I used to dread opening my inbox. Here's what changed. 🐾

Four prompts that turned email from the most exhausting part of my day into something I actually handle. The one that saved the most relationship damage surprised me.

Welcome to Phase II.

If you’ve been here for the Foundation Series — eight weeks of AI for real life — thank you. What you built over those eight weeks was real and I heard it in your replies every week. Now we’re going deeper. Ten topics that came directly from what you told me you needed. Topic one: email.

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I want to tell you something honest. For years I spent more time on email than on almost anything else in my day — and the cost wasn’t just hours. It was the low-grade mental weight of it. The emails waiting. The ones I’d read and closed without deciding. The responses I’d been meaning to write. The guilt of the thread I’d let go too long.

That weight was there even when I wasn’t at my computer. Email was living rent-free in my head.

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Four things that changed everything

The first thing I changed was the response I’d been putting off. I stopped trying to compose it from scratch and started giving AI the situation — the goal, what I wanted to avoid, the tone I needed — and getting a draft in ninety seconds. Then I edit until every word feels like mine. The email that had been sitting for a week gets sent in twenty minutes.

The second thing was length. I used to spend twenty minutes compressing a too-long draft or trying to expand a short note into a proper email. Now either direction takes two minutes.

The third thing was templates. I realized I was writing the same three or four emails every week from scratch. Building reusable templates once — in my own voice — gave me back hours every month.

The fourth thing surprised me the most. I started asking AI to help me decide whether something should even be an email. Some situations — the complaint, the misunderstanding, the request that needs back-and-forth — belong on the phone. That decision, made deliberately instead of defaulting to email, has saved me more relationship damage than any other change I’ve made.

🎬 Watch Sunday’s video: All four prompts on screen — including the right channel decision prompt that I think is the most underrated idea in this whole week.

👉 Sunday video link

⬇️ ALL 4 EMAIL PROMPTS FROM THIS VIDEO ⬇️

📌 Prompt 1 — The Response You've Been Overthinking
"I need to respond to this email and I've been putting it off: [paste or describe email]. I want to accomplish: [your goal]. I want to avoid: [what not to do]. Please draft a response that is [warm / direct / professional / firm but kind] and under [word count] words. I'll edit before sending."

📌 Prompt 2 — Length Transformation
Choose one: SUMMARIZE (pull out 3 key points + action items from a long email) / COMPRESS (tighten my draft to under [word count] words) / EXPAND (turn my short note into a complete professional email). Then paste your content.

📌 Prompt 3 — Recurring Email Template
"I send a [weekly / monthly] email to [audience]. Purpose: [describe]. Tone: [describe]. Please create a reusable template with: (1) a flexible subject line formula, (2) a standard opening I can personalize, (3) sections for my typical content, (4) a consistent closing."

📌 Prompt 4 — Right Channel Decision
"I received this email: [paste or describe]. Relationship and context: [describe]. Should I respond by email, phone, or in person — and why? If email: what's the most important thing my response needs to accomplish? If call: what should I prepare to say?"

Here’s what I want to know: how much time do you spend on email in a typical week? Hit reply and give me your honest guess — an hour, two hours, more than you want to admit. I’ll share what I hear back in Wednesday’s post. 🐾

— Debbie
AI Puppy Playbook