Writing: Emails, Decks, and Docs

I timed myself last month. In a single workday, I spent two hours and forty minutes writing. Emails, a slide deck intro, a project brief, a Slack message I rewrote three times.

Two hours and forty minutes. On words.

You're probably in the same ballpark. Most professionals are. And the wild part is that almost none of that writing required original thinking. It was just... packaging. Taking what you already knew and putting it into sentences.

That's exactly what AI is built for.

Here's the workflow that changed everything for me: draft, then edit.

You don't ask AI to write the final version. You ask it to write the first version. Then you make it yours. This matters because first drafts are where all the time goes. Staring at a blank page, figuring out how to open the email, getting the structure right. AI blows through that in seconds.

Try this. Next time you need to write a client email, open ChatGPT or Claude and say:

"I need to email a client named Sarah. She asked for a project timeline update. We're two weeks behind because of a vendor delay, but we'll still hit the final deadline. Tone should be professional but not stiff. Keep it under 150 words."

You'll get a solid draft in five seconds. Then you spend one minute adjusting it to sound like you. Done. What used to take fifteen minutes now takes two.

But here's the catch. If you skip the editing step, people will notice.

AI slop is everywhere now. You've seen it. Those emails that sound vaguely professional but feel like nobody actually wrote them. Generic openings. Overly smooth transitions. No personality. That's what happens when people copy-paste AI output without touching it.

The fix is simple: give AI your voice.

Paste in three or four emails you've actually sent. Tell it: "Match this writing style. Notice the sentence length, level of formality, and how I open and close." Now the drafts it produces will sound like you, not like a writing textbook.

Then use the iteration loop. This is where it gets fun.

"Make it shorter."

"More direct."

"Less formal."

"The second paragraph is too soft. Make it clearer that this deadline isn't negotiable."

Each time you give feedback, the output gets closer to what you'd actually send. You're not writing from scratch. You're editing with a collaborator who never gets tired and never gets defensive.

This works for everything. Presentation intros, project updates, proposals, even LinkedIn posts if that's your thing. The pattern is always the same:

1. Give AI the context (who, what, why, constraints)
2. Get a first draft
3. Edit it until it sounds like a human wrote it (because one did, you)
4. Use feedback prompts to iterate before you even touch the keyboard

Remember what we covered about context? The more you give, the better the draft. Don't just say "write an email." Say who it's to, what the situation is, what tone you need, how long it should be. The specificity you learned in Week 2 is what makes this work.

One more thing. AI is particularly good at things most people hate writing: rejection emails, awkward follow-ups, feedback that needs to be honest but diplomatic. The emotional labor of figuring out "how do I say this without being a jerk" is something AI handles in seconds. You just describe the situation and the outcome you want.

The goal here isn't to stop writing. It's to stop spending your best thinking hours on writing that doesn't need your best thinking.

AI should save you 30-60 minutes a day on writing. If it's not, you're using it wrong.