Recipes for Your Job
Twenty ready-to-run task briefs for admin, marketing, finance, research and management. Copy, paste, adapt the nouns, keep the bones.
It is 8:40 on a Tuesday and you can already see the whole morning. Forty minutes matching receipts to a claims spreadsheet. An hour turning meeting notes into an action list. A contact list two departments have quietly broken in different ways.
None of it is your actual job. All of it is on your list.
This is the bookmark chapter: twenty briefs to paste into an agent tonight, sorted by role. Chapters 1 to 9 explained why they work; this one hands them over.
What a recipe is
A recipe here is three things stapled together. The brief: the exact words to paste, safety rails already written in. A risk light with a time estimate. And what good looks like: the receipt to expect, meaning the agent's own report of what it did, so you can judge the result in two minutes.
The lights follow chapter 6's reversibility test. Green: you could undo the result in five minutes and nothing leaves your machine. Amber: real files, or numbers someone will act on, so it runs on copies and gets reviewed before use.
There are no red recipes here. None of the twenty asks an agent to log into anything, send anything to another human, or spend a penny. Where one brushes an amber rule, I say so next to it.
Every recipe runs, as written, in at least two of chapter 8's tools: point Claude Cowork at a folder, or hand ChatGPT Work the files uploaded or connected. In a Word or Excel file, Copilot's Agent Mode runs it in the file itself. The web-research recipes also suit Perplexity Comet or Claude in Chrome; I flag where the choice matters.
Every card below is paste-ready, safety rails included. Twenty cards, five roles, none red.
Admin and ops
If your job is keeping the machine running, your recipes are files, lists and documents that arrive messy and must leave tidy.
| Time | Risk | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The shared-drive tidy | 15 min | Amber |
| 2. Meeting notes into an action tracker | 10 min | Green |
| 3. Two contact lists into one | 15 min | Amber |
| 4. The policy into a checklist | 10 min | Green |
1. The shared-drive tidy
The team folder nobody dares reorganise: chapter 4's Downloads job, pointed at work. Amber, about 15 minutes. It touches real files, so it runs on a copy, always.
What good looks like: tidy subfolders plus a move report you can scan in two minutes. Nothing renamed, nothing missing.
2. Meeting notes into an action tracker
Raw notes in, an action table out, gaps kept visible. Green, about 10 minutes: it only reads, and the output is a fresh file.
What good looks like: every row traces to a meeting, and ownerless actions are flagged, not guessed.
3. Two contact lists into one
Two exports, one truth. Amber, about 15 minutes: this list feeds real mailings, so the agent flags conflicts and you settle them by hand.
What good looks like: one clean list, a small flagged pile, and a count that reconciles. If not, that is your sixty-second catch.
4. The policy into a checklist
Twelve pages of policy nobody reads, turned into one page somebody will. Green, about 10 minutes. In Word, Copilot's Agent Mode builds it in the document itself.
What good looks like: a section reference on every line. Spot-check three against the policy before it goes anywhere.
Marketing
Marketing recipes lean on the browser and the draft pile. Nothing here publishes or sends anything, per chapter 6.
| Time | Risk | |
|---|---|---|
| 5. The competitor scan | 30 min | Green |
| 6. One piece, five formats | 15 min | Green |
| 7. Campaign exports into one report | 20 min | Amber |
| 8. The mention sweep | 15 min | Green |
5. The competitor scan
Chapter 5's competitor scan, made weekly: it tightens that brief to the last three months and adds a comparison table. Green, about 30 minutes of the agent's time, not yours. Needs a browsing tool: Cowork, ChatGPT Work, Comet or Claude in Chrome.
What good looks like: a two-pager where every claim came from a visited page. Spot-check two sites yourself.
6. One piece, five formats
You wrote it once; stop rewriting it by hand. Green, about 15 minutes. Everything returns as drafts for review.
What good looks like: five drafts that sound like the original, with genuinely different angles, not just lengths.
7. Campaign exports into one report
The monthly copy-paste marathon across ad platforms. Amber, about 20 minutes: these numbers go to your boss, so check a sample against the source files. In Excel, Copilot's Agent Mode is a natural fit.
What good looks like: totals that match the exports on a three-campaign spot-check, and a note that flags odd numbers.
8. The mention sweep
Who talked about you last month? Green, about 15 minutes, browser tools again.
What good looks like: a short honest table with working links. An empty result is valid; a padded one is the failure.
Finance
Every finance recipe is amber, deliberately. Confident wrong numbers are chapter 7's failure mode and money is where they sting, so every brief bans guessing and every receipt gets checked.
| Time | Risk | |
|---|---|---|
| 9. The invoice pile | 20 min | Amber |
| 10. The expense cross-check | 15 min | Amber |
| 11. Budget versus actuals, first draft | 15 min | Amber |
| 12. The contract terms table | 20 min | Amber |
9. The invoice pile
Chapter 1's 38-PDF pile, as a recipe: this is the chapter 1 brief, word for word. Amber, about 20 minutes. Before anything leaves your desk, check five rows against the PDFs.
