Defeat the blank page: How to never start from scratch again

Welcome to Prompt, Tinker, Innovate—my AI playground. Every edition gives you a hands-on experiment to sharpen your thinking, streamline your workflow, and supercharge your creativity with AI.

This isn’t armchair theory—we roll up our sleeves and build.

This week’s playground: Let AI become your structural engineer

Let’s be honest: staring at a blinking cursor is brutal.

You’ve been asked to write a “Go-to-Market Strategy,” a “Crisis Communication Plan,” or a “DEI Policy.” You know the material. What you don’t know is the structure.

• What are the expected sections?

• Is there a standard flow?

• What am I missing?

Starting from zero is cognitively expensive—and it’s where procrastination breeds. That’s where AI changes the game. Used right, it becomes your structural engineer: quickly designing the scaffolding so you can pour your insights into a professional, coherent frame.

From panic to plan: A real story

When I started at Citrix, I came from the virtualization space as a Forrester Research Analyst. I knew the market, the players, and the pain points cold. My first big task? Draft a Go-to-Market plan for our biggest partnership.

I froze.

Not because I didn’t know. I did. But I had no idea what a GTM doc actually looked like. What sections? What order? What level of detail? Instant imposter syndrome.

(Shoutout to Aimee Catalano, who found me mid-panic in her office asking what a GTM plan even was—and somehow still decided I was worth helping... and befriending.)

If that happened today, I wouldn’t have called a friend (though maybe that meltdown was my friendship interview). I’d call AI—and save us both the stress.

I’d ask it to be my marketing VP. I’d have it lay out the structure, explain what belongs in each section, and feed me smart questions to guide my thinking. The difference? I wouldn’t be starting from fear. I’d be starting from a frame.

Your AI experiment: Try this prompt

👉 Time to tinker: Think of a doc you've been putting off. Maybe it's a job description, proposal, white paper, or quarterly review. Paste this prompt into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.

📝 Prompt: "Act as an expert [Insert Role, e.g., Senior Project Manager / CMO / HR Director].

Create a [Insert Document Type, e.g., Go-to-Market Strategy / Product Manager Job Description] for [Insert Context, e.g., a B2B SaaS startup launching a new AI tool].

Please provide a comprehensive, industry-standard template/outline for this document.

For each section of the outline, do not write the full content yet. Instead, provide:

1. A brief description of what belongs in that section.

2. A list of 3-5 guiding questions I need to answer to fill that section out effectively."

💡Pro tips: Once you’ve got the outline, don’t tackle it all at once. Break it into chunks. Try these prompts at various stages of the document:

• "This outline looks great. Let’s tackle Section 3: ‘Target Audience Analysis.’ Here are my rough notes: [Paste your messy notes]. Please draft this section based on the structure you proposed.”

• “Now generate a second outline—this time from the lens of a time-starved startup CEO who values brevity and outcomes. Show what you’d cut or change.”

• “Now simulate the feedback a skeptical CFO or head of legal might give on this outline. What would they flag or question?”

That’s how you stay in control while keeping momentum high.

What did you discover?

• Did the AI suggest a section or category you hadn't thought of?

• Did having a "fill-in-the-blanks" structure reduce your anxiety about starting the task?

• How much time did this save you compared to searching for templates online?

Reply and let me know—I’d love to hear how this changed your workflow!

Until next time...

Keep tinkering, keep prompting, keep innovating.

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