How to Use AI as Your Chief of Staff (Not Just Your Copywriter)
Stop Using AI Like a Typewriter
Most people use AI to write faster. And for many working in PR, it's a godsend to blast past the dreaded blank page. But if you're only using it for content creation, you're leaving 80% of the value on the table.
The real power of large language models isn't just writing. It's helping you think, plan, and manage better. Used correctly, AI becomes your personal chief of staff. It tracks projects, spots problems, and gives you operational clarity most people only get from a human assistant.
Here's how to make that shift.
First, Stop Asking the Wrong Question
Most professionals approach AI thinking: "What can AI do for me?"
Wrong question.
Ask instead:
Where do I waste time?
Where do I lose visibility?
What work keeps slipping through the cracks?
These high-friction zones deliver the most AI value. Look for:
Tasks you repeat constantly
Decisions that eat up your day
Work scattered across different tools and teams
Notes you never get around to organizing
Projects where you're always putting out fires instead of planning ahead
Start Simple: Your Daily Chief of Staff
Before you connect tools or build complex systems, train your AI to manage your day. I use this prompt every morning:
"You are my personal assistant. Each morning, help me prepare by:
Summarizing today's meetings from this list: [paste calendar]
Listing my top priorities based on these notes: [paste tasks/emails]
Flagging anything urgent I might overlook."
Run this same structure daily. The consistency trains your AI to understand your patterns and priorities. After a week, you'll notice it gets better at knowing what actually matters to you.
Extract Action Items from Chaos
AI reads handwriting surprisingly well. I take photos of scribbled meeting notes or those long task lists I write over coffee and use this prompt:
"Extract all action items from this photo. Organize into a table with: task description, owner, deadline, and topic. Ignore discussion notes. If no owner is listed, mark as 'Me.' If no deadline exists, mark as 'TBD.'"
No more lost actions or forgotten commitments. And honestly, it reads my terrible handwriting better than I do half the time.
Manage Multiple Projects
Stop juggling project status in your head. Feed your AI everything you're tracking and ask:
"Review these projects. For each, identify what's going well, what's blocked, what's overdue, and what's urgent. Group related tasks. Output as a clean table."
Give it context about your priorities and working style. I check in with mine every few days, give it updates, ask what I should focus on. You get consistent reviews of what's on track, what's behind, and what you've completely forgotten about.
Connect Your Tools (When You're Ready)
Once basic prompts work, connect your systems. The goal is simple: get AI out of isolation and into your actual workflow.
Option 1: Simple Dashboard Create a shared Notion page or Google Sheet. Each morning, paste:
Calendar events
Task updates
Email highlights
Project status
Then ask: "Based on my dashboard, what are my top 3 priorities? What risks should I watch? What can I delegate or ignore?"
Option 2: Automated Feeds Use Make.com or Zapier to automatically send data from your tools into one place your AI can read. Think:
Calendar entries to Slack
Flagged emails to Google Sheets
Project updates to Notion
Your AI gets a unified view without you copying and pasting all day.
Option 3: File System Assistant With Claude, you can create a personal knowledge system:
"Create a file system to act as my personal assistant. Build folders to store information about my projects, priorities, and work patterns. I want you to add to and pull from these files as we work together."
Claude will build and maintain its own database about you. It learns your patterns and preferences over time. It's like having an assistant who actually remembers what you talked about last week.
Train Your AI Like a Junior Team Member
The key to all this: treat your AI like you would a new hire.
Tell it what matters to you
Correct it when it gets priorities wrong
Add context as you go
Ask it to spot patterns in how you work
Every conversation becomes a feedback loop. You're not just getting help. You're building a system that thinks the way you do.
The Real Upgrade
Anyone can write faster with AI. But when your AI knows your workload, recognizes your patterns, tracks your actions, and flags what matters before you even notice it, that's the upgrade you should want.
Start with simple daily prompts. Add connections when you're ready. Focus on the friction points that actually slow you down.
Once you've built this operational partnership, the blank page becomes the least of your problems. You'll wonder how you ever managed without it.
