Do this before writing anything!

Hello,

Thank you for showing up again.

I’ve previously talked about the problem of AI spam.

This is basically a “part 2” of that post, where I am going to teach you how to correctly use AI for writing.

Let’s get right into it.

How “not” to use AI for writing

Ok, so let’s say you have an essay coming up that you have to complete. But you don’t want to write it yourself, since you are too busy with laying on the couch and scrolling on Social Media for two hours. So you decide to open up the Chatbot of your choice and asking it to: “Write an essay about photosynthesis.” 

The AI is obviously going to write that for you. But is it any good? Of course, it’s good! It is a flawless 10-page essay that covers every single aspect of the topic while sounding like a professor. If you are reading this newsletter, I hope that you have tried out a Chatbot sometime in the past. If not, close this email, open up your browser, create an OpenAI account and try it out. For the people that did try a Chatbot knows, that the output is always perfect. It’s almost too good…

That’s where the problem comes in. Your teacher, professor or boss will know that you couldn’t write something like that yourself. It’s just too good. 

The lesson here? Don’t think of AI as a “Cheat Code” to do your work without actually doing it. It is supposed to be a tool to supercharge your creative output by helping you out with tedious tasks or idea generation. Not by doing the entire thing for you. 

How to actually use AI for writing

So… Now you know what not to do. I don’t want to say, that you should abandon AI completely. I’m saying that you should use it differently. 

To make this as easy as possible to understand, I am going to give you a step-by-step guide of what to do every time before you start using AI for your writing.

Step 1: Getting an idea.

This step is simple enough. Either you got a topic assigned to you by your boss or something, or you want to come up with your own idea.

If you want to come up with your own idea, then an AI can really help you there. For example: If I wouldn’t know what to write my next newsletter post about, I would ask the AI something like this: “I don’t know what to write my news newsletter post about. The general topic of my newsletter is AI. Give me some unique ideas that I could write my next post about.” 

I think you get how this works. You can apply this to any topic or use case you want. It’s that easy.

Step 2: Creating a rough outline

Ok. Now you’ve got your idea. But you’re just sitting in front of an empty Word document. It’s really hard to start writing if you have no direction whatsoever. 

That’s where an outline can really help. And guess what: With AI, you can easily create one. 

I am going to continue with the “newsletter post example”, so that we can stay on the same page. I would ask an AI something like this: “I want to create a newsletter post about [topic], ⁣ but I have no idea what to begin with. Could you create a rough outline for me?”

It’s as simple as that. 

Creating an outline first is the end of staring onto a blank page. Try it out and you’ll see how much it helps.

Step 3: Actually writing the thing

You’ve now reached the point where you actually have to do some work. The lazy people (I’ve been there as well, so don’t be ashamed) would now just tell the AI to: “Write out the entire essay based on the outline you’ve provided.” 

Never do that again! 

Instead… actually sit down, remove all the distractions (Yes, also the phone that is constantly pinging next to you on the desk) and write it yourself. 

Use your mind and your creativity to make your writing stand out from all that AI written crap that you see all over the internet. 

People have to train their “creativity muscle” again. Being creative nowadays is like an ancient art that not many people are able to do. And AI isn’t helping with that… At least not, when you use it like that. 

I know that this was a bit dramatic, but it was just a thing that I wanted to get off my chest because it genuinely annoys me and people need to stop doing that. 

Really try to implement the steps that I’ve given you every time you write something. 

This method can really supercharge your productivity and your creative output. 

I hope this was helpful, and I’ll see you next Friday.

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