Building Your AI Toolkit

The Right Tools, in the Right Order

🔄 Quick Recall: Over the past five lessons, you’ve learned AI techniques for scheduling, email, meetings, documents, and project coordination. Now you’ll select the specific tools that fit your workflow and build an integrated system.

The worst thing you can do is try to adopt every AI tool at once. The best thing: pick your biggest time drain, solve it with one tool, master it, then expand. This lesson gives you the framework.

The EA AI Stack

Here’s the complete landscape, organized by function:

Start here: A general AI assistant (ChatGPT or Claude) plus one specialized tool for your biggest pain point.

The 3-Phase Adoption Plan

Phase 1: Foundation (Weeks 1-2)

Pick your two starter tools and commit to using them daily:

Tool 1: General AI assistant — Use for email drafting, meeting briefs, and document creation. This covers the widest range of tasks with a single tool.

Tool 2: Your biggest time drain — If scheduling eats your day, start with Reclaim AI. If email is the bottleneck, start with SaneBox. If meetings are the problem, start with Otter.ai.

Week 1: Learn the tool. Use it for every relevant task, even when it feels slower than your manual process. (It will feel slower initially — that’s normal.)

Week 2: Refine your prompts and settings. By now, you’ve found what works and what needs adjustment.

Phase 2: Expansion (Weeks 3-6)

Add one new tool every 1-2 weeks:

• Week 3-4: Add your second-priority specialized tool
• Week 5-6: Add your third tool or upgrade a free tool to premium

Only add a new tool when the previous one is habitual. If you’re still thinking about whether to use Tool 1, don’t add Tool 2.

Phase 3: Integration (Weeks 7-8)

Connect your tools so information flows between them:

• Meeting transcriptions → action items in project tracker
• Calendar events → pre-meeting briefs generated automatically
• Email drafts → approved and sent from one workflow
• Project updates → compiled into weekly executive brief

✅ Quick Check: Why does integration matter? Because isolated tools create “swivel chair” work — copying information from one tool to another. When your meeting notes app automatically sends action items to your project tracker, which automatically reminds owners of deadlines, which automatically compiles status into an executive brief — that’s when AI truly saves 10+ hours per week. Individual tools save time; integrated tools transform your workflow.

Prompt Library: Your Secret Weapon

Build a personal prompt library — tested, refined prompts for your recurring tasks:

Store your prompts in a Notion page, Google Doc, or text expander tool (TextExpander, Raycast snippets). The key is instant access — when you need to draft a meeting decline email, you should be able to pull up your refined prompt in under 5 seconds.

Getting Executive Buy-In

If your executive hasn’t explicitly approved AI tools, use the “invisible improvement” approach:

Step 1: Start quietly. Use free AI tools for your own drafting and preparation. Don’t announce it.

Step 2: Let quality speak. Your meeting briefs become more thorough. Email responses go out faster. Documents are better structured. Your executive notices.

Step 3: Reveal when asked. When they comment on the improvement, share that AI assisted the process. Offer to show them what’s possible.

Step 4: Propose expansion. With proven results, suggest specific tools that could save them time directly (like a scheduling tool or email triage).

✅ Quick Check: Why is this approach more effective than presenting a formal AI adoption proposal? Because executives are busy and skeptical of technology pitches. They respond to demonstrated results, not theoretical benefits. When they’ve already experienced better meeting briefs for two weeks, the conversation isn’t about whether AI works — it’s about how to get more of what’s already working.

Key Takeaways

• Start with 2 tools (a general AI assistant + one specialized tool for your biggest time drain), master them, then expand
• Follow the 3-phase plan: Foundation (weeks 1-2), Expansion (weeks 3-6), Integration (weeks 7-8)
• Build a prompt library for recurring tasks — tested, refined prompts you can access in under 5 seconds
• Use the “invisible improvement” strategy for skeptical executives — let quality results speak before revealing the AI behind them
• Evaluate tools honestly: track time before and after to confirm real savings

Up Next: In the final lesson, you’ll design your complete AI-enhanced daily workflow — a morning-to-evening routine that integrates everything you’ve learned into a sustainable, strategic work pattern.