Summer has a different rhythm. There are airport gates instead of conference rooms, long drives instead of back-to-back meetings, and just a little more margin in the day. Even when the calendar remains full, there are moments between meetings that don’t exist during the rest of the year.

Most of us fill those moments the same way. We catch up on email, skim the headlines, or doom scroll until it’s time to board. I’ve started doing something different.

Recently, I heard Geoff Woods, author of The AI-Driven Leader, describe a framework he calls CRIT—provide Context, define the Relationship, let AI Interview you, then assign it a Task. The acronym stuck with me, not because it made me a better prompt writer, but because it put structure around something I’d already begun doing. It gave me a simple way to think about using AI as a preparation tool rather than an answer machine.

Turn Waiting Into Rehearsal

Over the past year, I’ve found myself arriving at important meetings noticeably better prepared—not because AI told me what to think, but because it challenged how I was thinking before I walked into the room. Whether I’m preparing for a CEO discussion, a board presentation, or a strategy session with a client, I’ve found that ten or fifteen focused minutes can expose assumptions I didn’t realize I was making.

I’ve asked AI to challenge my growth strategy before meeting with a CEO. I’ve used it to translate complicated appropriations and political dynamics into language business leaders could immediately understand. Before client strategy sessions, I’ve had it play the role of a skeptical congressional staffer or program manager to identify the questions I was most likely to face.

Sometimes the best prompt is also the shortest: “What am I missing?”

Those conversations rarely produce a perfect answer. They almost always produce a better question.

The goal isn’t better answers. It’s better questions—the kind that help others discover the lesson instead of being told what to think.

That’s become a far better use of idle time than consuming information I’ll barely remember tomorrow. Those small moments of preparation, stolen from otherwise wasted time, have quietly become one of the most valuable ways I use AI.

Small Improvements Compound

Long before AI entered the conversation, I believed meaningful improvement rarely comes from giant leaps. It comes from getting just a little better, consistently. One percent today. Another fraction of a percent next week. Over time, those seemingly insignificant gains compound into something much larger.

That’s how I think about these twenty-minute conversations. I don’t expect a breakthrough every time I open the app. I simply expect to arrive a little better prepared than I would have otherwise. Over weeks and months, that preparation compounds into better meetings, better decisions, and, hopefully, better leadership.

Better Questions

The point is not to turn AI into a substitute for preparation. The point is to use it to make preparation more deliberate. Before the next meeting, ask yourself (and AI):

• What am I assuming that may not be true?
• What question am I hoping no one asks?
• Where am I using familiar language that may not land with the person across the table?
• What would a skeptical buyer, staffer, investor, or board member challenge first?

Those questions force a different level of thinking. They move AI from novelty to rehearsal, and rehearsal is often what separates a productive meeting from a polite one.