AI for Everyone · Part Four · Free · No signup
Your thinking partner.
Now we do actual work — the kind that used to consume an afternoon. Two workflows: reading something long and dense, and writing something you have been putting off.
Part 4 · 3:18 · captions available · Dr. Pesach Walter, Ed.D.
Four real jobs
I would guess three of these are already sitting on your desk.
Understand
Twenty pages of policy, a research article behind a wall of jargon, a benefits notice written by people who apparently hate you.
Write
The letter you have been postponing. You do not struggle to write. You struggle to start.
Decide
A choice with too many moving parts, laid out so you can actually see it.
Think aloud
With something that will not get bored, sigh, or check the clock.
Practice · Part 4
Do this today.
Read each step, then actually do it. Ten to twenty minutes. The point is not to be perfect — it is to finish having done it yourself.
Workflow A · Step One
Read something hard — the plain-language pass
Paste the document in, or upload it if your tool allows files. Then ask these three things in order. Do not skip to the third.
Workflow A · Step Two
Make it about you
A summary is useful. A summary aimed at your actual situation is worth the afternoon it saves.
Workflow A · Step Three
The question that earns its keep
This is my favorite question in the whole series. It routinely surfaces the clause you would have missed.
Then verify anything consequential against the original text. That is the Part Three habit, and this is exactly where it pays.
Workflow B · Step One
Write something hard — get a flawed first draft
Do not start alone. Describe the situation, your goal, and the tone you want. Change every detail below to your own.
It will be about seventy percent right, and it will be wrong in the interesting places — the parts only you know. That is the point. Reacting to a flawed draft is ten times easier than facing an empty screen.
Workflow B · Step Two
Revise three times, in plain words
You do not need special language. Say what you would say to a capable assistant.
- “Too formal. Warmer.”
- “Cut the second paragraph entirely.”
- “She will take that as criticism. Soften it.”
Workflow B · Step Three
Read it aloud
Change anything that is not your voice. It is not finished until it sounds like you — and you will hear the difference immediately.
This does not replace your thinking. It removes the friction around your thinking. The judgment about what your sister can hear, what your policy really means, whether that argument holds — that is decades of accumulated knowledge, and there is no substitute for it.
The two workflows, on one card
Use your browser's print command to put this page on paper. The video and buttons will not print — only what you need.
- Read something hard: plain-language summary → five points for my situation → what is this not telling me → verify what matters.
- Write something hard: situation, goal, and tone → first draft → three plain revisions → read it aloud.
“AI did not write a word of my dissertation, and it could not have. It helped me get unstuck at eleven at night. It did not lower the standard. It let me meet the standard.”