You already know what you want to say—but the process of organizing it in a way that’s logical, focused, and aligned with your audience can be stressful. This week, we’re sharing a ChatGPT workflow to go from idea to polished outline in 15 minutes, freeing you up to focus on refining the ideas rather than struggling to get them onto paper.

What’s your process for starting a presentation?

Many of us often struggle with this early stage because we’re either overthinking the outline or skipping structure altogether, and both approaches lead to frustration and a less effective presentation.

But with a simple workflow—like using ChatGPT to organize those raw ideas into a clear outline—you can eliminate the stress and save so much time.

This kind of process doesn’t just get you moving; it shifts your focus. Instead of wrestling with where to start, you can spend your time refining the content, sharpening your message, and making sure every piece of the presentation aligns with your audience and goals. It’s a game-changer for anyone who wants to take their presentations from scattered to strategic without burning hours or energy on the wrong parts of the process.

The Problem: Why the Outline Stage Feels Like a Bottleneck

The outline stage is where you’re taking something abstract—an idea, a vision, or even a collection of insights—and trying to give it shape. This step is often the most mentally demanding because it requires clarity of thought and an ability to filter what’s essential from everything else.

A lot of people sometimes feel stuck at this stage because it’s where ambiguity is the greatest. The idea is there, but it’s still unformed—it’s almost like trying to untangle a knot. Until you can get those first few threads clear, it can feel like progress isn’t happening. But this stage is critical, and taking the time to work through it sets the foundation for everything else. Without a strong outline, even the best ideas can get lost or diluted.

It can also be a time issue. There’s rarely enough of it to sit down and thoughtfully work through that translation process. And when you’re trying to be both strategic and concise, it can feel paralyzing. The stakes are high—your presentation needs to inspire, inform, and drive action. So that pressure can make this early stage surprisingly difficult.

The Solution: A Faster Way to Structure Your Ideas

Using an AI tool like ChatGPT is a powerful solution to this problem. It takes one of the most challenging parts of the process—organizing your thoughts—and simplifies it. Instead of staring at a blank page or getting stuck trying to create the perfect outline, you can use AI to quickly structure your ideas into something workable.

With this workflow, you can hand off the heavy lifting to ChatGPT. In just a few minutes, it helps you turn everything in your head into a polished outline that’s ready to work with.

Step 1: Before diving into prompts, clarify a few essential pieces of the presentation.

• What’s the goal? What do you want this presentation to achieve? Are you persuading, informing, inspiring, or driving action? A clear purpose gives direction to the entire outline.
• Who’s the audience? What do they care about? What do they already know, and what do they need to know? Understanding this helps the AI structure your content in a way that resonates.
• What’s the core idea? If you had to summarize your presentation in one sentence, what would it be? This acts as the anchor for your outline.
• Key points or themes. Jot down a few high-level ideas or topics you want to cover. Even if they’re not fully formed yet, this gives the AI something to work with.
• Tone and style. Are you going for professional, conversational, motivational? Setting this up helps the AI match the tone you’re aiming for.

These answers don’t need to be perfect, but the more clear you are, the more focused your outline will be.

Step 2: Feed ChatGPT a detailed prompt.

Now that we have some basic content and understanding of the audience, we can move into shaping this into a structured presentation outline using ChatGPT. We’ll apply this step-by-step to a hypothetical presentation on improving employee onboarding with digital tools.

The first part of the prompt is about context. This sets the stage for the AI by providing key details about the presentation’s purpose, audience, and any relevant constraints.

I’m creating a presentation to propose a new roadmap for improving our employee onboarding process using digital tools. The audience is a mix of HR leaders and IT managers, and the goal is to get their buy-in for the project. I want the presentation to address both the operational benefits of streamlining the onboarding process and the psychological impact on new employees, such as increased engagement, faster adaptation, and higher retention rates. Act as a combination of an HR strategist and a behavioral psychologist to help craft an outline that balances practical implementation with the human aspects of onboarding.

Asking the AI to think like multiple experts is a great way to elevate the quality of the output, especially for presentations that need to balance different perspectives. By combining these perspectives, we're encouraging the AI to approach the problem holistically—considering both the logistical and emotional dimensions of onboarding. We're dealing with operational challenges (HR processes) and human behavior (engagement, learning, and adaptation). So asking the AI to act as a mix of an HR strategist and a behavioral psychologist could give us a more nuanced and impactful output.

The second part of the prompt focuses on the goals and objectives of the presentation—the "why" behind it. This part of the prompt should focus on clarifying what you want the presentation to accomplish for the audience.

The goal of this presentation is to secure buy-in from HR leaders and IT managers for a new roadmap to improve employee onboarding using digital tools. The presentation aims to highlight why onboarding matters for organizational success, outline current challenges in the process, and demonstrate how digital tools can drive both operational efficiency and a better employee experience. By the end, the audience should feel confident in the proposed plan and motivated to collaborate on implementation.

The last part of the prompt provides the AI with additional details and specifies exactly what kind of output you need.

Here are the key points I want to include in the presentation: Current onboarding challenges: inconsistent processes, excessive paperwork, and lack of engagement from new hires. Benefits of digital onboarding: faster integration, improved employee experience, and reduced administrative workload. Proposed roadmap: Audit existing onboarding processes to identify gaps. Pilot a digital onboarding program with one department. Scale the program across the organization based on feedback and results. A call to action for collaboration: specific ways HR and IT can work together, such as sharing data insights, aligning tools, and creating joint training resources. I need you to produce a high-level presentation outline. The outline should be organized into sections with clear headings, and each section should include a brief description of what it will cover. The tone should be professional and persuasive, keeping in mind the audience of HR leaders and IT managers

The Full Prompt Template

I’m creating a presentation to [state the purpose of the presentation, e.g., propose a roadmap, pitch a new idea, provide an update]. The audience includes [describe the audience, e.g., department heads, executives, clients, or team members], and the goal is to [state the goal, e.g., gain approval, secure buy-in, educate, or inform]. The presentation should address [briefly describe the focus or key themes, e.g., operational improvements, customer impact, financial benefits]. The goal of this presentation is to [describe the desired outcome, e.g., motivate the audience to take action, agree on a plan, or collaborate on an initiative]. It aims to [list what the presentation should achieve, e.g., explain the importance of the topic, highlight current challenges, present solutions, and inspire confidence in the plan]. By the end, the audience should [describe what you want the audience to feel, understand, or do, e.g., feel confident in the proposal, see the value of the initiative, or commit to next steps]. Here are the key points I want to include in the presentation: [List key point 1, e.g., current challenges or opportunities]. [List key point 2, e.g., proposed solutions or benefits]. [List key point 3, e.g., the roadmap or action plan]. [List any additional points, e.g., a call to action or specific audience takeaways]. I need you to produce a [describe the output, e.g., high-level outline, slide titles, or detailed talking points]. The output should be [describe the structure, e.g., organized into sections with headings, bullet points, or brief summaries]. The tone should be [describe the tone, e.g., professional, persuasive, or conversational], keeping in mind the audience of [reiterate the audience, e.g., HR leaders and IT managers, or clients and stakeholders]."*

Remember anything in brackets is a placeholder. You fill these in based on the specifics of what you’re working on. Experiment with the prompt, tweak it to fit your style, and watch how it transforms your presentation writing skills.

Wrap-Up

Writing an outline can take up a lot of time and is often the most stressful part of the process. AI helps you get to the part of the process where you’re really adding value much quicker—whether that's crafting a narrative, designing the visuals, or preparing for delivery. You're still in control of the final product, but with a lot less friction to get there.

​

Until next week,
Meghan
Founder, The Good Deck