The first few years in academia can feel like drinking from a firehose. Faculty need to quickly learn to balance teaching, service, research, and administrative tasks, potentially leading to busy weeks and constant feelings of being behind. Artificial intelligence has received a lot of attention (both positive and negative) over the last few years. Early career anatomists can use it to reduce administrative burdens and carve out time to better concentrate on work that requires educational and subject matter expertise.
Here are three suggestions to refine workflows using AI:
Streamline Your Email Writing Process
Use AI to refine professional communication, such as when drafting emails that address difficult concerns. Feed your draft into AI with a prompt that is similar to: “Review this email draft. Preserve my key points but suggest revisions that make the tone professional and firm while remaining collegial.” Early career academics can spend a lot of time and effort wording emails, especially when worried about sounding too accommodating or harsh, depending on context. Use AI to help identify the middle ground, and always proofread the result!
Structure Your Chaotic Day
Use AI to help plan how to tackle an otherwise unstructured day, whether it includes course prep, meetings, research, teaching lab or classroom sessions, or administrative tasks. You can start by listing every task, meeting, and deadline for a day. Feed it into AI with a prompt similar to: “I have these tasks today: [list of tasks]. Prioritize them by urgency and impact and suggest a realistic timeline that accounts for context-switching energy costs. Flag items that could be moved to tomorrow.” You can then use the output to help sort through what you need to accomplish today versus what can wait, and you’ll be able to build in reasonable buffer times between different content areas.
Refine Your Courses
You may have inherited syllabi and course materials from colleagues, or you’ve found yourself wanting to update a course you’ve taught many times before. Instead of starting from scratch, use AI to help improve your existing materials. For example, feed your existing syllabus into AI with a prompt similar to: “Review this syllabus for clarity and tone. Suggest: (1) language that’s more welcoming to diverse learners, (2) policies that better support students with disabilities, (3) references or examples that are outdated and should be revised, and (4) areas where expectations could be clearer.” With this prompt, you keep full control while AI helps you strengthen your course by targeting revisions around what may be most confusing or outdated. Additional prompts can be developed to help you improve other materials, including assessment guidelines, question vignettes, and grading rubrics.
Conclusion
AI won’t conduct your research or teach your students, but it can be used to help address tasks that consume time and mental energy. In every use, ensure that you are following institution-specific AI guidelines and upholding professional standards. Use AI to help refine your ideas, but make sure it doesn’t replace your unique perspective and expertise.
These strategies represent three ways that AI can be used as a tool to support your work and time management. Start with one area that you feel you need to improve, and experiment from there. Note what saves you the most time or feels the most helpful to determine which strategy is most valuable for your needs.
AI Author Use Statement: I used Claude 4.5 Sonnet to help me refine the suggested prompts included in this blog post. I take full responsibility for the final content.