Don't use AI to write
Writing requires thinking, don't let an AI do the thinking for you.
Tools like Claude, Codex/ChatGPT and Gemini are great. I use them all day (both at work and personally) for coding, research, digging through data, collecting information etc. But what I don’t use them for is writing, and I strongly suggest you do the same.
Don’t skip the thinking!
Writing forces you to deeply think about the problem you’re solving, and what you’re trying to communicate to your readers. This is why writing is hard, but also why writing is such a useful tool to help you think. If you generate a document based on some bullet points, or whatever the source is, you’re skipping the thinking step. The result probably looks “pretty good”, and you’re likely going to accept it with some minor tweaks. But did you think deeply about the problem? Does the document really reflect the most important things you wanted to communicate? Probalby not. But you’ll never know, because you skipped the thinking step.
The issue is not that AI tools are bad at writing (to the contrary), they’re just bad at thinking and coming up with new ideas. And that’s exactly where you come in!
If you’re worried that this will slow you down, ask yourself what your added value is if you’re just prompting an AI to do the thinking for you.
So no AI to help with documents at all!?
Once my initial writing, and thinking, is done, I actually do use AI to further improve the document. I’ll use prompts like “Read this doc, what questions would you have?”, or “what is the most important take away in this doc?”. This is similar to asking someone to prove read before you publish. Try to refrain from asking an agent to make fixes or improvements; just ask it questions. Based on the feedback you get back, you’re back in thinking mode how to best address the feedback.
AI tools are also very useful while preparing to write. Collect supporting data, structure data, and ask question about data, where “data” can really be anything.