The Matts - Workshop Resources

AI Productivity Exercises

Try these practical exercises to enhance your workplace productivity with AI tools. These techniques will help you learn progressively, extract actionable insights, and challenge your thinking.

Exercise 1: Progressive Learning (ELI5)

This technique helps you learn complex topics in stages, starting with simple explanations and gradually increasing in complexity. It's especially useful for mastering new concepts or technical subjects.

Workplace Application: Perfect for learning new technical skills, understanding complex processes, or preparing to explain difficult concepts to colleagues with different expertise levels.

"Teach me [TOPIC] in stages: first like I'm 5, then gradually more advanced. Ask questions after each stage to check understanding."

Replace [TOPIC] with any subject you need to learn, such as "cloud computing," "cybersecurity," "agile work," "project management," etc.

Exercise 2: Strategic Summary

This technique uses action learning principles to extract practical insights and actionable information from websites, documents, or other content sources.

Workplace Application: Use this approach to quickly process large volumes of information, identify key takeaways, and determine practical next steps from articles, reports, or industry resources.

"Using action learning, summarise this website (INSERT URL) focusing on what to do, what choices matter and what we can learn from it. Highlight any key data."

You can use this with a website URL e.g. https://www.amazon.com/ or attach a Word document, PDF, or copy and paste any text content that you need to analyze.

Exercise 3: Devil's Advocate - Uncovering Blind Spots

This exercise helps identify potential weaknesses, assumptions, or blind spots in your thinking by providing constructive criticism and alternative perspectives.

Workplace Application: Ideal for testing the robustness of proposals, plans, or decisions before finalizing them. Helps identify risks and alternatives you might not have considered.

How to Use This Exercise:

Choose any scenario relevant to your work:
- Your LinkedIn/CV
- A project proposal
- A workplace policy
- A business decision
- A marketing strategy
Use the initial prompt with AI
Use 2-3 follow-up prompts to dig deeper
Share the most surprising insight you discovered

Initial Prompt:

"Act as a constructive devil's advocate. First identify potential weaknesses or blind spots, then suggest alternative perspectives. Be specific and challenging but constructive. My scenario is: [scenario here]"

Follow-up Prompts (pick 2-3):

"What important counterarguments am I missing?"

"What assumptions am I making that could be questioned?"

"What alternative approaches should I consider?"

"What skills or resources might I need that I haven't considered?"

"How might different stakeholders view this differently?"

Quick Examples:

LinkedIn/CV Review: "My CV shows 3 years in customer service and 2 years in project management. I want to move into leadership."

Project Proposal: "Proposal to implement new scheduling software for our team of 15 people."

Business Decision: "Considering expanding our business hours to include weekends."

Exercise 4: Professional Persona with Role Prompting

Role prompting is when you ask an AI to respond as if it were a specific type of expert or character. This shapes the AI's output to match the expertise level, terminology, and perspective you need.

Workplace Application: Use role prompting to draft emails or documents from different professional perspectives. This helps when communicating with various stakeholders who have different concerns and information needs.

"You are a medical professional. Reply to the statement 'My haemorrhoids are bothering me'."

"You are a comedian. Reply to the statement 'My haemorrhoids are bothering me'."

Notice how dramatically the tone, content, and terminology shifts between different roles. This technique helps tailor your communications to different audiences effectively.

Workplace Applications:

Technical Communication: "You are a technical project manager. Help me draft an email explaining our software deployment delay to our development team, focusing on technical challenges and next steps."

Try the same prompt but change the role to: "senior executive" or "customer service representative" to see how the tone and content shifts.

Exercise 5: Structured Format Control

This technique allows you to specify exactly how you want information presented. By controlling the output format, you can ensure information is delivered in the most useful structure for your needs.

Workplace Application: Perfect for creating structured documents, reports, or data presentations that follow specific formats required by your organization or that make information easier to scan and understand.

Format Types You Can Request:

Creative formats: Limericks, haiku, dialog format (conversation)
Data structures: Excel-like tables, JSON/dictionary format, CSV
Technical formats: Executive summaries, technical documentation, process documentation (SOP format)

"Write a limerick about a man named Enus."

"Write an SOP on the proper use of a knife and fork."

"Return a table about sunbathing with two columns, one titled 'pros' the other 'cons' and fill in five examples for each."

