Top AI tools and prompts to improve your day-to-day productivity

In the UK alone, there are over 3,170 businesses in the artificial intelligence industry, 60% of which have sole focus on developing AI tools, and 40% have diversified using AI tools.

AI is impacting almost every industry, improving workplaces, and day to day tasks in personal lives too. Chat GPT is very quickly becoming a household name, and the easy user interface, weekly updates and impressive output is gripping users across the world. However you are only just scratching the surface of what AI is capable of with Chat GPT.

If you are wondering how best to improve your day to day productivity in general using AI, then this blog is definitely for you.

This blog covers:

• How to best structure an optimised AI prompt
• The top tools and platforms in the AI industry at the moment
• Examples of prompt ideas for daily tasks on these platforms

Without writing out each and every prompt for you, this blog should give you the tools to confidently use AI tools and get the most out of them.

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How to structure an AI prompt

AI is a very constantly developing industry, with even the ‘experts’ on consistent steep learning curves. The growth of these platforms has lead to the development of ‘Prompt engineering’. Prompt engineering is the process of structuring and refining the input into an AI tool in order to get the best possible output.

For more advanced AI use cases, prompts can become formatted to suit the specific LLM (language learning model). However, for simple tasks, we can keep it very general and simple; more below.

The key thing to remember with prompt engineering is to give as much context, information, and set out as many expectations as possible.

Below is a 3-step structure of how best to structure a general AI prompt.

1. Explain your role

Give a clear description of what you need the specific task doing for, and who you need it for, whether it be yourself or a specific audience. Do this by giving context to your role, or assigning the GPT a specific role. This allows the GPT to adopt a specific persona and better understand what angle to provide an answer from.

Eg. “I am an SEO manager and need…” “I need you to act as a…” “You are a…”

2. Give context

Make sure that you provide as much surrounding information to the GPT as possible. If you have reference documents, images or attachments, you can usually attach them to the prompt.

Eg .“Explain this topic”, “Look at the attached data”

3. Define the expected output

Finish by giving a clear description of what the expected output from the GPT should be. You could define a specific tone of voice, a wordcount, how you want the output to be structured. Use words like ‘Suggest’, ‘assess’, ‘suggest’, ‘understand’, ‘explain’, ‘highlight’.

Eg . “Make sure your answer is written like a digital marketing expert, structured in paragraphs with headings, and hitting a word count of 500”

Top tips for good prompts

• Give examples – Before giving the AI model your task, you could give examples of what a good or bad response would be. This could include providing desired input-output pairs so that the AI model can detect patterns
• Ask for Justification – ask the model to perform step-by-step reasoning steps. Making the model justify its answer can often produce a higher quality output.
• Avoid ambiguity – Keep your prompt clear and explain it like you would to a person who has no prior knowledge on the topic
• Test different prompt lengths- Depending on the AI tool and LLM, you will notice that the quality of output is different depending on how much information you give to it.
• Step by steps- for multi-step processes, it might be worth formatting the prompt as a numbered step-by-step process to help understanding.
• Experiment and reiterate- dont be afraid to get it wrong the first time, take time to learn from your prompt curation and see how you can improve your output the next time. The great thing about most AI tools, is that the chat is continuous, so you can always make changes and ask for more things as the conversation goes on.

My top tools and prompts for improving day-to-day productivity

There are many, many blogs out there which give long lists of different AI tools. Some are brand new platforms, and others are AI features integrated into platforms you already love. These can leave us feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to start, with the initial lengthy research into AI tools leaving us even less productive.

The AI tools below are free, easy to use, useful, have varied functionality, and have many use cases. For each platform, see use cases and prompt ideas, but remember to expand on these prompts to better suit your desired outcome.

Prompts for different use cases

The following prompts are starting points to show you the capabilities of AI. When using these prompts, I suggest adding that extra level of detail as spoken about above, to personalise it to you.

For studying

Some of the must-have AI tools for students include Grammarly (checking grammar) Otter.ai, (note taking) and Jenni.ai (research). Here at Embryo, we have a policy against using AI for written content. We strongly suggest that you don’t use these tools to generate bulk text, but as an assistant to enhance your current writing.

“Break down (subject/ topic) into smaller, easier-to-understand parts. Use analogies and real-life examples to simplify the concept and make it more relatable”

“Provide me with 5 recommended resources for (topic), and explain why each one could be useful for me”

“Create a study schedule for 3 classes over a 3 week time period. Each study session should be X long and not over weekends”

“Create a revision plan for an exam which consists of 7 different topics. Here are the 7 topic titles….. Topics number 2 and 5 need to be revised more than the others. I need 10 practice examples for each topic”

“Explain (topic) to me at a degree level standard”

“How do I solve this problem…. Explain your reasoning step by step”

“Summarise this complex text into a small paragraph with bullet points”

“Generate a project plan for this brief (insert PDF)”

“What are the most important (facts/figures/stats/formulas) related to this topic?”

