Working With AI: A Practical Guide
This Working With AI Guide is Provided by DTC Inc. | Workshop Participant Takeaway | Version 1.0 | September 2026
A practical guide for thinking, creating, learning, and getting work done with AI.
📄 Prefer a downloadable copy? A print-ready PDF of this guide is attached to this page. Look for Working With AI: A Practical Guide (PDF) in the Attachments panel.
AI is much more than a faster way to search for information or write an email. Used well, it becomes a thinking and working partner: helping you organize information, explore ideas, solve problems, learn new things, create, communicate, challenge your thinking, and get work done more effectively.
You don't need to be an AI expert. You don't need to know the perfect prompt. You need to learn how to work with it.
🎯 1. Start With a Different Question
Most people begin with "What can AI do?" A better question is: "What am I trying to accomplish, and how could AI help?"
Pay attention when you catch yourself thinking any of the following:
- This takes forever.
- I don't know where to start.
- I need to organize all of this.
- I have too much information to sort through.
- I need to write this.
- I wish I had someone to bounce this off of.
- I don't understand this.
- There has to be an easier way.
- I've done this manually five times already.
- I wonder if there's another way to think about this.
Every one of those is an opening to ask: could AI help me here?
🪜 2. Move Beyond the Google Mindset
There are different levels of working with AI. Most people stop at the first one. The further down this progression you go, the more useful AI becomes.
| Level | Name | You are asking for | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Search | "Find something for me." | Useful, but only the beginning. |
| 2 | Do | "Create something for me." | Draft an email. Summarize a document. Build a checklist. Organize notes. |
| 3 | Think With Me | "Help me work through this." | Explore possibilities. Challenge an idea. Identify what you're missing. Compare approaches. Solve a problem together. |
| 4 | Know My World | "Understand the context around what I'm doing." | Give AI appropriate information about your role, objectives, preferences, organization, project, previous work, and constraints. |
| 5 | Build & Repeat | "We figured out a good way to do this. Help me make it repeatable." | Turn successful work into reusable prompts, templates, workflows, projects, or processes. |
💬 3. A Simple Way to Talk to AI
Forget trying to write the perfect prompt. Remember three things: Context, Intent, Conversation.
| Element | The question it answers | What to include |
|---|---|---|
| Context | What does AI need to understand? | Who are you? What's happening? Who is involved? What has already happened? What constraints exist? What information or documents would help? |
| Intent | What are you actually trying to accomplish? | Not the task itself. The outcome you need the task to produce. |
| Conversation | What happens after the first answer? | React the way you would with a colleague. Tell it what's wrong. Ask questions. Add missing context. Push back. Ask for alternatives. |
Intent in practice
| Instead of | "Write an email." |
|---|---|
| Try | "I need this person to understand why we're changing the process, feel clear about what happens next, and respond by Friday." |
That second version is your actual intent. And the back and forth that follows is not overhead.
The conversation is part of the work.
🗣️ 4. Useful Things to Say to AI
You don't need complicated language. Steal any of these.
To get a better answer
- "Ask me questions before you answer."
- "What information would make your answer better?"
- "Explain this like I'm completely new to it."
- "This is too complicated. Simplify it."
- "That doesn't sound like me. Ask me questions so you can understand my style better."
To pressure test your thinking
- "What am I missing?"
- "Challenge my thinking."
- "What assumptions am I making?"
- "Give me three different approaches."
- "Don't just agree with me. Tell me where my thinking may be wrong."
To move the work forward
- "Take all of this messy information and help me organize it."
- "What would you do next?"
- "Now turn this into a checklist I can actually use."
⭐ And one of the most useful questions of all: "What else could you help me do with this that I haven't thought to ask?"
🔁 5. Let AI Teach You How to Use AI
You do not need to become a prompt engineer. AI can help you get better at working with AI.
| When you get | Say this |
|---|---|
| A great result | "This worked really well. Create a reusable prompt I can use next time to get this kind of result. Include placeholders for anything that will change." Or simply: "Turn what we just did into a repeatable workflow." |
| A bad result | "This isn't what I was looking for. Help me understand what information or direction was missing from my request." |
| No idea where to begin | "I want to accomplish [X], but I don't know the best way to use AI for it. Interview me and help me figure it out." |
You don't have to know the right way to use AI before you start. Ask AI to help you figure out the right way.
