Marc Schraepler von Gerlach

AI in everyday work

How I work with AI

I use AI almost everywhere: for writing, research, concepts, analysis and small programs. The difference is not the program. It is the preparation.

Most people start every chat from scratch. I don't. I give the AI a fixed set of standing instructions, the way a new employee gets an induction on their first day: who I am, how I work, what I don't want. It says, for example, that it should contradict me when my logic is weak. And that it should mark assumptions as assumptions.

For every client project I set up a separate workspace. It holds the knowledge for exactly that project: goals, decisions, contacts, tone. Everything is maintained in one place, in Notion. The AI looks things up there instead of me explaining everything again each time.

Whatever repeats, I write down once as an instruction. How a quote is structured. How I phrase emails. Every piece of feedback makes these instructions a little better.

One rule always applies: the AI proposes, a person approves. In a family office, for example, it pre-sorts incoming mail and suggests deadlines. A person makes the decision.

I test new tools on my own tasks first. I only recommend what has passed that test.

Tools

I have tried many AI programs. Most of them I deleted again after a few weeks. These four I still use every day. You don't need any technical knowledge for them.

What do you want to do?

  • Ask something quickly, collect ideas, draft a text → ChatGPT
  • Write or revise a longer text: report, letter, job application → Claude
  • Work with Gmail, Calendar and an Android phone → Gemini
  • Understand your own documents: contract, manual, course notes, minutes → Gemini Notebook

Golden rules for getting started

This is the essence of many hours of trying things out. Follow these nine points and you will have a usable result within ten minutes.

  1. 1. One program is enough. Don't install twenty apps. Start with one, ChatGPT is the safest choice, and only add a second when you hit a limit.
  2. 2. Start with a real task. Don't just play around. Take something that needs doing today anyway: the reply to the property manager, the shopping list for the weekend.
  3. 3. Speak instead of typing. On your phone, tap the microphone and talk as you would to an assistant. “I need to write to my landlord that the heating is gurgling. Make it polite but firm.” You don't need ready-made commands.
  4. 4. Say who it's for. “For my tax adviser” produces a different text than “for my granddaughter”. The more the AI knows about the occasion and the reader, the better the answer.
  5. 5. Follow up instead of starting over. The first answer is a draft. “Shorter.” “More formal.” “Explain it for someone with no background.”
  6. 6. One topic per chat. One for trip planning, one for taxes, one for the club. The AI remembers what has already been said in the same chat. Throw everything into one window and you get worse answers.
  7. 7. Check important things yourself. The AI always sounds convinced, even when it is wrong. Check numbers, names, dates and legal questions yourself.
  8. 8. Tell it once who you are. In the settings you can record who you are and how you want answers, for example “short, no jargon”. That then applies to every new chat. For me it is the single most important setting.
  9. 9. Enter nothing confidential. No passwords, account numbers, health data or company documents. And switch off in the settings that your chats may be used to train the AI.