☀️ The 5 Prompts I Use Every Single Day

When people find out I use Claude all day, every day, they picture some enormous vault of clever prompts, colour-coded and cross-referenced. The truth is almost embarrassing. I’ve spent thousands of hours learning AI properly, I teach it for a living, I built my whole website with it… and my actual daily routine is five prompts I could scribble on the back of a receipt.

That’s not because I’m lazy (well, not only). It’s because daily-use AI isn’t about clever - it’s about repeatable. The prompts that survive are the ones that fit into moments you already have: the kettle boiling, the inbox opening, the 4pm slump.

I call mine the Kettle-to-Kettle Five, because the first one happens while the morning kettle boils and the last one happens somewhere around the evening one. Here they all are, in full, with the small tweak that turns each from “fine” into “how did I run a business without this”.

Two notes before we start. These all work in ChatGPT too, though Claude is my home (and where the memory trick in prompt five earns its keep). And please don’t try to adopt all five by tomorrow - that’s how you end up doing none of them. Pick the one that matches your worst daily moment and let the others arrive one at a time.

1. The day sorter (first kettle)

What it is: you empty your head, it hands back a sensible running order. Not a productivity system. A tip-out-the-bag-and-sort-it.

How to do it: open Claude before you open your email (this ordering matters more than any word in the prompt), and dump everything - tasks, appointments, the thing you’re dreading, the thing you forgot yesterday.

Nick this one:

Good morning. Here's everything on my plate today, in no particular order: [dump it all in, messy is fine]. Sort it into a realistic plan: what to do first, what to batch together, and what can honestly wait until tomorrow. Flag the one thing that will cause actual trouble if it doesn't happen today. Keep the whole answer short enough to read while my tea brews.

The tweak that makes it sing: add one line about your energy. “I slept badly, plan accordingly” or “I’m full of beans until lunch, then useless.” Claude will quietly front-load the thinking work or the easy wins to match. It’s the difference between a plan for a generic human and a plan for today’s you.

2. The email untangler (whenever the inbox bites)

What it is: for any email longer than your screen, or any email that made you feel something. It tells you what they actually want, what you minimally have to do, and drafts the reply.

How to do it: copy the whole email, paste it under this:

Nick this one:

I'm pasting in an email. First, tell me in two sentences what this person actually wants from me. Then tell me the minimum I need to do about it. Then draft a reply that's friendly, brief and sorts it in one go. For context, this is from my [client / boss / supplier / kid's school] and things between us are [good / new / a bit strained]. Here's the email: [paste]

The tweak that makes it sing: that context line about the relationship. The same email needs a different reply if it’s from a lovely long-term client or a supplier you’re one invoice away from falling out with. One sentence of context saves three rounds of “no, warmer… no, firmer”.

3. “Shorter and warmer” (before sending anything)

What it is: barely a prompt, more a reflex. Nearly everything I write gets passed through it - emails, messages, announcements. Written communication has a natural drift towards long and cold, especially when you’re tired or annoyed. This reverses it.

How to do it: draft your thing badly and fast, then:

Nick this one:

Make this shorter and warmer. Keep [the one thing that must survive: the date, the price, the "no"]. Cut anything that sounds like a company wrote it. Here it is: [paste your draft]

The tweak that makes it sing: naming the thing that must survive. Without it, “make this shorter” will occasionally trim the actual point - you’ll get a lovely warm message that no longer mentions the deadline. Tell it what’s load-bearing and it edits around it.

4. The decision helper (for the thing you’ve been circling)

What it is: for the decision you’ve picked up and put down four times. My brain (ADHD, since you ask) will happily let a medium-sized decision expand to fill an entire week. This contains it in ten minutes.

How to do it:

Nick this one:

I'm trying to decide between [option A] and [option B]. Before you give any opinion, ask me up to five questions that would actually change the answer. Then lay out the honest case for each, tell me which way you'd lean and why, and tell me what would have to be true for the other option to win.

The tweak that makes it sing: the “ask me questions first” line. Skip it and you get an instant, confident, generic answer. Keep it and Claude surfaces the thing you hadn’t admitted was the real issue - usually around question three. The “what would have to be true” ending is the other quiet gem: it turns a verdict into something you can test.

5. The shutdown (last kettle)

What it is: two minutes at the end of the day that make tomorrow morning about 40% less horrible. You close the loops instead of carrying them to bed.

How to do it:

Nick this one:

End of day. Here's what I got done: [list]. Here's what didn't happen: [list]. Write me a three-line note for tomorrow morning: what to start with, what's carrying over, and anything I promised anyone. Then remind me of one thing that actually went well today, because I will have forgotten.

The tweak that makes it sing: if you’ve got memory switched on (Settings → Capabilities, it’s free), the shutdown feeds the day sorter. Tomorrow morning you can just say “start with what we agreed last night” and it does. The five prompts stop being five separate tricks and become one loop… which is the actual secret of this whole guide.

What this can’t fix

It won’t run your day for you. The day sorter is only as good as the honesty of your dump - if you leave out the scary task, it plans a lovely day around a hole. It’s also not a calendar: keep appointments where appointments live, and let Claude handle the thinking, not the remembering of times. And the first week will feel slightly forced, like any new habit, so keep the five somewhere frictionless - a saved note, a doc, pinned in your notes app - because a prompt you have to hunt for is a prompt you’ll quietly stop using by Thursday. By week three you’ll do all five without noticing you’re doing them.

Short on time? Do this bit

Do the shutdown. I know - it looks like the most skippable one. But it’s the prompt that makes the others work, because tomorrow’s plan is already half-written when you sit down with your tea. Start at the end.

Once these five feel like yours, there’s a whole second helping in Copy-Paste These 8 Prompts And Save An Hour Today - same idea, wider net. ✨