Your Saturday deserves better than another Google search

Today's Tip: Turn a Google Maps rabbit hole into a real Saturday plan

The problem with a free Saturday isn't that there's nothing to do. It's that there's too much… and no plan.

Let me explain…

Preston Whitaker had a good problem. His wife Margaret had said, over coffee the Sunday before, "We never do anything anymore." Not sharp. Just true.

Preston is 66. He runs a small CPA practice out of a converted carriage house in Traverse City, Michigan. He's been winding it down for two years now… still keeps about a dozen long-time clients, still files a return with a pencil first before touching the software. Careful man. Good with a spreadsheet.

He decided the next Saturday was going to be different. A real day out. Sleeping Bear Dunes was thirty minutes west.

He had ideas. A morning walk. Lunch somewhere with a view of Lake Michigan. Maybe the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive in the afternoon. Ice cream in Empire on the way home.

That was Wednesday.

By Thursday night, he had thirty tabs open in his browser. Trip reports from 2019. A blog about the best pasties in Leelanau County.

Two different maps with pins scattered like he'd sneezed on the screen. He had no plan. He had a mess.

He gave up around ten. Closed the laptop. Went to bed.

Friday morning, his oldest daughter called from Chicago. She uses Gemini for everything at her marketing job.

She listened to his problem for about a minute and said, "Dad. You're doing it backwards. You don't need more information. You need a plan. Let Gemini make it."

Here's the prompt she sent him.

Preston pasted the prompt into gemini.google.com on his laptop. Signed in with his regular Gmail account.

Forty seconds later, Gemini had a plan.

Depart Traverse City at 8:15 a.m. First stop, the Empire Bluff Trail — a three-quarter-mile walk each way to a Lake Michigan overlook, best done before ten to beat the crowds.

Second stop, a late breakfast in Empire at eleven. Third stop, the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, the seven-mile loop with the overlook decks. Rain plan: the Philip A. Hart Visitor Center for the twenty-minute film. Home by 4:30.

Preston printed it. Not because Margaret needed the printout, but because he wanted one.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "But the restaurant might be closed." Or, "What if the hours are wrong?" You're right to ask.

That's why the prompt asks for addresses and hours instead of just names. Once you have the address, you can spot-check any place you're unsure about in another tab. Two minutes of verification beats two hours of tab-hopping.

The old way of planning a Saturday was to open Google, read fourteen blogs, pin twenty places on a map, and then flip a coin. The new way is to write down what you actually want, hand it to Gemini, and let it turn the map into a schedule.

Try it this week. Pick one Saturday. Give it a real plan.

Your weekend deserves better than another rabbit hole.

★ Quick Wins

Skill Builder: The Plain-Words Prompt

Here's a problem you've probably run into. You ask AI for something, and it gives you back an answer that sounds… fancy. Long words. Business-speak. Sentences that circle around the point instead of landing on it.

That's not you being fussy. That's how these tools default. They were trained on a lot of corporate writing, so when they don't know who they're writing for, they write like a middle manager writing a memo nobody will read.

The fix is one more prompt. You don't have to start over. You just have to tell it who's reading.

Here's the trick: after the AI gives you something, ask it to rewrite the same content for a specific person and reading level. Not "make it simpler." That's too vague. Instead: "Rewrite this for a sixty-eight-year-old who is not a doctor and hates jargon." Or: "Rewrite this for my grandson who is twelve and reads at grade level."

The AI will strip out the throat-clearing… drop the buzzwords… and give you back something you'd actually want to read aloud. It works on medical summaries, insurance letters, contracts, email drafts, everything.

Save this prompt somewhere you can find it. A note on your phone. A sticky on your monitor. Anywhere.

Because you're going to want it the next time an AI answer sounds like it was written by a lawyer's assistant on a Monday morning.