By Elton Jones
With these three shortcuts, you’ll save the same amount of time or more when prompting our most reliable AI chatbots
One day, I had a simple realization: instead of retyping the same prompts over and over, why wasn’t I just saving them?
That question changed how I use AI.
From there, I started thinking bigger — not about “better prompts,” but about better systems. If AI is supposed to save us time, using it shouldn’t feel like extra work. For me, that meant turning my favorite chatbots into something closer to digital assembly lines rather than one-off assistants I had to constantly retrain.
Once I stopped over-prompting and started building repeatable routines, ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude became dramatically more useful in my day-to-day work as a journalist.
Here are three habits I adopted that now save me up to 10 hours a week — and could make your own AI workflow faster, smoother, and far less frustrating.
Create and save reusable prompts for daily tasks
During my days as a novice with AI, I got into the habit of repeating the same requests over and over when I asked my chatbots to compose a professional email, an article aimed at gamers who enjoy fighters, a social post meant to attract fellow All Elite Wrestling fans, and more. Eventually, I built myself a Google Doc full of reusable prompts designed specifically for those kinds of AI requests and more. My rule became “if I typed out a prompt more than once, I might as well save it for later use.”
For example, during my freelancing hustle, I used to repeatedly ask different chatbots to “write a professional email summarizing my experience as a journalist and offering my services as a freelance writer.” After typing out some version of that prompt more times than I can count, I finally created and saved a custom version that included my background, preferred tone, and specific goals for those outreach emails.
This is where ChatGPT is especially useful. You can go into its settings, open Personalization, and add custom instructions that shape how it writes — from tone and style to how formal or casual you want it to be.
Split a massive request into more focused assignments
I’ve always loved that you can ask one AI chatbot to research a topic, outline the key points, and turn it into a polished article in minutes. But I started noticing that my “do everything” prompts sometimes led to small mistakes — the kind I knew another chatbot wouldn’t make. That’s when I began dividing big tasks across my three favorite AI tools based on what each one does best.
When I set out to write a brand-new anime-themed piece about the most powerful “Dragon Ball Z” characters, I kicked things off with ChatGPT to brainstorm headline ideas. Then I turned to Perplexity to gather accurate, up-to-date information with clear sources to help structure my article.
Once I had a draft, I handed it over to Claude for final edits, since it’s one of the strongest AI tools for refining writing. Treating AI like a relay race — with each chatbot taking the baton for the part it’s best at — helped me work faster, think more clearly, and avoid overloading any single tool.
Let AI brainstorm your plans, then turn the best ideas into polished first drafts
Writer’s block is one of my most mortal foes. I tend to have tons of lightbulb moments whenever I’m asked to cook up a new pitch, but I just as many moments of falling into a creative drought. I got tired of running into a mental wall and began using my top AI chatbots to become my idea generator and first draft producer.
I began saving more time for actually writing out my pitches instead of sitting in complete silence while trying to come up with my initial concepts. It’s always worth reaching out to your chatbots to get the ball rolling on turning your imperfect thoughts into fully-realized plans.
ChatGPT became my go-to for cooking up short first drafts, while Claude stood out for producing longer and more detailed drafts. Gemini is also a godsend for generating drafts since it can pull information from my Gmail messages, Docs, and spreadsheets to build the context it needs for first drafts.
I also used my chatbots to turn my wall of notes into more structured instructions and even spread them across easy-to-read charts for future reference. Rewriting is a part of the job for a writer such as myself. But I began saving time by asking my AI assistants to generate the sorts of ideas and first drafts that could inspire me to zero in on an idea and follow a structure that works.
The takeaway
By adapting these three practices, I saved myself more time for the more creative endeavors in my life. Saving my most-used prompts for later use, splitting the work of one chatbot among several others, and being presented with starter ideas that can then be turned into first drafts morphed into my three most reliable routines whenever I used AI.
Source: Tom’s Guide
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