What good looks like: a clean sheet, a per-supplier totals sheet, and blank cells listed honestly in the report. Zero problems on a messy pile deserves suspicion.
10. The expense cross-check
Claims on one side, receipts on the other, an agent doing the matching. Amber, about 15 minutes, though it changes nothing: it only sorts claims into piles.
What good looks like: three lists with filenames you can open. Verify two matches and one mismatch before acting.
11. Budget versus actuals, first draft
The month-end commentary nobody enjoys writing. Amber, about 15 minutes: the draft never goes out unedited. In Excel, Copilot's Agent Mode runs it inside the workbook.
What good looks like: arithmetic you can verify in seconds and commentary that describes rather than invents. “The data cannot show why” in a draft is a good sign.
12. The contract terms table
Renewal dates hiding in a folder of PDFs. Amber, about 20 minutes: a wrong notice period costs real money, so the brief demands a page number for every fact.
What good looks like: a table you can audit. Confirm the dates of the two soonest renewals on the quoted pages.
Research and analysis
The analyst's recipes share one bone: quotes and figures come back verbatim with sources attached, so checking takes minutes, not a re-read.
| Time | Risk | |
|---|---|---|
| 13. The source sweep | 20 min | Green |
| 14. Survey answers into themes | 15 min | Green |
| 15. The cleaning pass with a change log | 15 min | Amber |
| 16. The two-sides brief | 15 min | Green |
13. The source sweep
Ten reports you were supposed to have read by Thursday. Green, about 20 minutes.
What good looks like: a claims table you can trace, and a disagreements section that stops you citing two contradicting numbers.
14. Survey answers into themes
Four hundred free-text answers, one afternoon back. Green, about 15 minutes.
What good looks like: theme counts that sum to the number of answers, and quotes that match their rows.
15. The cleaning pass with a change log
Messy data in, clean data out, every change on record. Amber, about 15 minutes: it rewrites real data, so it works on a copy and logs every touch.
What good looks like: a clean file, a change log, a short questions list. The log is the receipt; skim it first.
16. The two-sides brief
For the question your team keeps arguing about. Green, about 15 minutes, browser tools again.
What good looks like: six linked arguments and a definitions list. If one side reads like a caricature, re-brief: argue each side as its supporters would.
Manager
A manager's recipes produce drafts and prep, never decisions. The judgement stays yours; the assembling does not have to.
| Time | Risk | |
|---|---|---|
| 17. The Monday report | 15 min | Green |
| 18. The one-to-one prep sheet | 10 min | Amber |
| 19. A thread into a decision memo | 10 min | Green |
| 20. The meeting diet | 10 min | Green |
17. The Monday report
Chapter 2's recurring status doc, and the star of chapter 11, where it learns to write itself. Green, about 15 minutes by hand.
What good looks like: a draft in your voice and format, silence made visible. Watch for stale text dressed up as news.
18. The one-to-one prep sheet
Ten minutes of prep you never quite get to. Amber for a different reason, about 10 minutes: these are notes about a real person. Use your work account, and keep anything HR-serious away from agents entirely.
What good looks like: a page that reminds you what you promised. Questions should trace to the notes.
19. A thread into a decision memo
Forty emails, one actual question. Green, about 10 minutes. In Word, Copilot's Agent Mode can draft the memo in place.
What good looks like: a memo everyone in the thread would call fair, ending on one sharp question. Check the attributions.
20. The meeting diet
The calendar audit you keep postponing because you are in meetings. Green, about 10 minutes.
What good looks like: an honest first pass you can disagree with, plus agenda templates worth stealing.
Swap the nouns, keep the bones
None of these twenty will fit your job exactly. Good: they are recipes, not spells.
The nouns are yours: file names, column headings, the topic, the 10% threshold, the competitor count. Swap freely.
The bones are what every brief above shares, and they do not move:
- Work on a copy. The original is never in play.
- Name the output shape. A table with these columns, a one-page memo, a draft in this structure.
- Never guess. Gaps get flagged, not filled.
- Define done. Totals row, page references, closing summary: finished means something specific.
- Draw the do-not line. What stays untouched, uninvented and unsent.
Strip those out and a recipe collapses back into a wish.
Want the invoice pile for timesheets? Swap invoices for timesheets, supplier for person, VAT for overtime, and leave every safety line where it stands. Same bones, different dinner.
When there is no card for the job
When nothing fits, build your own card from chapter 5's five questions. Answer them in order and the brief writes itself:
- What does finished look like? The outcome, not the steps.
- What am I handing over? The files, links and examples.
- What are the rules? Formats, thresholds, things to leave alone.
- How will we both know it is done?
- When should it stop and ask me?
Write the five answers as plain sentences and stack them. Every card here was built exactly that way.
Twenty cards is a start, not a library. The habit that matters is reaching for one the next time a Tuesday morning tries to eat itself.