019 - I Hope This Email Finds You Well
Using GenAI in your writing tasks. Effectively.
Hey Friends! Welcome back to my channel. Blogletter. Whatever, you know what I'm saying. Lots of stuff has happened since the last time we caught up – I received the Microsoft MVP Award (from Microsoft), which is an acknowledgment for my work sharing Automation and Microsoft 365 information; I released my most recent class 'The Birdzzz and The Beez' which is helpful for all the new learners but created with new tax and accounting staff in mind; and I completed an intense six-week course on public speaking with Misty Megia which was the best online learning experience I've ever had, both in terms of content and also community.
And now I'm back. So, let's get into it!
Generative AI Loves to Make Words
I made this slide for my very first presentation on Generative AI at ENGAGE23 in June 2023.
This is the Garbage Bot. It's still one of the most favorite slides I've ever created. The problem is that I *knew* the avalanche of lousy content would come out on social media and from third-party marketing sources. I missed how the professional world would also enthusiastically embrace the easy output and outsource all words to the Garbage Bot.
And, before we go on, I absolutely encourage outsourcing word stuff to Generative AI. But… not like this.
So, we're going to discuss three problems with outsourcing your word stuff to Generative AI tools like ChatGPT or Copilot and then some ways to effectively use them in your practices.
ChatGPT Wrote That, Didn't It?
You just got a really challenging assignment to write word stuff. Whether it's an email, a marketing document, or a report – it doesn't matter; some of us enjoy writing, and some would rather pour asphalt on a 125-degree day. (And that's fine; we all have different gifts; otherwise, we'd be boring like robots). So, you think, "I'll just use this ChatGPT/Copilot thing I keep hearing about to do the writing, and then I don't have to do anything."
Here are the problems when you take that approach –
ChatGPT/Copilot (and other GenAI applications) have words and writing patterns that they favor. They have a "voice", just like you do when you write. Because so much content is being created by these tools now, it's pretty easy to see when someone has used ChatGPT/Copilot to create something.
This isn't an issue when you're creating documentation that nobody really wants to read anyway—like policy documents. If someone looks at that and sees that ChatGPT wrote it, their reaction will probably be, "That's a great idea; I'm going to do that, too."
The problem comes up when you write something that is human-to-human that is expected to *be human*. So, personalized emails to clients or co-workers is an example of where a level of *human* is expected. Yes, business language does its best to remove most of the human from our communication. However, it still has some level of connection. When the person receiving the email senses that you couldn't even be fussed to put any effort into communicating with them, that's NOT a great relationship-building/maintenance experience.
Alternatively, when the writing exercise is also being used to showcase your creativity or unique value proposition, that is NOT a good time to use ChatGPT. We'll talk a little bit more about that later, but the message to the readers is essentially that you have no creativity or unique value proposition. And that might not be true! But it's certainly the message that's being conveyed.
To that last point, if you can create it with ChatGPT, guess what? So can I. Probably word-for-word even. It might take me a couple of tries to guess your prompt, but most folks don't have the prompting skills yet to get anything other than "Basic ChatGPT" responses.
One of the places this is popping up, hilariously (for me because I don't have to evaluate the submissions), is submitting abstracts to speak at conferences. If you've not been in the conference speaking world, most of the time, a big conference will put out a call for speakers, and everyone will submit "abstracts" on the last day. An "abstract" is the words you see in the conference session catalog describing the session. That description is typically provided by the speaker who wants to present and sometimes edited by the event organizers.
Now, let's combine 1 + 2. ChatGPT has a "voice" and can be easily replicated if you use the same prompt. Most folks don't have the skill to create more advanced prompts, so they're using the same/similar prompts…
That's right – conferences are not only receiving an almost overwhelming number of submissions that they have to sort through, BUT they are also receiving word-for-word identical submissions from different sources. This means, most likely, all of the submissions created by ChatGPT will just be tossed – there's no way to evaluate the submission's merit or the speaker's skill. And while it took possibly 10 seconds to create, it'll take even less time to reject.
