningful time or energy?

   • Is this something I do often that follows a clear structure?

Even identifying just three tasks AI could support each week can unlock hours for more strategic work.

2. Learn to Prompt with the CLEAR Framework

Once you know what to delegate to AI, the next step is learning how to communicate with it. AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others are highly capable, but they rely on your direction. A vague prompt gets a vague answer. A clear prompt gets a powerful result.

Use the CLEAR Framework to structure your prompts:

C – Context

Set the scene. Tell the model who it’s writing for, what the purpose is, and what you’re hoping to achieve.

Example: “You’re a communications lead writing to busy department heads. The goal is to summarize our Q2 results in plain language.”

L – Layout

Break down the request into steps or structure. This helps the AI stay organized.

Example: “Start with an executive summary, then give three key results, and end with a short quote from leadership.”

E – Examples

Show the AI what good looks like by pasting in samples, templates, or snippets of your past work.

Example: “Use the tone and format of this email: [paste].”

A – Ask Specifically

Be clear about the desired format, tone, and length.

Example: “Make it friendly but professional. Keep it under 200 words. Use short paragraphs and bullet points where helpful.”

R – Refine

Treat the output as a draft. Ask the AI to revise, cut, expand, or reframe based on your feedback.

Example: “Now rewrite this for a skeptical audience. Focus on outcomes, not features.”

Prompts are not one-and-done. Think of AI like a junior colleague who gets better with coaching.

3. Streamline Communication with AI

If you spend most of your day communicating through emails, Slack, meetings, memos and more, AI can drastically reduce the time it takes and improve the quality of what you send.

Use Cases:

• Drafting clear, thoughtful emails in less time

• Summarizing meeting transcripts or chat threads

• Polishing spoken thoughts into written content

• Repurposing one message into multiple formats (e.g., from an email to a LinkedIn post)

Tools to Try:

• ChatGPT: Copy-paste messages, meeting notes, or call summaries and ask it to draft follow-ups, recaps, or next steps

• Claude: Particularly strong at longer documents and natural language nuance

• Fireflies.ai and Otter.ai: Join your meetings, transcribe them, and summarize key takeaways

• Voice dictation + AI: Record your thoughts on a walk or in the car and have ChatGPT or Claude write it up for you

Prompt Example:

“Here’s a transcript of a voice memo I made after a call. Can you write a professional email summary with clear action items?”

“Turn this Slack conversation into a one-paragraph update for leadership.”

4. Accelerate Research and Information Analysis

When you’re short on time but need to get smart on a topic, AI is your new research assistant. It can pull key insights, summarize long docs, and answer questions faster than a traditional Google search.

Use Cases:

• Quickly understanding a new topic or trend

• Summarizing customer interviews or survey data

• Extracting key recommendations from a research report

• Comparing pros and cons of different platforms or strategies

• Social listening or market research

Tools to Try:

• Perplexity: A powerful free research assistant that cites sources and can answer follow-up questions

• NotebookLM (by Google): Upload your own documents and have it answer questions, summarize, or surface key concepts

• Claude: Especially good at digesting large PDFs or chat logs

• ChatGPT with browsing (Pro): Great for pulling current information from across the web

• Gemini (by Google): Similar to ChatGPT, with deeper integration across Google Docs and Gmail

Prompt Examples:

“Summarize the top 3 takeaways from this 40-page research paper and explain why they matter for a nonprofit audience.”

“Give me a one-slide summary of this report for a time-crunched executive.”

Tip: Test a few tools like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. They each have different strengths. Find one that matches your style and needs.

5. Use AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions

AI isn’t going to make business decisions for you. But it can surface angles you hadn’t considered, weigh tradeoffs, and help you structure your thinking.

Think of it as a neutral advisor or brainstorming partner.

Use Cases:

• Choosing between competing strategies or features

• Exploring ways to roll out a change with minimal friction

• Identifying risks and unintended consequences

• Mapping possible outcomes or next steps

How to Use It:

1. Provide background: “We’re a B2B SaaS company with 10 people, launching a new pricing model next month.”
   

2. Frame the decision: “We’re deciding between flat-rate pricing and usage-based pricing.”
   

3. Ask for options, risks, and tradeoffs: “What are 3 pros and cons of each? How might this affect churn?”

Prompt Examples:

“Act like a product manager. What questions should I ask before rolling out this new feature?”

“We’re debating whether to launch a podcast or webinar series to build community. Outline the tradeoffs in reach, effort, and long-term value.”

“List three low-risk experiments we could run to test this idea before committing.”

You still make the final call. But with AI, you can explore your thinking faster and more thoroughly.

Final Thoughts

You don’t need to know everything about AI to start using it well. You just need to:

• Identify where it can save you time

• Learn how to prompt clearly
  Use a few tools consistently and refine as you go

Start small. Pick one part of your workflow, such as communication, research, or planning, and try integrating AI this week.

You might be surprised how quickly it becomes one of the most valuable collaborators on your team.