A WorkLighter how-to

How to start using AI when you're not technical

You start using AI by paying about £20 a month for one assistant and talking to it in your web browser or its app on your phone. Write down how your business works once (about twenty minutes), pin it in the assistant's settings, then hand over one weekly chore, like quotes or meeting notes. That's the whole method. No code to write, no course to sit through.

If that sounds too thin, good. Most people stall because they treat AI as a subject to study. Treat it like a new member of staff instead. You wouldn't send a new receptionist on a six-hour video course before letting them answer the phone; you'd explain how the place runs and give them one job.

What do you actually need to buy?

One AI assistant, about £20 a month. Nothing else. An assistant is a chat window: you type or dictate a request in plain English and it writes back. It runs in the web browser you already use, the phone app works the same way, and signing up involves less form-filling than online banking. There's no installation project.

Which one? It matters less than the adverts suggest. The big names are all good enough at the two things you'll use them for: writing things for you, and making sense of things sent to you. Pick one, pay for the standard plan rather than limping along on the free tier, and stop shopping. One is plenty.

Write your business context down once

This is the most valuable twenty minutes of the whole exercise, and almost nobody bothers. Every assistant has a place to save standing instructions: look in the settings for something called custom instructions or projects. Whatever you save there is read before every answer, in every chat, without you repeating yourself. It's the induction folder you never got round to writing for a human.

So write the business down, once. What you do and where. What you sell and what it costs. Who your customers are. How you like to sound when you write to them. Pin all that and the assistant stops sounding like a chirpy marketing intern and starts sounding like someone who works for you. Skip it and every chat opens with the same wrong guesses, which is how most people decide AI is overhyped. The note makes the difference, not the tool.

Paste this into that settings box and fill in the brackets:

I run a small business. Keep this context in mind for everything you write for me.

What I do: [your trade and where you work, e.g. a six-chair salon in Nottingham]
What I sell: [your main services, with prices]
My customers: [who they are and what they ask for most]
How I sound: [e.g. friendly and plain, short sentences, no exclamation marks, sign off with my first name]
House rules: [anything fixed, e.g. deposits for Saturday bookings, no discounts on colour work]

When you write anything a customer will see, use this context, keep it short, and ask me for any missing detail rather than guessing. Never invent a price.

Which chore should you hand over first?

Pick one job that turns up every week and that you resent, because repetition is where the time comes back. Don't set out to "learn AI"; open-ended study is exactly how this fizzles out. Set out to lose a chore. Good first candidates:

• Quotes and estimates, if you send a few every week.
• Replies to the questions customers ask again and again.
• Meeting or call notes turned into a short summary with actions.
• Chase-up messages for overdue invoices that stay polite.
• Review replies, including the stinkers.

Do this week's version with the assistant: paste in whatever you'd normally start from (the enquiry, your scrawled notes) and ask for a draft. When it's wrong, say so the way you'd tell a junior, and the next draft comes back closer. Once the chore stays handled for a few weeks, take the next one.

If quotes are your chore, you can read a complete worked example before spending a penny: Recipe 2 of The Time Refund, "Quotes and estimates on autopilot", is free to read in full. It saves 45 to 90 minutes a week if you send five or more quotes a week. Setup takes about 45 minutes and needs no tools beyond the assistant.

What should you ignore for now?

Most of what's being shouted about. Three things in particular:

• Agents: software that sends the email itself and books things on your behalf, rather than drafting them for you to approve. Impressive demos. Keep them away from real customers until checking AI drafts is second nature.
• Automation platforms: tools that connect your other software together so things happen on their own. Useful one day, but they turn a twenty-minute start into a weekend of plumbing.
• Anything sold with a countdown timer. If the offer expires at midnight, so does the seller's interest in whether it works for you.

So when is a second tool worth it? The rule in The Time Refund is blunt: don't buy anything until you actually need it, meaning a specific weekly job your assistant can't do. That bar is higher than it looks. Eight of the playbook's ten recipes run on the one assistant you already pay for. Until a real job forces the issue, about £20 a month is your entire AI budget.

Where does AI still need your eyes?

Anywhere a number is heading for a customer. An assistant writes by predicting likely words, so it can state a wrong price with the same confidence as a right one. The quote total, the invoice amount, the VAT, the date you've offered: check them every time, before anything leaves. It takes seconds and it isn't optional.

It also knows nothing you haven't told it. If your prices went up and your pinned note didn't, it will keep quoting the old ones, confidently. When something changes in the business, update the note the same day.

Treat it like a bright new hire in their first week: good drafts, but your signature. Nothing goes out unread.

Your first week, in short

1. Sign up for one AI assistant on its standard paid plan, about £20 a month.
2. Write your business context and pin it in the settings. Twenty minutes, once.
3. Pick one weekly chore and do this week's version with the assistant.
4. Check every number before a customer sees it.
5. Buy nothing else yet.