I want to share something that happened recently, because I think it can be relatable.
A while back I built out a meta prompt for my weekly manager 1:1. If you've seen it, you know I put real thought into it. It scans my interactions across accounts, pulls out what matters, and turns it into a structured update I can walk into a meeting with. I was proud of that build, and honestly I still use a lot of it.
But then I decided to take it further.
I added a full briefing package to the workflow. An executive summary PowerPoint. An HTML web app covering four key areas. The whole thing automated and emailed out an hour before the meeting. I tested it, it ran clean, and I thought my manager was going to love it.
I asked him if he saw the email with the web app and he said he didn't see it yet, it got lost in his Outlook.
When he opened it and we went over it at the end of the meeting he said, "Hey, those four bullet points you sent me in Teams earlier? That's all I needed for this conversation."
That stung a little. But it was honestly some of the most useful feedback I've gotten.
The overbuild trap
Here's the thing about building with AI tools like Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Cowork. They make it fast and easy to create things we genuinely couldn't build on our own before. A PowerPoint in seconds. A web app from a prompt. An automated workflow that runs on a schedule. It's impressive, and it feels productive.
But fast and easy also means it's easy to build more than anyone actually needs.
I built for the output. I should have built for the person.
My manager didn't need a web app. He needed four clear points to drive a ten-minute conversation. The moment I understood that, the whole workflow got simpler, faster, and more useful.
Why this matters beyond just workflow design
As AI moves toward a consumption model, this lesson has a real cost attached to it. Every output your AI generates uses tokens. Every document it creates, every summary it writes, every email it sends — that's compute running in the background. If you're generating things nobody reads, you're spending budget on noise.
Knowing your audience isn't just good design practice. It's cost management.
Before you build, ask one question: what does this person actually need to do their job? Start there. Build that. If they need more, they'll tell you.
What I do now
My 1:1 workflow now does one thing. It looks through the past week, finds what matters across my accounts, and outputs four bullet points. That's what drives the conversation. No PowerPoint. No web app. Just the information my manager needs, in the format he'll actually use.
It took less time to build, costs fewer tokens to run, and works better than everything I built before it.
Build less. Deliver more.
Microsoft