I Asked EAs How They're Really Using AI.

You open your inbox to another "50 AI Prompts for Executive Assistants" post, you bookmark it, and you never open it again.

That's not a knock on you, it's a knock on the content, because most AI advice for EAs reads like it was written by someone who has never actually managed a calendar, an inbox, and an exec's expectations at the same time.

You've lived the real version, the morning where you're piecing together what your exec needs to see from three different tools before 9am, or the calendar that looks fine until you actually scroll through two weeks of it and find four conflicts nobody caught. 🫢

Generic prompt lists don't solve that, they're written for a hypothetical office, not yours.

In typical EA fashion, this community didn't wait around for someone else to figure it out. I asked what people were actually using AI for, and two workflows came back that hit two of the most universal EA headaches, the daily scramble to know what actually needs attention, and the never-ending puzzle of a packed executive calendar. Both are below. 👇

Before we get into this week's workflows, a quick reminder that if you don't already have it, the Claude Cheat Sheet for EAs is free, and it covers 10 prompts for flight and hotel comparisons, email drafting, meeting prep, post-meeting summaries, and exec travel profiles.

One favorite from it, the exec travel profile prompt, you build it once, paste it at the top of every travel conversation, and every flight or hotel search comes back already ranked against your exec's actual preferences instead of a flat list you have to sort through yourself.

Another one worth pulling out on its own, the pre-meeting briefing prompt. Give it a name, a title, and a company, and it comes back with a one-page briefing, who the person is, what's going on at their company, likely topics, and a suggested opening question, in about 30 seconds instead of the 20 minutes you'd normally spend Googling around before a meeting.

Here's the first workflow from this week's community roundup.

One EA described building a daily and weekly rundown of everything her exec needs to see, not just a calendar view, but a single briefing that pulls together the meetings that need prep, the emails that are actually urgent, and the documents sitting around waiting for a signature. Instead of hunting across three tools every morning, she has AI assemble it for her.

Here's a peek at how it starts, "Here's my exec's calendar for today and a list of recent emails. Build me a daily brief with three sections..."

The rest of that prompt, plus a second workflow for calendar audits, is coming up.