- The seven jobs it does well
- Draft. Turns a blank page into a rough page. Fast.
- Shorten. Long thing into short thing. Transcript into action list.
- Expand. Rough notes into a full email or document.
- Change the tone. Angry to polite. Technical to plain. English to Spanish.
- Explain. Anything, at any level, as many times as you want.
- Organise. Messy thoughts into a table, list, timeline or plan.
- Give options. Twenty ideas on demand. You pick the good ones.
Key idea
Notice the pattern
- All seven change something you gave it.
- It’s strongest when you bring the material and it does the shaping.
- The more you give it, the better it gets.
- Best places to use it
- Anything you dread. The awkward email. The complaint. The apology.
- Anything you repeat. Same document, different details. Every time.
- Anything you don’t understand. A contract, a bill, a medical letter.
- Anything you’re stuck on. Twenty rough ideas beat staring at nothing.
- Anything in a second language.
- Any format you half-remember. Formal letters, invoices, agendas.
- Uses nobody mentions
- Think out loud. Explain your problem to it. Half the time you solve it yourself.
- Ask what you’re missing. A question that pays for itself again and again.
- Imagine failure. “This plan failed. Write the story of how.” Great for spotting
- risk.
- Practise conversations. The pay rise talk. The hard chat with a parent.
- Read the boring stuff. Paste the lease or policy. Ask what’s bad for you.
- How good is it, really
- Drafts: better than your first, worse than your third.
- Summaries: very good, but it can drop the bit that mattered.
- Explaining: excellent. Maybe its best skill.
- Facts: poor without web search. Check every number, name and date.
- Ideas: good at variations. Rarely gives you the idea nobody’s had.
- Your life: it has no clue. It only knows what you type.
Try this
The dread test
- Write down the three tasks you least want to do.
- Two of them can probably be done with AI. Start with the worst one.
The 30-second version
Seven jobs: draft, shorten, expand, re-tone, explain, organise, give options.
- All of them change material you supply. Bring the substance.
- Dread and repetition are the two big signals.
- Great at explaining. Weak at facts. Clueless about you.