How do I use AI to write better at work?

The fastest way to make your writing worse is to ask an AI to write it for you and send the result unedited. The second fastest is to avoid the tools entirely and spend four hours on an email that should take ten minutes.

The useful middle is this: you keep the thinking and the voice, and hand the machine the parts that are mechanical — structure, compression, checking, and the blank-page problem.

Start from your own rough notes

Write five bullet points of what you actually want to say, in your own words, badly. Feed those to the tool with a clear instruction: "Turn these notes into a 200-word update for my manager. Keep my phrasing where you can. Do not add facts I have not given you."

That last sentence matters. Models fill gaps confidently, and invented specifics in a work document are worse than clumsy prose.

Use it as a critic, not a ghostwriter

The highest-value prompt is not "write this" but "what is wrong with this?" Paste your draft and ask for the three weakest sentences, whether the opening states the point, and what a busy reader would misunderstand.

You will get a sharper result because your draft stays yours. Editors are more useful than authors when the author is you.

Compress, don't decorate

Long documents usually need cutting, not embellishing. Ask for a version at half the length that keeps every fact. Then compare: which version would you rather receive? Nine times out of ten the shorter one wins, and the exercise trains your own editing eye.

Never outsource the facts

Anything with a number, a date, a legal statement, a quotation or a claim about a person must be checked against a real source. Treat model output as a first draft written by an enthusiastic intern who has never been punished for being wrong.

If you need current information, use a tool with web access and still click through to the source. If you need your company's information, paste it in deliberately rather than hoping the model knows it.

Keep a short prompt library

Save the five prompts that consistently work for you: the meeting summary, the difficult email, the one-page proposal, the proofread, and the "cut this in half" request. Rewriting prompts from scratch every day is where most of the time savings disappear.

Know what not to paste

Do not put confidential contracts, customer data, unpublished financials or personal information about colleagues into a tool your employer has not approved. Ask which tools are sanctioned, and use those. If in doubt, describe the situation without the identifying details.

The rule that keeps people out of trouble: use AI to improve writing you are willing to sign your name to, and never to produce writing you cannot verify.