🧱 6. Don't Keep Starting From Zero
Not all context belongs in every prompt. Think about information in three buckets.
| Bucket | What belongs there |
|---|---|
| Today's context | Information unique to the task you're doing right now. |
| Reusable prompt or workflow | Something you do repeatedly and want AI to help you do consistently. |
| Persistent context | Information that stays relatively stable: your role, responsibilities, preferences, communication style, organization, ongoing projects, and goals. |
Depending on the platform and account you're using, persistent context may be handled through features such as custom instructions, memory or personalization, projects and workspaces, reference documents and files, or organizational instructions.
The specific features will keep changing. The principle won't:
Give AI the context it needs without starting over every time.
🧰 7. Which AI Should I Use?
You don't need to use every AI tool. Start with the work, then choose the tool.
| Tool | Especially useful for |
|---|---|
| Gemini | Work that already lives inside the Google ecosystem. Depending on your account and available features, it can work alongside Gmail, Docs, Drive, Sheets, and other Google Workspace applications. |
| ChatGPT | A broad AI working environment for thinking, writing, planning, research, files, ongoing projects, learning, and creative work. Available capabilities depend on your account and settings. |
| Claude | Another powerful general AI environment, particularly useful for working through substantial information, documents, writing, analysis, projects, and complex thinking. |
| And many others | There are specialized AI tools for meetings, research, images, video, coding, automation, presentations, and data. |
You don't need to chase every new tool. Learn how to work with AI well. That skill transfers.
🧠 8. AI Can Help You Think, Not Just Do
Some of the most powerful AI use doesn't save you from doing a task. It helps you think better about the task. Give AI an idea, then ask:
- "What's weak about this?"
- "What perspective haven't I considered?"
- "Argue the other side."
- "What questions should I be asking?"
- "Give me five possibilities I probably wouldn't think of myself."
- "Help me understand why this isn't working."
- "Teach me this instead of just giving me the answer."
- "I have an instinct about this but can't articulate it yet. Ask me questions and help me work through it."
AI is most valuable when it complements your thinking rather than replacing it.
⚖️ 9. Use Your Judgment
AI can be remarkably capable. It can also be confidently wrong. A polished answer is not necessarily a correct answer.
Verify what matters. Check important facts, numbers, dates, sources, medical information, legal or financial information, and other consequential conclusions before you act on them.
Be thoughtful about what you share. Before entering sensitive personal, health, financial, employee, participant, caregiver, or organizational information, make sure the system and account you are using are appropriate and approved for that information. When possible, remove identifying details AI doesn't actually need to complete the task.
AI can contribute capability. You retain judgment, responsibility, and accountability.
🚀 10. Build the AI Reflex
You will not become good at AI by memorizing a list of prompts. You'll become good by using it on real things. The progression is simple:
| Step | What you do |
|---|---|
| 1. Notice | Spot an opportunity inside work you are already doing. |
| 2. Try | Bring it to AI, even roughly. |
| 3. Iterate | Keep talking until the result improves. |
| 4. Build | Capture what worked. |
| 5. Repeat | Build on it next time. |
Over time, the biggest change isn't that you know more AI features. It's that you begin looking at work differently.
✅ Your 7-Day Challenge
Before you move on from this workshop, fill these in. Be specific enough that you could start tomorrow. Print this page or copy the table into your own notes.
| Commitment | My answer |
|---|---|
| One thing I will stop doing entirely manually | |
| One recurring activity I will begin doing with AI | |
| One place where I will build context instead of continually starting over | |
| Something I will try with AI in the next seven days |
💡 Keep one question nearby: "What else am I doing the old way simply because I haven't imagined another way yet?"
📞 Questions about using AI safely in your organization? Contact DTC at support@dtctoday.com or submit a ticket through the DTC Client Portal.