These structured formats help organize information effectively and make it more accessible to your audience. Experiment with different formats to see which ones best suit your workplace communication needs.

Exercise 6: Self-Evaluation of AI Outputs

This technique leverages AI to evaluate its own outputs based on criteria you specify. It's like having the AI "mark its own homework" to identify strengths, weaknesses, and potential improvements in the generated content.

Workplace Application: Useful for getting an initial quality assessment of AI-generated content before you review it yourself. Helps identify potential issues or areas for improvement in first drafts of reports, proposals, or creative content.

"Task: Create 5 new soft drink brand names For each name, provide: • Appeal & target market • Potential issues (cultural/linguistic/trademark) • Ratings (1-10): Memorability, Distinctiveness and Global potential"

How This Works:

This prompt gets your chatbot to "mark its own homework" by first generating options and then evaluating them against specific criteria. It's particularly useful when you need to generate and assess multiple options for a workplace task.

After generating the options, you can follow up by asking: "Based on these ratings, which option would you recommend and why?"

Try adapting this technique for workplace scenarios like project proposals, marketing campaigns, training approaches, or any situation where you need to compare multiple options against defined criteria.

Exercise 7: Prompt Chaining for Comprehensive Results

Prompt chaining combines multiple prompt techniques into a single comprehensive request. By linking different elements together (role, tone, constraints, format, examples), you create a production line that guides the AI to produce precisely what you need.

Workplace Application: Ideal for complex workplace tasks where you need specific expertise, tone, constraints and output format all aligned. This approach minimizes back-and-forth by giving the AI complete instructions in one go.

Elements to Chain Together:

Role prompting: Specify the expertise perspective
Tone: Define the communication style
Constraints: Set boundaries and requirements
Format/Evaluation: Structure the output
Examples: Provide sample outputs to guide the AI

"Task: Suggest appealing alcoholic beverage names. Role: Young adult male (18-35). Tone: Mildly humorous, not overly masculine. Constraint: Avoid existing UK product names. Format: Provide 10 names in a 3-column table: Name, Rating (1-10), Reasoning Examples: MoonBrew, AuAle, BarleyBite"

How This Works:

This technique chains together all the previous techniques (role prompting, tone specification, constraints, structured format, and examples) to create a comprehensive prompt that gives the AI clear direction. It's like creating a production line for your AI outputs.

For workplace applications, modify each element to match your specific needs - for example, change the role to "financial analyst," the tone to "professional but accessible," and the constraint to "regulatory compliance terminology." This approach works well for any complex workplace communication task.

Sample AI Prompts

Below are categorized example prompts you can use with AI tools like ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot. These prompts demonstrate how to effectively interact with AI for various productivity tasks. Simply click the "Copy" button to copy a prompt to your clipboard.

Brainstorming & Idea Generation

Initial Idea Development:

"Help me brainstorm some unique social media post ideas for [type of business]."

Perfect for overcoming blank page syndrome when starting creative projects.

Report Structure Development:

"Help me brainstorm some key sections for our [type of report]. I need to cover our team's achievements, challenges we faced, and plans for next quarter."

Useful for structuring reports, presentations, or other formal documents.

Role-Based Communication

Professional Role Simulation:

"You are a [type of professional, e.g., medical professional, financial analyst, HR specialist]. Reply to the statement '[insert your specific question or statement]'."

Helpful for drafting specialized communications from different professional perspectives.

Email Drafting with Role Perspective:

"You are a [role, e.g., technical project manager]. Help me draft an email explaining [topic, e.g., our software deployment delay] to [audience, e.g., our development team], focusing on [specific aspects, e.g., technical challenges and next steps]."

Great for crafting communications tailored to specific audiences and purposes.

Simplification & Explanation

Basic ELI5 (Explain Like I'm Five):

"Explain [topic] like I'm five."

The simplest way to get jargon-free explanations of complex topics.

Interactive ELI5 with Comprehension Check:

"Explain [specific workplace process or concept] like I'm five years old. After explaining, ask me questions to check my understanding and help me learn more."

Adds an interactive element to help reinforce understanding of complex topics.

Multi-Level Explanation:

"Explain [topic] with increasing complexity in three paragraphs - first for a beginner, then for someone with basic knowledge, and finally for a colleague with technical understanding."

Creates explanations that can be used with different audiences or as a learning progression.

