Speaker 1: If you've ever looked at your to do list and
Speaker 1: thought everything feels urgent and I don't even know where
Speaker 1: to start, then this episode will be really helpful for you.
Speaker 1: That feeling of overwhelm that I'm sure we're all familiar
Speaker 1: with comes from having too much to do all at once,
Speaker 1: with no clear way to decide what actually matters today.
Speaker 1: And the problem isn't that you're bad at prioritizing. It's
Speaker 1: that modern work throws meetings, emails, projects, and personal commitments
Speaker 1: at you simultaneously, and your brain isn't built to hold
Speaker 1: all of that in a calm and chilled out manner.
Speaker 1: So in this episode, Neil and I are going to
Speaker 1: talk through practical ways to use AI to help you
Speaker 1: prioritize when you're weak is feeling out of control. We
Speaker 1: are going to cover how to get AI to help
Speaker 1: separate urgent from important, break big heavy work into manageable chunks,
Speaker 1: and learn how to safely connect AI to your email
Speaker 1: and calendar so that it can identify priorities, draft replies,
Speaker 1: and help you plan your week. By the end, you
Speaker 1: are going to have a much more effective way to
Speaker 1: decide what deserves your energy and what can wait. Welcome
Speaker 1: to how IAI with me Doctor Amantha Imba, and Neo Applin,
Speaker 1: head of Inventium AI. Each episode we share one practical
Speaker 1: way to use AI better at work and in life.
Speaker 1: No fluff, no dech jargon, just things you can use
Speaker 1: straight away. So today we're talking about how to help
Speaker 1: AI to get you to prioritize when everything feels urgent
Speaker 1: and nia. I know you and I have weeks where
Speaker 1: they can just be quite overwhelming with the amount of
Speaker 1: work that we've got on, particularly in the AI space. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to share a couple of my workflows because
Speaker 1: I am not a copilot user, which means that my
Speaker 1: AI is not automatically connected into my calendar. But I
Speaker 1: know that you've got some different methods because you're more
Speaker 1: copilot than me. So should we get into it. Yep.
Speaker 2: But also, if you're not in copilot, you can use
Speaker 2: other applications like Claude and Gemini and whatever, so you're
Speaker 2: not left out if you're not copilot, So go for it.
Speaker 1: Okay. So here's what I typically do at the start
Speaker 1: of the week and I realize, oh, I'm feeling overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: What am I going to do? Is I will work
Speaker 1: with my AI, and I will do a brain dump
Speaker 1: of everything that is on my mind, like every single task,
Speaker 1: whether it be big, deep work chunks or smaller shallow
Speaker 1: work chunks. Then I will ask the AI to well
Speaker 1: some of the context that will know because it knows
Speaker 1: me quite well. But I will still prompt it to
Speaker 1: interview me to try to break apart what is urgent important,
Speaker 1: what is important not urgent and urgent and not you know,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so kind of working in those those you know,
Speaker 1: typical time management task management quadrants. Then I will get
Speaker 1: a bit of a list, so a bit of a
Speaker 1: priority list from AI. Sometimes I will ask it to
Speaker 1: ask me questions to break down how long I think
Speaker 1: each task will take, because then that's important for time boxing,
Speaker 1: because sometimes you know, everything can feel overwhelming because you
Speaker 1: just in your mind overestimate how much time everything is
Speaker 1: going to take. And then another thing that I'll do
Speaker 1: is I will ask it to ask me questions to
Speaker 1: identify which task is causing me the most stress, because
Speaker 1: you know how sometimes you've just got a shopping list
Speaker 1: of things that need to get done during the week,
Speaker 1: but often there's just one that's causing a lot of stress.
Speaker 1: Have you had that experience before? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And sometimes you can't put your finger on it.
Speaker 2: You just know I feel stressed, but you don't know
Speaker 2: which one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I find that AI is quite helpful in
Speaker 1: asking me questions to just unpack that, and often I
Speaker 1: will prioritize for Monday the task that is causing me
Speaker 1: the most stressed, because once I get that done, then
Speaker 1: my stress levels automatically decline. I sometimes then get more
Speaker 1: micro and I'll get it to break the list up
Speaker 1: into a task list or a to do list, if
Speaker 1: you like, splitting it up into deep versus shallow work
Speaker 1: tasks for every day of the week Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Speaker 1: At Inventium, we do Gift of the Fifth, so a
Speaker 1: lot of us don't work on Friday if we've got
Speaker 1: all our work done. So it's often a four day list.
Speaker 1: And that I find that little process, which takes all
Speaker 1: of five minutes chatting with the AI is I find
Speaker 1: a really good flow to get the AI to help
Speaker 1: me prioritize. Do you do anything similar to that? Because
Speaker 1: I do have one other flow that I want to share,
Speaker 1: But first you have you done anything like that? Neo?
Speaker 2: I have I think that my days are a little
Speaker 2: bit different to yours. Often I've got larger chunks of time,
Speaker 2: whereas you're If you ever seen Amantha's calendar, everyone, it
Speaker 2: is a thing to behold. It's like someone sprinkled hundreds
Speaker 2: and thousands on the calendar because they are all different colors,
Speaker 2: and there are no gaps, because everything is scheduled within
Speaker 2: an inch of its life. So Amantha needs this kind
Speaker 2: of productivity, whereas for me, often I've got blocks of
Speaker 2: half a day, or some a day delivery, or a
Speaker 2: few hours here and there, so my day is not
Speaker 2: as tightly scheduled as Amantha's. However, I can help anyone
Speaker 2: whether their diary looks more like mine or more like yours.
