Be Productive Using AI: Aim to Save 10 Hours a Week

Get Hours of Your Week Back with AI, Starting Today

Beginner · 18 lessons · Free

Most professionals try AI, get a bland answer and give up. This free course shows you the exact prompts, workflows and daily routine to hand your email, meeting notes, reports and planning to an AI assistant, while you stay in control of the facts and decisions. You will set a baseline, aim for 10 hours a week, and measure what you actually save.

What you will be able to do

• Audit your week and identify the tasks where AI will save you the most time
• Choose and set up the AI assistant that fits the tools you already use
• Write clear prompts using the five-part framework: Role, Context, Task, Format, Examples
• Summarize email threads, draft replies from bullet points and triage your inbox daily
• Turn meeting notes into decisions, action tables and follow-up emails in minutes
• Draft reports, proposals and status updates without inventing numbers
• Plan your week, research with sources you can verify, and check AI output for errors
• Run a personal AI routine with a reusable prompt library and track your hours saved

Who it is for

• Busy professionals who spend too much of the week on email, meetings and documents
• Managers who want faster reports, cleaner meeting follow-ups and better planning
• Freelancers and consultants who want to spend more time on paid work and less on admin
• Business owners who want practical AI habits before investing in bigger tools
• Anyone who has tried ChatGPT or similar tools a few times and found the results generic
• Complete beginners who want a safe, step-by-step starting point

Curriculum

Module 1: AI Productivity Foundations and Choosing Your Assistant

1. Welcome: Where Your Hours Actually Go (18 min)
2. What AI Assistants Are Good (and Bad) At (12 min)
3. Choosing Your Assistant: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot (15 min)

Module 2: Prompting That Works: Gold In, Gold Out

1. Gold In, Gold Out: The Five-Part Prompt (15 min)
2. Show, Don't Tell: Examples and Output Formats (12 min)
3. Iterate Like a Conversation, Not a Search Box (12 min)
4. Fixing Weak Answers: Your Troubleshooting Toolkit (12 min)

Module 3: Email, Meetings and Documents on Autopilot

1. Inbox Triage and Replies in Minutes (15 min)
2. Meetings: Prep, Notes and Follow-Ups (15 min)
3. Reports, Proposals and Documents Fast (15 min)
4. Summarize Anything: Long Documents, PDFs and Articles (12 min)

Module 4: Planning, Research and Decision-Making with AI

1. Plan Your Week and Protect Your Priorities (15 min)
2. Research with Sources You Can Check (15 min)
3. Better Decisions and Catching AI Errors (15 min)

Module 5: Your Personal AI System

1. Build Your Daily and Weekly AI Routine (15 min)
2. Your Reusable Prompt Library and Saved Assistants (15 min)
3. Privacy and Safety Basics (15 min)
4. Measure Your Hours Saved and Plan Your Next Step (15 min)

What you get

• 18 practical lessons across 5 modules, each with a concrete action step, starting with a 5-minute first win
• Downloadable PDF workbook with time audit, routine planner and hours-saved tracker
• Prompt library with 31 copy-ready prompts for email, meetings, documents, planning and research
• 3 free bonuses: The AI Productivity Prompt Vault (50 more prompts), Inbox to Zero with AI, and The 30-Day AI Productivity Challenge
• 5 module quizzes and a 15-question final exam
• Certificate of Completion when you pass the final exam
• Tool-neutral methods that work with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot

Bonuses

• The AI Productivity Prompt Vault: 50 Prompts for Everything Beyond Your Inbox ($27 value). Fifty copy-ready prompts that take your AI habit past email and meetings into spreadsheets, presentations, learning, career moves, projects and personal admin. Every prompt uses the Gold in, Gold out structure from the course, so you fill the brackets and get a usable first draft.
• Inbox to Zero with AI: The 20-Minute Email System ($19 value). A compact, print-and-pin system for processing email in two 20-minute blocks a day with AI doing the first draft. It includes a triage prompt, 12 reply prompts for the situations that slow you down, rule ideas and a weekly reset checklist.
• The 30-Day AI Productivity Challenge ($27 value). A day-by-day plan that turns the course into a habit, with one 15 to 20 minute task a day, a clear done-when signal and a weekly hours check. By Day 30 you have a tested routine, a personal prompt library and an honest record of the time you are getting back.

Your instructor

Shihan Sheriff, FCMA, CGMA, CPA (Australia), MBA (General), MBA (Data Science & AI), UAECA, CAAB, CAIS, is VP of Finance at Nomod (Y Combinator-backed), CFO at Esanjo and a four-time Amazon bestselling author. He shares practical, plain-English ways to use AI in finance, business and life.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this course really free?

Yes. The full course, workbook, quizzes and certificate are free. If you want to go deeper later, the Academy has paid courses, but you don't need them to get value from this one.

What will I have done after the first lesson?

You will have sent a real email with AI's help in about 5 minutes, and finished a time audit that shows where your week goes. Those two steps give you your first measured saving and your three practice targets for the rest of the course.

Will I definitely save 10 hours a week?

No one can promise that. Ten hours is the goal the course works toward. How much you save depends on your role, your tasks and how consistently you use the routine. You'll measure your own baseline and track your real savings each week.

Do I need a paid AI subscription?

No. Everything in the course can be done on the free versions of Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini, with some usage limits. Some features, such as AI inside your work email, may depend on your plan or your employer's settings.

Which AI assistant should I use?

The one that fits where your work already lives. Lesson 3 helps you choose. The prompts and workflows in this course work in Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot.

I'm not technical. Can I follow this?

Yes. The course is written for beginners in plain English. If you can write an email, you can follow every lesson. There's no coding.

Is it safe to use AI with work information?

It can be, if you follow some basic rules. Lesson 17 covers approved tools, anonymizing data, privacy and memory settings, and staying accountable for anything AI helps you produce. Always follow your employer's policy.

Who is this course not for?

It is not for developers looking for coding or API guides, and not for anyone who wants AI to make decisions or send messages without review. If you already use an assistant daily with detailed prompts, you may find Modules 1 and 2 familiar. Skim them, then go straight to the workflows in Modules 3 to 5.

What should I take after this free course?

Your hours-saved tracker decides. Lesson 18 matches your biggest remaining time leak to one course, for example Prompt Like a Pro for sharper prompts, a Mastering course for the assistant you use most, or AI for Business Owners if you run a business. One course is enough; there is no bundle to buy.