Each recipe lists Tools (what must be set up), Trigger (when you run it), Prompt/steps, and Human checkpoint (what you review). Recipes are deliberately built on earlier skills — if one doesn't work for you, there's usually a missing prerequisite from an earlier module.
Module 09 · ~12 min
Everyday AI Workflows — The Recipe Book
Ten complete, copy-paste workflows using what you've learned so far. Steal them, then adapt them.
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The big idea
💡Key idea
Every recipe follows the same shape: tools, trigger, prompt/steps, and a human checkpoint on anything with consequences. Communication, organization, and thinking recipes cover most daily knowledge work, and the way they stick is by anchoring to existing habits and adopting one recipe per week instead of ten at once.
Quick check
1 question · instant feedback
0/1
- Every recipe in this module includes a "human checkpoint" because:
Deep dive
5/5 open
Inbox Zero Triage (daily, 5 min) uses the Gmail connector to triage today's inbox into needs-reply-today, needs-reply-this-week, FYI-only, and unsubscribe candidates, drafting replies for the urgent ones as Gmail drafts you review and send — never auto-send. The Difficult Email recipe (as needed) has you paste a dreaded thread and ask for a summary of what they want plus three drafted replies (firm, warm, neutral) so you can pick, blend, and send — always your checkpoint for anything with relationship stakes.
Meeting Prep in 10 Minutes (before every important call) uses Calendar, Gmail, and web search to prep you with email history, recent company news, a likely agenda, and three smart questions.
Task Sorting & Weekly Plan (Sunday evening or Monday morning) clusters your open tasks by project, scores each on impact and effort, and builds your week with a max of 3 high-impact tasks per day plus batched admin blocks — you veto or adjust, since AI proposes and you decide.
Meeting Notes → Notion + Recap (after each meeting) extracts decisions and action items from a transcript, adds items to Notion Tasks, creates a linked meeting note, and drafts a recap email for your review. Quarterly File & Receipt Cleanup uses Claude Code or Codex to run the full receipts pipeline — organizing files, processing receipts, and archiving stale files — turning what used to be a lost weekend into 30 scheduled minutes.
The Decision Sparring Partner (for real decisions) has the strongest model interview you one question at a time, then lay out the strongest case for and against each option, what your answers reveal you actually want, and what a smart skeptic would say you're ignoring — explicitly instructed not to be agreeable.
One Idea → Five Assets (weekly content) takes a core idea and produces a LinkedIn post, a carousel outline, a newsletter section, a thread, and three video hooks, all in your style with one consistent through-line. Learn Anything Faster (ongoing) teaches you a topic Socratically — one concept at a time, checking your understanding with questions. The Friday Shipping Review (weekly) uses your connectors to summarize what shipped, what slipped, commitments you must not drop, and next week's top three priorities in under 300 words.
Three implementation rules from people who actually sustain these systems: anchor to existing habits, like running the inbox triage recipe with morning coffee or the Friday review before shutdown — new habits ride old ones. Save every recipe as a Skill, Project instruction, or text-expander snippet — if running a recipe takes more than one short message, friction will kill it.
And adopt one recipe per week: run it for a week, keep or kill it, then add the next. Ten in one weekend usually means zero in a month.
Quick check
1 question · instant feedback
0/1
- The best way to make a new AI workflow stick:
Pitfalls & takeaways
Failure modes
- Adopting ten recipes at once instead of one per week — it kills follow-through
- Skipping the human checkpoint on sends, deletes, and decisions
- Running a recipe as a fresh, un-saved prompt every time instead of saving it as a Skill or snippet
- Not anchoring a new AI habit to an existing routine, so it gets forgotten
- Letting the AI be fully agreeable in a decision-support recipe instead of demanding pushback
Durable takeaways
- Recipes = tools + trigger + prompt + human checkpoint
- Communication, organization, and thinking recipes cover 80% of daily knowledge work
- Every recipe keeps a human checkpoint on sends, deletes, and decisions
- Anchor to existing habits, save prompts as Skills, adopt one recipe per week
Quick check
1 question · instant feedback
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- Recipe 7 explicitly asks the AI to "not be agreeable" because:
Do the work
🏋️Prove you learned it
Pick exactly one recipe that hits your biggest pain point. Set it up completely, including saving the prompt as a Skill or instruction, and run it today. Put a calendar reminder to evaluate it in 7 days and decide whether to keep or kill it before adding a second recipe.
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Quick check
1 question · instant feedback
0/1
- The right cadence for adopting recipes: