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How you create your summary or TL;DR in 30 minutes with AI

Are you struggling with AI for your content creation? You’re not alone

Not experiencing those high-speed benefits of AI when using it to create content? Most brands still struggle to embrace AI and apply it correctly, so it actually speeds you up instead of slows you down. No worries, you’re not the only one.

Did you know that just 1 in 5 executives feels comfortable about AI? It’s shocking that amongst the 45+ years old, about 26% use AI, and only 29% of organizations are prepared for AI. (Source)

Most marketers still use AI at a superficial level, just for suggestions, a bit of research, and minor rewriting. Usually, they’re stuck at ‘can you (re)write…’ or ‘how to say …’ Not using the immense power it can have for your work and saving you time.

What if I tell you I can write a clear and engaging summary of a big, fat, chunky PDF or article in under 30 minutes? Or create a TL;DR to capture the essence and key takeaways in only 25 minutes.

For clarity, TL;DR stands for ‘too long; didn’t read.’ It’s used to summarize a long read and dense it to the ‘why it matters’ while leaving out the details without sacrificing the structure. Usually, if done correctly, the TL;DR seduces the reader to read the original post as well.

On this page, you’ll learn

1. The pre-requisites so AI can speed you up instead of slowing down: personalize ChatGPT and learn to prompt
2. Why you need to invest time now to save time later
3. AI’s exponential growth widens the gap every day. Why you need to start today

It’s all explained with two examples: first, how you can create a summary, and second, how I created a TL;DR in minutes.

The pre-requisites for amazing AI experience

Two things really make a difference. One is using the Custom Instructions and GPTs available in the paid Chat-GPT. The other is learning to prompt, which brings your AI from good to great.

Go paid and use Custom Instructions and GPTs

First, you have to pay to play. Get a paid subscription to ChatGPT-4, or a CoPilot license. I’ll explain it by ChatGPT, I expect CoPilot to have similar features.

The difference between the free and the paid version is huge. At first glance, it looks the same and both use version 4o. The magic is in using Custom Instructions and building your own GPTs to automate common prompts and tasks.

Custom Instructions equal baking in your brand voice and add another characteristic to personalize ChatGPT. I strongly recommend using this feature. It will 10x your output, add personality, and decrease the time you need to review and rewrite AI’s output.

It’s a bit too long and much to give an example of my configuration on this page. → Improve your ChatGPT output: a 2 step guide for ‘Custom Instructions

A GPT is like your own template for specific prompts or tasks you use often. Building your own GPT sounds complicated and only for the pros, but it’s actually a piece of cake, and anyone can do it.

Ask ChatGPT for help or google for some best practices and examples. That’s how I learned it.

I have several GPTs for my newsroom, from ‘proofreading’ to check on my structure and clarity and give me suggestions for improvement’ to ‘writing cheeky, provoking LinkedIn captions with a focus on the first 90 characters.’

Don’t make a sh*tshow your prompts; master the art of prompting

The main reason why you’re not seeing results is the ‘sh*t in, sh*t out’ rule. If you can’t properly prompt, you will not get what you’re looking for.

Prompting and prompt engineering sounds impressive and complicated. In reality it’s like chatting with well, ChatGPT. It’s already in the name. Based on research, following 60+ online courses and some trial and error, here are a few tips for better prompting

• Long, detailed prompts. Ask ChatGPT, AI, exactly what you’re looking for as if you are giving 5-year-old instructions. Be clear. Be precise. My prompts usually are 3 to 5 lines, if not more.
• Prompt chaining. Weave your prompts together; it’s a chat. There’s no such thing as a one-prompt answer; always use follow-up prompts to get a better answer.
• Give feedback. If the answer is not what you’re looking for, tell that to ChatGPT. You can do that with a new prompt in the same chat, or just hit the ‘regenerate’ button.
• Add more prompts for specific needs. Imagine you’re writing something specifically for mobile. Then, add that to your prompt. It can be as simple as ‘please optimize for mobile reading, use short paragraphs, use sub-headers, use many break lines to create hierarchy, and use white spaces. Write in B1 intermediate English without jargon.’ Or add that you want the output in a bullet list, a top 10, or a table. The options are endless.
• Say ‘hi, please, and thank you’ to ChatGPT. My personal tip is to say ‘hi, please, and thank you’ while chatting with ChatGPT. It’s not that ChatGPT will do a better job, your input will be better as you’ll communicate with ChatGPT on an equal level, and therefore, the output will be better.

Example 1. Create a summary in minutes

Imagine you’re a team manager. You want to communicate the key highlight of this year’s annual report to your team and signal what matters the most to their daily marketing jobs.

