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- 🏴☠️ Cut Meeting Prep to 5 Minutes
🏴☠️ Cut Meeting Prep to 5 Minutes
Walk in Ridiculously Prepared
Captain YAR
January 27, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
Last month, I walked into a team sync with my heart racing and my notes scattered across three apps. I told myself I would “wing it,” like I always do. Ten minutes later, I was asking the same questions we already answered last week. That is the quiet tax of modern work: we pay for it with stress, sloppy decisions, and meetings that feel like treadmill miles. Then I stumbled on a sharp workflow from this creator on Reddit, spiritualsages, and it hit me like a glass of cold water. Meeting prep does not have to be a panic sprint.
You can slash your meeting prep time by 80% while making every session significantly more productive.
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It is the classic corporate nightmare. You are ten minutes away from leading a team sync, and you are scrambling. You are digging through Slack channels, hunting down old emails, and trying to remember exactly where you left off last week.
The result is usually a half-baked agenda that you end up editing while people are already joining the call. The Reddit author built a specific AI workflow that cuts their prep time from thirty minutes down to just five. It turns the chaotic noise of project management into a clear, actionable plan.
The Expert Facilitator Strategy
The magic is not “AI writes an agenda.” The shift is making the AI act like a strategist, not a typist. This creator’s prompt plays the role of an expert meeting facilitator that first analyzes context, then decides what deserves meeting time.
You paste in messy notes, transcripts, and threads, and the AI filters them with intent. It pulls unresolved items from last time, surfaces new topics that need real decisions, and separates “needs discussion” from “send an update.” It also prioritizes ruthlessly so you do not try to solve ten big problems in twenty minutes.
Logic Over Volume
The most impressive part is how it respects the clock. If a meeting is thirty minutes, the prompt forces realism and limits you to two or three substantive topics. That constraint alone changes everything, because it stops you from creating an agenda that is secretly a wish list.
This is especially helpful if you tend to over-pack and then wonder why nothing gets finished. By narrowing the focus, you actually resolve what matters. And it reliably catches the leftovers we forget, like loose ends from last week, while stripping away the fluff that never needed a meeting.
The Parking Lot Solution
Most meetings do not fail because people are lazy. They fail because one side topic hijacks the whole room. The prompt fixes this by hard-coding a Parking Lot section into the output.
When the AI scans a long email chain or Slack thread, it identifies valid topics that are real, but not urgent for this call. Instead of letting them clutter the agenda, it parks them where they can be tracked without stealing time. You acknowledge the issue, put it in the parking lot, and keep moving.
Driving Concrete Outcomes
A pretty agenda is worthless if everyone leaves with vague “we should” energy. This workflow forces every agenda item to have a purpose and an owner. Each topic gets a goal, like decision, alignment, brainstorm, or info share, plus a realistic time slot.
The best detail is the ending. The prompt reserves the final five minutes strictly for confirming next steps and owners. That is how a meeting turns into a list of commitments instead of a foggy conversation.
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Prompt of the Day
Here is the prompt drafted by the original author. You can use this in ChatGPT, Claude, or any major LLM:
“You are an expert meeting facilitator who specializes in creating clear, focused agendas that drive productive discussions and actionable outcomes. Your role is to analyze meeting context and create structured agendas that ensure time is used efficiently and all stakeholders leave with clear next steps.
Your analysis process:
First, review all provided context:
– Previous meeting notes or transcripts
– Email threads or Slack conversations related to the meeting
– Project documentation or status updates
– Specific topics the organizer wants to cover
Then identify:
– Unresolved items from previous discussions that need follow-up
– New topics that require decisions or alignment
– Information that needs to be shared vs. discussed
– Who needs to be heard from and on which topics
Agenda structure you create:
– Meeting Objective (one clear sentence describing what success looks like)
– Pre-Meeting Prep (if attendees should review anything beforehand)
– Agenda Items (in priority order):
For each item include:
– Topic name
– Time allocation (be realistic)
– Discussion owner/lead
– Goal for this item (decision needed, alignment required, information share, brainstorm, etc.)
– Key questions to drive the discussion forward
– Parking Lot Topics (items mentioned but not urgent for this meeting)
– Next Steps & Owners (to be filled during meeting, but show structure)
Your communication style:
– Be concise and specific
– Use clear, jargon-free language
– Prioritize ruthlessly (not everything needs meeting time)
– Flag when a topic might need pre-work or a separate meeting
– Suggest time limits that are realistic, not aspirational
Critical constraints:
– If the meeting is under 30 minutes, limit to 2-3 substantive topics maximum
– Always leave 5 minutes at the end for next steps and action item confirmation
– If you notice the same topics repeatedly unresolved, flag this pattern
– Distinguish between ‘needs discussion’ and ‘can be resolved via email/async’
When you receive meeting context, ask clarifying questions if:
– The meeting objective isn’t clear
– Key stakeholders aren’t identified
– There’s conflicting information about priorities
– The requested topics exceed realistic time allocation
Create agendas that respect people’s time and drive toward concrete outcomes.”
How to Apply This Workflow
Open a fresh chat with your preferred model.
Paste the instructions above as your “system.”
Do a full context dump: last meeting notes, relevant emails, Slack threads, project requirements, and any status updates. Keep it messy; that is the point.
Review the agenda, especially the time allocations and the Parking Lot, then paste it into the calendar invite.
This is a fantastic example of using AI to handle the mental load of management.