The Life Starter
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Week 6 · Lesson 3 of 6
Digital · Guided lesson

Break complex work into steps

About 31 minutes · 5 reading + 26 practice and checks
Work at your own pace. Optional videos take extra time.
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Before you begin

The idea in everyday life

Complex work becomes easier to verify when split into stages with artifacts between them. Plan, retrieve, extract, transform, critique, and finalize separately when errors in one stage could contaminate the rest. Preserve a human checkpoint before consequential action.

The idea

Reliable workflows are pipelines: inspect, plan, draft, test, revise, approve.

Try it

One step at a time.

Use the sample or information you have permission to use. These steps help you build your weekly project.

  1. 1

    Map the current human process and mark decisions, dependencies, source inputs, and quality checks.

  2. 2

    Assign AI only the stages it can perform or assist, keeping sensitive approvals explicit.

  3. 3

    Pass results between steps in a clear format: a table, checklist, labeled sections, or JSON (a structured text format for data).

  4. 4

    Pause after research or planning to correct direction before generating an expensive final artifact.

Example

See how it works.

For a policy brief, the operator first defines questions, then gathers approved sources, extracts claims into a table, drafts an outline, writes sections, verifies every citation, and finally edits tone. A single 'write the brief' request would hide missing evidence.

Check your work

Did you cover these?

  • Each stage has an input, output, and acceptance test.
  • Source retrieval is separated from synthesis.
  • A failure at one stage can be corrected without rerunning or trusting the entire chain.
Your work

What to finish

A workflow map with the stages this task needs and human and AI ownership labeled at every step.

Common mistake

Watch for this

Requesting research, strategy, production, and verification in one giant prompt with no review boundary.

How can I tell I understand it?

You can inspect and replace any stage without rebuilding the entire workflow.

Try 3 questions

Quick knowledge check

Answer all 3 questions. Get at least 2 right and the lesson completes automatically.

Not yet passed

You’ll get an explanation for each answer. Signed in? Your results save to your account.

1A workflow extracts facts from approved sources, makes an outline, drafts a report, and gets human approval. The extraction table contains two figures with no source support. What should happen next?
2An AI stage must hand survey findings to a human reviewer before drafting. Which handoff lets the reviewer inspect evidence and replace a faulty finding without redoing the whole task?
3A six-stage workflow labels AI as draft owner and Lee as final approver. It automatically emails each draft before Lee reviews it. Where is the control failure?
0 of 3 answeredApply the lesson to a short question, then review the explanation.
3
Finish this lesson

Pass the check. We’ll save the progress.

Answer all 3 questions above and get at least 2 right. You can review the explanations and try again.

Go to the knowledge check
Optional course overview video · same video as Lesson 1
Google CloudAI and Machine Learning with Google CloudYouTube
Optional course overview

AI and Machine Learning with Google Cloud

From Google Cloud. Watch here or open it on YouTube .

Observe how the video builds from basic prompting to iterative work. Turn that progression into visible checkpoints rather than one long conversation.
Tools, templates, and lesson sources

Tools and templates

Tools open in a new tab so you can keep your place here.

Sources and further reading

Explore the references behind this lesson.

NIST — AI Risk Management Framework
OpenAI — Prompt engineering guide
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