Apply It: Direct, Don't Prompt (Hour 1 Worksheet)
Paste one real prompt you wrote this week, rewrite it as a direction, and run the new-hire test. The audit that turns Hour 1 from watched into practiced.
Apply It: Direct, Don't Prompt (Hour 1 Worksheet)
The hour ends with "direct, don't prompt" — this sheet checks whether you actually made the switch. One real prompt from your week, rewritten as a direction (outcome first, context second, taste last), plus the new-hire test: could a sharp hire act on it without a follow-up question?
8–12 minutes. Re-run the same task with your direction version and compare outputs — that comparison is the lesson.
The fastest way through it: treat it like madlibs. Open optimustranscriber.com, hit record, and read the sheet out loud — saying your real answer wherever there's a blank. Paste the transcript into your agent and it builds from what you said. You talk at 200 words a minute and type at 60 — this is the difference between "I'll do it later" and done before your coffee's cold.
Next up
Next
Rung 1 — Why Amnesia Is the Problem
Same agent, same question, two days apart — two different answers. Fluency without memory is theatre. Meet the four memory tiers that turn a chatbot into a colleague.
Go deeper
Why Most AI Agents Get Abandoned in Week One
The mistake that kills 80% of agent deployments and the three things any real agent can do out of the box.
Apply it
Apply It: Score Your Real Week (OSLO Worksheet)
One coffee, one pen, your actual week. Score all four OSLO pillars, find the real bottleneck (it's rarely the one you think), and commit to one pillar play.