Before AI, 4+ hours
You would have spent easily a few hours. It starts with reading the document, identifying the key takeaways, and applying them to your marketing team’s responsibilities. Once you have that, you have to weave these points into your existing marketing strategy and planning. And in the last step, you still have to write the email to your team.

I would guess, minimum of 4 hours, if not more.

With AI, 30 minutes
You can prompt ‘what are the key takeaways of the PDF for the marketing department? Can you create a bullet list with a maximum of 5 points”. In a succeeding prompt, you could ask ChatGPT, ‘Can you explain how this output aligns with the attached marketing strategy and what needs to change?’. With the first prompt, you attach the Annual Report in PDF; in the second, you attach the marketing strategy as a PDF of ppt.

A little tuning and tweaking in AI’s output. And in the last step, you ask ChatGPT, ‘Please write an email to my team with this output. Please use my tone of voice. Keep the email short and clear with a bullet list and a subject line that is engaging yet clear with the main key takeaway or impact on the marketing department’.

I would say about 30 minutes, and you’re ready to send the email to your team.

Why you need to invest time now, to save time later

Learning to use AI for content is a process. And that takes time. You have to play and fool around, iterate, test, play a bit more and find what works for you.

There’s no such thing as an AI-training and you’re there. Using AI for content is a different way of working with different processes. Once you have that set, the best thing is that it frees up your headspace to do more strategic thinking about what you want to communicate and why that matters to your customer.

Investing time upfront equals time savings after.

You need this time. And that brings me to the last point. Start now.

AI’s exponential growth

Did you know that just 1 in 5 executives feels comfortable about AI? It’s shocking that amongst the 45+ years old, about 26% use AI, and only 29% of organizations are prepared for AI. (source: Rijn Vogelaar). In the meantime, the younger generation embraces AI (79%) and jumps on the exponential growth.

In short, on the senior executive level, 1 in 5 experiments with AI, while in the younger generation, 4 in 5 embraces AI. And not even 1 in 3 organizations are prepared for it.

You probably heard it’s going fast, yet you don’t realize how fast. It’s not only about using AI to produce better, faster, and more content; it’s also about the speed and agility of your marketing organization to react to the here and now with relevant content.

The gap between AI-savvy and not-so-AI-savvy people grows by the day. So, if you didn’t start learning how to work with AI yesterday, the next best time is today. Like, now.

It’s exponential and not linear growth due to data availability, faster processing times, and calculation speed because of tech innovations (we can process more data in less and less time), adoption of AI by people and organizations, and changing demands by society and business corporates.

Start now; if you’re not ready, your competitors will. You need the time to learn to work with AI and catch up with the others who started yesterday.

Next to that, if you don’t embrace AI, the younger talent will resign and choose another employer who does. To keep your talent, you’ll need to do this.

Example 2. The TL;DR of ‘Writing for busy readers’

It’s really that fast and easy because I have personalized my ChatGPT and invested time in learning to prompt. In not even 25 minutes, I created the too long didn’t read version of a ‘Writing for busy readers’, from 3.382 words to 794 words without losing the essence and key takeaways.

Original page:

Writing for busy readers; how to simplify your writing

TL;DR page, from prompt to publication in 25 minutes:

TL;DR Writing for busy readers

Time spent:

• 10 minutes from prompt to webpage; all it needed was one good prompt and copy-paste it into PressPage, my CMS for newsroom.
• 2 minutes to create a variation of the existing visual because I invested time in making all my templates in Canva Pro.
• 10 minutes of editing and formatting to optimize for mobile. The design of the copy always takes a lot of time because I want to create a quick and easy reading experience for my busy readers on a mobile device.

Prompt used: ‘Can you write a shorter version of this piece? About 50% less long while you keep the same tone of voice and structure. Please tell me the changes you’re making + input to use:’

It’s good to realize that you need quality input to get quality output. If your original piece of content s*cks and lacks a solid structure, the one-prompt-and-go for a summary or TL;DR will not happen. Again, sh*t in is sh*t out.

And that’s it. From prompt to online publication in 25 minutes.

Conclusion: Speed it up with AI

AI can speed you up if done correctly and save huge amounts of time. But only if you comply with the pre-requisites and are not afraid to invest time to test and learn. The best time was to start yesterday, and the next best time is today.

What you need to know

1. The pre-requisites so AI can speed you up instead of slowing down: personalize ChatGPT and learn to prompt
2. Why you need to invest time now to save time later
3. AI’s exponential growth widens the gap every day. Why you need to start today

Now, it’s your turn to create engaging and meaningful content in just 30 minutes.

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