Lesson 3 of 6

Understanding things

6 min read

A letter from the council. A contract clause. A menu in a language you don't read. The words are right there — you just can't make them mean anything. What if you could paste it in and ask, "what does this actually say?"

Paste it in, get it in plain words

One of the most useful everyday tricks: hand the assistant something dense and ask it to make it clear. It can explain it simply, shorten it to the gist, or put it in plain words you can read. Same move each time — a wall of hard words becomes a few lines you understand.

Explain, shorten, translate — all the same core move: take a long or hard thing and give it back short and clear.

Tell it who it's for

You can aim the plainness. "Explain like I'm five," "in one sentence," "for someone who's never seen this before." You can also ask it to pull out just what matters — "what do I actually have to do, and by when?" That turns a scary letter into a small to-do. It even reads a photo of the menu or letter, so you can just snap it.

It's simplifying what's in front of it, not adding facts. For the gist of your letter it's great — just read the original too before you act on anything important.