Sometimes, writing something out yourself is actually part of the learning process. I sometimes feel selfish as a content creator because I choose the topics that I want to learn about/talk about, and I always get a ton of knowledge from creating the content. Fortunately for me, the things I want to learn about align with what other people want to learn about/talk about, so it works out nicely.
But if I used ChatGPT to create my content, I might learn something on the surface but miss the deeper understanding of a topic. For me, the learning process goes – think of a topic, research the topic, take an idea jumble and convert it to a word jumble, think about a topic from the reader's perspective, and translate the topic so it in a language readers can understand. That's A TON of mental chewing right there, especially when it comes to translating the information.
And I'm not saying we need to learn everything about everything. An easy example of this is IRS "news" – the IRS makes announcements all the time. And then they change their mind. And then new laws come out. I might want to do a deep dive into, say, the nature of retirement distributions to QTIP trusts in the post-SECURE world, but I certainly don't have a desire to deep dive into the IRS's "dirty dozen" tax schemes. So, as with all things, "it depends". 🤷🏻♀️
Things You Should *Definitely* Have ChatGPT/Copilot Write
Now that I've scared you into thinking that you should never use GenAI to create word stuff let's talk about some things that you will definitely benefit from having ChatGPT write about.
Emails
Wait, didn't I say "no emails" above? Yes, I did. But I'm going to give you an email tip and a Snaggable Prompt in the last section to help with writing emails. Emails are such a huge way that we communicate currently, and they're also a massive time sink that nobody fully reads anyway. Plus, how many emails have you just sat on writing because they were too loaded with emotions?
Feedback (to yourself)
Maybe you don't have ChatGPT/Copilot write your work, but you have it give you feedback to help you improve your writing. My writing process is lots of words… refinement…, and ChatGPT cleaning up around the edges or bringing in perspective I didn't think about.
Feedback (to others)
I don't mean having ChatGPT/Copilot write out employee evaluations because that is another situation where "half-assed" is worse than "no-assed". I mean that in our profession, we're often asking our younger staff or administrative staff to make changes to their work. And we're not always the best at it. In fact, we semi-joke about "Review Note PTSD" from public accounting. ChatGPT/Copilot will always tend to be positive. A proper prompt setup can transform what might be brusque review notes into something that helps a person grow.
Some Tips and a Snaggable Prompt!
You don't have to let ChatGPT say everything on its mind. In human-to-human interaction, it's rude to say "shush." In your interactions with ChatGPT and Copilot, you give them word limits.
Give it a tone to work with – my article on adjectives should give you some different tones to play around with.
Ask it to give you an outline to hang your words on, so it's still helping you create your content, but you're actually writing the words. Just know that if you just take the "out-of-the-box" outline it gives you, you will still get the exact outline everyone else gets.
This is why a lot of the GenAI courses follow the same topic progression – they just use ChatGPT to create the content without having prompting skills to create something new and exciting.
Consider formatting and readability – for example, the review notes would probably look great in a table so that you can also have a column for response and checking off that it's done.
Here's a Snaggable Prompt for your email creation activities. Remember that you can use elements of this prompt to draft emails with Outlook's Copilot.
"Hi [GenAI], I am a [enter job role/profession] in a [describe work culture/environment]. You are an administrative assistant tasked with managing my emails. Your job is to craft an engaging but concise email, use a warm and professional tone, limit email creation output to 150 words, and use headers and bullet points where appropriate for readability. The first sentence in every email should be [Something friendly but not default]. The last sentence before the signature should be [Something friendly but not default]."
If all fails, just “GenAI Launder” through different AI models…
I mean… they all have different voices, so… (This is just a joke. I think.)
Thanks for hanging out with me! I hope you got some ideas on how to more effectively use ChatGPT/Copilot in your writing. Because I want you to use it! Just… not like that. If you want to learn more communication techniques or even about using GenAI in your tax and accounting practice, I'd suggest checking out my 'The Birdzzz and The Beezzz' course. Lots of Snaggable Prompts to save you from having to build your own.
Happy Chatting!