Productivity
Beginner
17 min
Task decomposition — breaking work into AI-sized pieces
The problem
Write a business plan for my dairy startup. You get twelve pages of structurally correct, factually empty text: an executive summary that summarises nothing, a market section with invented figures, financials with placeholder numbers. You conclude AI is not ready for real work.
The workflow
1State the big task
2Find the seams
3Order the steps
4Mark human decisions
5Run step by step
6Review between
7Assemble
★Verify whole
What you need
Task: A business plan for a small dairy processing unit in Nashik, to take to a bank for a term loan. Purpose: bank credit appraisal, ₹85 lakh.
The tool
Any assistant, using the prompt below
The prompt
Subscribers. The full prompt is part of the SMEMinds AI Playbook. See plans.
What comes back
1. Product and segment definition — INPUT: your two supplier tie-ups, capacity from the machinery quote.
Verify before you use it
Human review required. Check every line below before this leaves your screen.
- Are the human-decision points genuinely yours to make? If AI is deciding your product mix, the plan is not your plan and you cannot defend it in the appraisal meeting.
- Are all real-data steps flagged? Any number that is not from a quote, a bill, a rate card or a market check is invented — and in a bank document that is a serious problem.
- Is the chain eight steps or fewer? Longer chains lose coherence and each step drifts further from your context.
- Does each CHECK actually take ten seconds? 'Verify the financials are correct' is not a ten-second check.