Good writing is challenging. It involves organizing good ideas. But, it also involves lots of hard grammar and technical aspects.

And if that wasn't enough, writing takes a crazy amount of time.

The question then is, can we actually use AI to speed up the writing process?

Unlocking AI as a Writing Assistant

I know what you're thinking. You probably don't trust apps like ChatGPT to do a good job in writing for you. And fair enough, they definitely fall short.

Have you ever tried to have ChatGPT writing a long form piece? If you've tried this, you know that you get generic results and worst of all, it doesn't even sound like you.

So at this point, you've probably heard this advice a thousand times, "AI is best used as a writing assistant".

this sounds great but what does this actually look like?

In the past, I was using AI as nothing more than an overqualified grammar corrector. That is like using a super powerful computer just as a calculator. It's not even scratching the surface of what's possible.

Today, I'm excited to share some of the cool progress I've made. I've built a crazy workflow that really uses the strengths of AI as a useful writing assistant.

My Advanced Writing Workflow

Before we get into it, just keep in mind this is not a step-by-step tutorial. I'm using advanced methods. They involve coding and nerdy stuff. So I'll save the nerdy details for another time.

If you do want to put in place this system for yourself, you can join my free community. There I'd be happy to guide you on how to achieve a personalized AI system based on your needs.

Maintaining Authenticity as a Writer

Alright, first off I know that as a writer you want to remain authentic. And I know that part of you even wants to ignore all this AI stuff. You might want to pretend it's not happening so you can go back to traditional writing.

But we can't ignore reality, AI is changing everything. We live in a competitive world and your competition is using AI a lot. Many are doing it in the fastest, laziest way.

They're going to ChatGPT and asking it to write some quick content. They won't even read it and then they'll publish it on their newsletters, blog, and social media. The worst part is that it's working for them, they are stealing your audience.

We obviously don't want to follow this lazy approach. But we face a significant problem. If we don't speed up our process and keep up with our competitors, we risk falling behind.

Our goal is to use AI to speed up our writing workflow while preserving the quality of our ideas.

You'll have an advantage over your competitors. You can still connect with the reader if you're the one generating the ideas.

Anyone using AI to write a blog post from scratch will sound robotic. They ask ChatGPT to do most of the work. So, they get generic results. That's why they can't connect with their audience.

As the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out."

We want to write persuasive content that impacts readers. That's where our creativity comes in. We bring the human spirit to the words we write.

But we can outsource certain aspects of our process to AI to help us write 2nd drafts faster.

If we can make a fast system that keeps quality, we'll hit the jackpot.

The Role of AI in Our Writing Workflow

Let's set the roles, this is what you do vs. what the AI does:

• Your role:
  • Generate ideas.
  • Share your unique perspective.
  • Bring the human soul to written words.

• AI's role:
  • The powerful assistant that can:
    • Write in perfect English, with flawless grammar.
    • It can follow our instructions to improve our drafts.

Streamlining the Process of Idea Generation

These are the two main things I focus on first:

• Research
  • Finding inspiration to generate ideas.

• Drafting
  • Writing down our ideas in our own words.

My Research and Idea Generation Machine

Let's start with the research side of things and how we can use AI to speed up the idea generation process.

Input and output, that's the name of the game.

We first take in information. Our brain processes it. It connects the information with other ideas and sparks new thoughts.

Once we're ready to sit down and write it out, we can write something new. We will base it on our experiences and the knowledge we've consumed.

How can we achieve this efficiently?

Introducing My AI-Powered Note-Taking System

Traditionally, we've relied on note-taking systems to help us manage knowledge.

I've spent years developing note-taking systems and even teaching them on YouTube.

Note-taking still has its place. But, AI can help us speed things up. Let me introduce you to my knowledge research machine.

My AI Magic Folder

This AI-powered system has revolutionized the way I process information. This is what my system looks like:

• I consume meaningful content from:
  • podcasts
  • interviews
  • YouTube videos
  • and books.

Where The Magic Happens:

• I then save a transcript of my favorite resources in my magic AI folder.

• I created a personal mini app that searches through this folder using AI.

• I have a system to ask my magic folder any questions.

Then AI does the following:

• It looks for relevant answers in my magic folder.

• It provides relevant short extracts from different sources.
  • I can optionally read the full context.

• AI summarizes the most relevant information in a few sentences.

This system feels like my own custom Google, but it's much smarter and efficient.

It only searches through the information I've consumed. This makes the results more personalized.

This AI-powered system has several benefits.

It Saves Time

Instead of manually highlighting and taking notes, I add the content to my magic folder.

The information is then retrievable at any time by asking questions. Instead of spending ages on manual organization this becomes a questions-first approach.

This system lets me find great thoughts from people I admire. Without this system I would have forgotten these ideas.

It's Customizable

I've built this system to cater to my specific needs.

Some apps offer similar services. But, I've found that making a custom solution is 10 times better. When I'm ready to write, I can ask a series of questions to the machine, and it provides me with all the research I need.

This helps inform my first draft and makes the writing process smoother.

Now that we have our ideas in place, it's time to start writing.

Faster Drafting and Editing

Writing is best when split into two processes:

• drafting

• and editing

The drafting phase involves capturing ideas. The editing phase is for refining these ideas.

No one ever writes something good in the first draft.

The best writers in the world revisit their writings way more than anyone else.

Great writers edit what they write many times. If we knew how much they edit things, we wouldn't think they are that special.

They're great editors, great thinkers that know how to revisit their thoughts.

My Secret Weapon For First Drafts

AI dictation, this is my secret tool.

This is an amazing way to write by speaking. In the past, dictation gave us OK results. But, with AI it's shocking how accurate the transcript is.

The aim isn't to create a perfect draft, but to get all your ideas out there.

Once you have your first draft, it's time to bring in some structure and make things flow better.

This is where the editing process begins.

AI System for Editing

Traditionally, this was a long and tedious process to clean things up, but now AI can help us.

I've developed a system where AI can help rewrite the first draft into a second draft super fast.

The 3 Stages Of AI Editing

This is my system for re-writing with AI:

1) Structure and Framework

I set the instructions on the writing framework and best practices that I want AI to follow.

I also study the type of structure I want. I look at my favorite blog posts by other writers. I then try to understand what I like about it so that I can ask AI to follow similar practices.

2) Breaking Things Visually

If you are reading this you'll notice that a lot of my "paragraphs" are one sentence.

This helps me see ideas clearly instead of focusing on large blocks of text.

So as part of my process I automatically add line breaks at the end of every sentence.

This is for my own benefit, but it also sets a nice rhythm for you, the reader.

3) Making AI Write Like Me

Lastly, I train the AI to use the type of words that I would use, feeding it all the previous content I've written.

The second draft keeps the ideas from the first draft. But, it improves the writing a lot.

It has headings, bullet points, and shorter, more concise paragraphs.

It's broken into visually appealing elements. This makes it easier for the reader to navigate.

Results and Iteration

This process gives me incredible results, I get a 2nd draft so much faster. From there I manually rewrite things as needed. And of course, I still use AI to corrects grammar mistakes fast.

The takeaways is that I don't let AI write any of the original ideas in my work. I bring the soul to the words, AI just helps me speed up that process.

Get Your Personalized Writing Machine

There you go, now one thing that has blown my mind is how customizable this all is.

So if you're interested in achieving similar results, you can join my free community or book a call with me here. I'd love to help you set up a custom AI workflow for your writing process.

I can help you build your own personalized machine that can write like you.

All I need from you are previous writings and references of the type of written end result you want to achieve.

With this information, I can train the AI to write like you and help you achieve a second draft in a much faster way.

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