“Compare and contrast (topic 1 and topic 2)”

For cooking ideas

Some of the most popular AI platforms and apps for recipe ideas and ingredient trackers include: ChefGPT, Dishgen and and Mealine. AI powered platforms like these can sometimes create a meal based off the food you have in your cupboards, saving time going to the shops and money!

“Draft a weekly meal plan for a family of 4. A mix of meats and vegetables”

“Create a shopping list for the above meal plan. What would the approximate price be?”

“Create a shopping list for a family of 4 with 2 small children, and a budget of (££)”

“Suggest high protein meal suggestions with a calorie count of around (kcal)”

“Suggest and generate an ingredients list for a high-protein chicken dish”

For workouts/exercise

Top Tip: Start your prompts with: “You are an expert fitness coach”

“Out of these gyms (list), compare pricing plans, benefits and disadvantages to help me decide which would be best suited for me, based on (beginner/type of exercise)”

“Create a customised weekly workout guide for a (age) year old, who aims to (state fitness goal). I have (list equipment) and can only work out on Monday, Thursday and Sunday”

“Help me build a consistent exercise routine. I need a mix of cardio and weight training, starting as a beginner”

“Give me tips to help me stay on track with a new exercise plan”

“Create a 30-minute high-intensity workout plan for me to do at home with no equipment. Provide detailed descriptions or images/GIFS of how to carry out these exercises”

“How do I modify (type of exercise/workout plan) for someone with a sprained ankle?”

For travel plans

Some of the most highly rated travel AI tools include: Mindtrip, Vacay, and GuideGeek. For travel, it is always best to double check sources and do your own research too, where large purchases are involved.

Things to tell the GPT to refine the prompt:

• Excluded countries
• Countries similar to…
• Number of travellers
• Child-friendly destinations
• Budget
• Transport time/ flight time

“Make a list of travel destination recommendations based on….”

“Provide me with a 3-day travel itinerary for (city/location).”

“Give me a list of holiday destinations which are a 3-hour flight time from Manchester”

“I am going to (country) for 5 days between (dates). I want you to create a list of things to see and do while I am there, and the best order to complete them in based on our flight times and cost”

“What areas are the best for accommodation in (country/city). We want to prioritise being centrally located, with a budget of (££/night)”

“Create me a list of items and clothing that I would need to take with me for a 4-night stay in (country/city). While there, we are doing (list activities and type of holiday)”

For workplace productivity

The big names in AI, such as ChatGPT and Gemini are getting extremely good at helping those out in a workplace environment; more detail on those below.

“Looking at this email chain(attach/copy/paste), summarise in 5 bullet points the key action points”

“See the attached email (link). Generate 5 email subject lines which are optimised to increase open rate for an e-commerce store”

“Look at my to-do list (link). Predict how long each activity will take, and order them in high to low priority”

“I own an online children’s clothing brand.I have a list of names and emails of 100 potential customers who have interacted with my website. Generate a list of outreach methods that will engage these customers and get them back on the website”

Chat GPT

As mentioned above, Chat GPT is one of the big names in AI, created by Open AI in 2022 as a demo of what chatbot AI was capable of. It quickly went viral and now has over 5.5 billion searches per month and is the 8th most searched for website in the world.

More recently, with the updates and improvements to image generation, Chatgpt has started to become a household name. With trends like turning your dog into a human, and creating an action figure of yourself, Chat GPT outputs have been going viral on TikTok, Instagram and LinkedIn.

For a more detailed understanding, the Open AI Academy is a great way for both beginners and experts to get up-to-date insight on skills and tips for using Chat GPT.

Open AI also have a specific prompt engineering page for ChatGPT users.

While here at Embryo we have a policy against AI-written content, Chat GPT is great to bounce off for topic ideas.

Gemini

Gemini is Google’s own AI platform, with very useful features for those who work at a laptop all day.

One of my personal favourites is the Gemini Notetaker on Google Meet, where at the click of a button, Gemini can transcribe a meeting, summarise key talking points, and create follow up actions, to an extremely high accuracy.

Gemini is also extremely good at deep research. Capable of gathering hundreds of different sources and references, the deep research function is great for those looking for an in depth understanding of pretty much anything.

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Data privacy concerns of AI

Using AI requires input of data, which understandably leaves people concerned about the privacy implications. Especially when working with sensitive internal information and those of clients.

Some useful resources on Privacy and AI:

• Exploring privacy concerns in the age of AI
• Examining privacy risks in AI systems
• Growing data privacy concerns with AI: What you need to know

Want to start using AI in your business?

While we are not AI experts (very few people actually are), Embryo are committed to staying up to date with AI updates, tools, platforms, trends and building a general knowledge base.

Our latest whitepaper covers all things AI, CMOs and the marketing function. Want to know more? Get in touch today.

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