What’s the one AI prompt that actually gave you back free days?

September 19, 2025

by a searcher from Maastricht University - School of Business and Economics in Fribourg, Switzerland

Not theory. Not “we use AI for research.” I’m talking about a single prompt (or tiny prompt recipe) that saved real hours—the kind you can feel in your calendar. If you’ve got one, please share: What you used it for (plain English). The exact wording of the prompt (copy/paste). How much time it saved you in a normal week. Anything you stopped doing because of it. One small tip to make it work for others. Bonus points for a tiny before/after story. I’ll compile the best into a simple cheatsheet for everyone here. Short, concrete, no fluff—what’s your winner?

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Reply by a searcher
from United States Naval Academy in Grand Rapids, MI, USA

"based on the due diligence you performed above, and my desired terms [input here] draft a negotiation outline both in bullet point and as a concise paragraph I can send to the seller/include in the LOI."

Reply by an member
from Western University in Toronto, ON, Canada

This is a great question, Enno. Here’s one that’s been a game changer in deal analysis. What I use it for: When reviewing a company’s financials, I use it to quickly identify red flags and suspicious adjustments to EBITDA/SDE—especially in industries I’m unfamiliar with. The exact prompt: "Act as an experienced M&A associate. You’re reviewing a potential acquisition in x industry. Based on this P&L and supporting notes, identify: Red flags in adjustments to EBITDA/SDE, Questions I should ask the seller or broker, Justifications I can use to negotiate a lower price. Be detailed, skeptical, and back up your points with reasoning." Time saved per week: ~4–6 hours per deal, especially early in diligence. What I stopped doing: Spending hours Googling niche industry norms or trying to figure out which line items to challenge manually. Tip to make it work: If you have access to clean financial data, paste it in directly. If not, start by asking for “common red flags in [industry] EBITDA adjustments” to build a checklist before the call. Side Tip: For initial research like industry scorecards, use perplexity and Claude, it pulls more data and actually sources the data often better than Chatgpt

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