Line one is the outcome

The draft lands on the first of the month. It opens warmly. Thank you for another month of working together. The season is turning and the team has been busy. Then a paragraph on the campaigns you ran, which the client already knows about, because they approved every one of them.

The result is in paragraph four. Orders went up. By how much sits in a table on the second page.

Your client reads two lines on their phone between customers. Then they ring to ask whether any of it is working. You spend twenty minutes reading them the report they already have. Now do that for every client, every month. The AI saved you an hour of drafting and handed you back an hour of explaining.

A report is not a diary. Not a recap of the work, not a tour of the dashboards, not a thank-you note with a chart stapled to it.

The rules

Line one is what changed or what you found. Not what you did. Not how the month felt. The number goes in the same line, because an outcome without its figure is an opinion. If the month was flat, line one says so, with the figure that shows it.

Background only if the outcome needs it, and never first. Ask what the reader cannot understand line one without. That goes second. Everything else is the AI showing its homework to someone who did not ask for it. Cut it.

No preamble, no restating the request, no summary at the end. The thank-you. The "as requested, here is your report". The closing paragraph that says the opening again in different words. Each one is a line the reader has to get past to reach the one that matters.

End with the decision the reader has to make, as options with costs. Two or three options. What each one costs in money, time or risk. A date to answer by. Never "let us know your thoughts", which hands the thinking back to the person paying you to do it.

Fix the instruction, not the draft. Rewriting one report by hand fixes one report. Two lines in the instruction your AI reads every month reach all of them. Step five builds the whole shape. This step starts it.

Do it now

1. Open last month's report, the one your AI drafted. Pick the client you know best.
2. Read it once. On paper, write the single thing that changed most, with its number. If you cannot find the number in the report, write the thing down anyway. Step two deals with the missing figure.
3. Paste the report into your chatbot with this underneath it:

Rewrite this report so that:
- Line one states what changed or what was found, with its number. No greeting, no background.
- Line two says where that change came from, with its number.
- Keep only the background a reader needs to understand lines one and two. Cut the rest.
- Remove any thanks, any restating of what was asked for, and any closing summary.
- End with the decision the reader has to make: two or three options, each with its cost, and a date to answer by.
Do not add any number that is not already in the report. If a line needs a number the report does not give, write unknown.

4. Put the new line one next to what you wrote on paper. If they differ, one of you is wrong. Find out which before anything goes to the client.
5. Open the standing instruction your AI reads before it drafts a report. In a chatbot project that is the project instructions. Elsewhere it is the prompt you paste in each month. Add these two lines at the top:

Line one of every report is the outcome: what changed or what was found, with its number.
The report ends with the decision the reader must make, as options with costs and a date to answer by.

A worked example

Say you and Sam run a two-person marketing agency. You look after the clients and Sam runs the ads. You handle paid search, email and social for eight small businesses, and on the first working day of each month an AI drafts every client's report from the exports. The garden centre is the client you know best, so its August report goes first.

Before, line one:   Thank you for another month of working together.
Before, the result: paragraph four, orders up, the figures in a table on page two
After, line one:    Online orders 312 in August, up 44 on July's 268.
After, line two:    38 of the extra 44 came through the autumn bulbs page.
After, line three:  Paid search cost £19.23 an order against a £22 target.
Cut:                the thank-you, the season, the list of approved campaigns
Option A:           Keep £1,850 a month on the bulb ads through September. No new cost.
Option B:           Move £600 of it to Christmas pre-orders from 15 September. Risk: no order history yet.
Answer by:          Friday 4 September

Same facts, different order.

The failure you will hit

You will let the AI soften line one when the month is bad. Orders fell, and the draft opens with the weather, the bank holiday and a paragraph about the market. The bad month is the one where line one matters most, because it is the month the client has something to decide. Write the instruction so it holds either way. A fall goes in line one with its number, the same as a rise.

The quieter version is leaving the preamble in and moving the outcome up to sit under it. By October line one is line four again. Read the first line of every draft before anything else, every month.

Not for you if

If your reports exist to prove you were busy, stop here. This step makes the result the first thing anybody reads, and some months the result is small. If you would rather a client skimmed past a small number than saw it, you want a newsletter, not a report.

Step two is numbers, not adjectives, where every line after line one earns its place with a figure. The Vault is the paid library, and Personal Productivity is one of its categories.