The situation

A 40-page report lands in your inbox with a meeting on it this afternoon. You don't have an hour to read it properly. This is one of the things AI genuinely does well — but only if you ask in a way that gets you a brief you can actually rely on, rather than a bland paragraph that misses the one figure that mattered.

Step one: give it the document, don't describe it

Upload the actual PDF into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini rather than asking about the report from memory. All three let you attach a file. Working from the real document is what keeps the summary honest — it has the text in front of it instead of guessing from the title. If your tool can't take the file, paste the relevant sections in as text.

Step two: ask for structure, not a blob

A one-line "summarise this" gets you a vague paragraph. Ask for a brief shaped the way you actually need to use it — the decisions, the numbers, the risks, the things you'd get asked about in the meeting.

I've attached a [type of report]. I have a meeting on it this afternoon and can't read all of it. Give me a one-page brief with these sections: 1. The main point in two sentences 2. Key figures and dates (quote them exactly from the document) 3. Decisions or recommendations being made 4. Risks, caveats, or anything flagged as uncertain 5. Three questions I should be ready to answer or ask Only use what's in the document. If something important isn't covered, say so rather than filling the gap. Plain English, Australian spelling.

Step three: the check that catches the miss

A summary's real danger isn't a wrong fact — it's a quiet omission. The report's one awkward finding gets smoothed over and you walk into the meeting not knowing it exists. Catch that with a second, deliberately adversarial prompt.

Now do the opposite job. Looking only at this document, tell me: - What's the single most important thing a busy reader might miss? - Is there anything in here that's bad news, a risk, or a caveat that my summary made sound smoother than it is? - Which section would someone challenge me on in a meeting?

Step four: spot-check before you rely on it

Pick the two or three figures you'd actually quote and find them in the original document. It takes a minute with the search function (Ctrl+F on Windows, Cmd+F on Mac) and it's the difference between "the AI said" and "I checked." If the numbers match, you can trust the shape of the rest.

When one pass isn't enough

For a routine report, the brief-then-check routine is plenty. For anything high-stakes — a document a real decision hangs on, or something you'll be quoted on — do one extra thing: ask a follow-up question that tests whether the tool actually understood the material. "What's the argument the author is making, and what evidence do they give for it?" A summary can list the right topics while missing the point entirely, and this question surfaces that fast. If the answer is vague or circles back to headings without real substance, the tool has skimmed rather than understood, and you should read the key sections yourself. It's a thirty-second test that tells you whether you can trust the brief or need to go to the source.

💡 This week's action

Next time a long document lands before a meeting, upload it and run both prompts above — the structured brief and the adversarial check. Then Ctrl+F two figures against the original. You'll walk in with a one-page brief and, more importantly, knowing the bit everyone else skimmed past. The whole thing takes under ten minutes.

Why this matters

Summarising is one of the safest, highest-value ways to use AI at work, because you keep the source in front of you and you're not asking it to invent anything. The skill is in asking for the brief in the shape you'll use it, then checking it didn't sand off the one detail that counts.