Data Analysis Prompts

Basic Marketing ROI Calculation:

Looking at this sales data, I need to calculate the Marketing ROI % for [specific time period] (marketing is included in the costs total). Please explain the formula step by step and show me how to set it up in Excel. Make it easy to understand for someone who isn't a finance expert!

Use with the Marketing & Sales Excel file. Great for learning how to get clear financial explanations without financial jargon.

Dataset Analysis & Insights:

Analyse this [type of] dataset and identify: * 3 unexpected findings that deserve attention * Critical areas for improvement based on the metrics * Key recommendations supported by the data Present findings in clear, concise bullet points suitable for an executive summary. Don't make things up!

Use with the REF2021 Results Excel file or other datasets. Demonstrates how to get focused insights and actionable recommendations from complex data.

Data Extraction & Conversion:

Please create an Excel file from this [document type] with columns for [column 1] and [column 2]

Use with the Shopping Information PDF or similar documents. Shows how AI can convert unstructured data into structured formats for easier analysis.

Automation & Workflow Prompts

Excel Macro Creation:

I need a macro for my [type] spreadsheet that calculates [specific calculation] from our [data types]. Include a chart showing [visualization elements] and conditional formatting to show when [metric] is [condition] e.g. [example]. Can you output a new Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook (.xlsm), the team has limited Excel expertise

Use with the Marketing & Sales Excel file or similar datasets. Demonstrates how to automate repetitive tasks for teams with limited technical skills.

Email Template Generator:

Create 3 reusable email templates for [specific scenario e.g., following up with clients who haven't responded]. Each template should have a slightly different tone (professional, friendly, and urgent). Include placeholder text for personalization and clear subject lines for each version.

Perfect for creating standardized communications that can be quickly customized and reused.

Process Documentation Creator:

Create a step-by-step standard operating procedure (SOP) for [specific process]. Include the following sections: Purpose, Scope, Responsibilities, Procedure Steps, Required Resources, and Quality Control. Format it in a way that's easy to follow with numbered steps and bullet points where appropriate.

Helps standardize and document workflows for training, consistency, and improvement.

Content Summarization

Meeting Notes Summarization:

Please summarize the following meeting transcript. Focus on the key points discussed, decisions made, action items, and any important deadlines mentioned. Ensure the summary is clear, concise, and organized. The summary should be no longer than 200 words: [INSERT TRANSCRIPT HERE]

Replace [INSERT TRANSCRIPT HERE] with your meeting text. Perfect for creating actionable meeting summaries from lengthy discussions.

Document to FAQ Conversion:

Convert this document into a comprehensive FAQ format. Create 10-15 frequently asked questions based on the most important information in the text. For each question, provide a clear, concise answer that captures the key points. Organize questions from basic to advanced topics. [INSERT DOCUMENT TEXT HERE]

Replace [INSERT DOCUMENT TEXT HERE] with your document content. Excellent for transforming lengthy texts into easy-to-navigate reference materials.

Format Control & Structure

Structured Table Format:

Return a table about [topic] with [number] columns, titled [column 1 name], [column 2 name], etc. and fill in [number] examples for each.

Simple demonstration of format control. Shows how to generate structured information in table format without needing any data files.

Advanced Prompt Engineering Example:

Take the Role of a [demographic details] What would be the name of a [product type] that might attract you? The tone should be [tone description] and not sound too [negative quality to avoid]. The name should not sound like any existing products in [market/region]. Provide [number] examples in a [number]-column array. Column one should contain the name. Column two should be what you rate that suggestion in order of one to ten, column three should explain your reasoning. Some examples would be [example 1], [example 2], [example 3].

This exercise combines role prompting, tone specification, constraints, structured format, and examples - perfect for learning advanced prompt engineering techniques.

The Matts Workshop Resources

AI Productivity Exercises

How to Use This Exercise:

Initial Prompt:

Follow-up Prompts (pick 2-3):

Quick Examples:

Workplace Applications:

Format Types You Can Request:

How This Works:

Elements to Chain Together:

How This Works:

Workshop Files

Sample AI Prompts

Brainstorming & Idea Generation

Role-Based Communication

Simplification & Explanation

Data Analysis Prompts

Automation & Workflow Prompts

Content Summarization

Format Control & Structure

Workshop Resources & Guides

Contact Information