Speaker 2: But in order for it to be useful, it really
Speaker 2: needs to know about you. It needs to know about
Speaker 2: the task you're working on, the projects you're working on,
Speaker 2: and things like that. So the first step is how
Speaker 2: do you help give that context to your AI. Now
Speaker 2: I know that one of the things you do is
Speaker 2: you work with Claude, and you work with projects a lot,
Speaker 2: and so with projects for those of you who aren't
Speaker 2: in Claude, it's a bit like a GPT it's a
Speaker 2: little bit like a notebook if you're in copilot land,
Speaker 2: where it's got your documents, your background, your knowledge, and
Speaker 2: so every time you up and up a new chat thread,
Speaker 2: it already knows all those things. And so having that
Speaker 2: background is great because you can say, here's my week
Speaker 2: that I'm really worried about, or here's these projects and
Speaker 2: I'm worried about. It knows loosely. We try to achieve
Speaker 2: it knows loosely about these projects and things like that. Heck,
Speaker 2: I used to be a project manager, so this have
Speaker 2: a project in claude, or have a notebook in copilot
Speaker 2: for each of the projects you're working on. That way
Speaker 2: you don't have to say it everything about all your job.
Speaker 2: It's just about that project you're working on. So there
Speaker 2: we go. Background is really important. The next is for
Speaker 2: me at least, sometimes I have this massive boulder and
Speaker 2: I don't really know how I'm going to chunk this
Speaker 2: boulder down. So this is where you're questioning. Idea is brilliant.
Speaker 2: So you say, I've got this thing maybe stressing me.
Speaker 2: How do I make this something that I can actually do?
Speaker 2: And AI is great at being able to break it
Speaker 2: down into smaller chunks that you can actually understand what
Speaker 2: you're trying to achieve, who you need to pull in,
Speaker 2: and things like that. So another massive tip which is
Speaker 2: get AI to help you to make sense of these
Speaker 2: things so you can then schedule it in calendar and
Speaker 2: all of those kind of things.
Speaker 1: One thing that I've had success with is, and again
Speaker 1: this is good if your AI is not talking to
Speaker 1: your calendar, is pasting in a screenshot of your calendar
Speaker 1: for the week and asking your AI to help you
Speaker 1: prioritize or potentially to give you insight into how you're
Speaker 1: organizing my diary. So I've occasionally done this, and I
Speaker 1: actually did this before we started recording because I was
Speaker 1: curious as to what would come out, and my AI
Speaker 1: knows me, but it's not connected into my calendar. So
Speaker 1: it was actually pretty good at recognizing what was non negotiable,
Speaker 1: like some of my external meetings, sales meetings, and also
Speaker 1: anything to do with Frankie a daughter, and it was
Speaker 1: it was good at identifying where all my deep work
Speaker 1: was time boxed, but it was interesting and it said
Speaker 1: that I had too much context switching with my deep work.
Speaker 1: I had too many deep work tasks scheduled, and some
Speaker 1: of them I'd only given half an hour or two,
Speaker 1: so it had, you know, I think pretty cleverly suggested
Speaker 1: that I extend those deep work blocks out and try
Speaker 1: to be a bit more single minded with what I
Speaker 1: was achieving each day. So that is a fun little
Speaker 1: exercise to do with your AI if you're wanting to
Speaker 1: get maybe some coaching around how you're currently organizing your diary.
Speaker 1: But tell me, neo, how can people who have set
Speaker 1: up connections either within the Microsoft environment using cope pilot
Speaker 1: an outlook to play together, or they've connected in chat,
Speaker 1: GPT or claude, or they're in the Google ecosystem where
Speaker 1: everything can see everything else, what is the best way
Speaker 1: that we can use our AI to help us prioritize
Speaker 1: for the week.
Speaker 2: You use AI as your productivity assistant, so you're using
Speaker 2: it like you would if you had a project admin
Speaker 2: to be able to help you with those projects. So
Speaker 2: are we connecting two things? If you can email and calendar,
Speaker 2: and these are really important things to connect in because
Speaker 2: often we have tasks that relate to many, many, many
Speaker 2: emails that we've been given. So connect the two of them. Now,
Speaker 2: how do you connect them Each of the different tools
Speaker 2: have their own different ways to connect in Now, Microsoft,
Speaker 2: within the Copilot and ecosystem, if you're in Microsoft Office three, six, five,
Speaker 2: or then you can get Copilot to do the connection
Speaker 2: into your mail and calendar just natively by clicking on
Speaker 2: the wet work tab. So that's great. You can do
Speaker 2: those kind of things. Google, same kind of thing. Within
Speaker 2: the Google workspace. You can be plugged in with those
Speaker 2: things with CHURCHBT and Claude. There are things called connectors,
Speaker 2: and so you need to go to often there's a
Speaker 2: plus button or in the settings there's connectors, and then
Speaker 2: you can add connectors for say Gmail or for your
Speaker 2: Google Calendar and things like that. So these are the
Speaker 2: things to be able to plug in. We'll just talking
Speaker 2: a moment about your calendar, so you can bring these
Speaker 2: calendars your emails in and then you can have a
Speaker 2: conversation about your day, your diary. So instead of it
Speaker 2: having a look at a picture like Amantha is given
Speaker 2: it and maybe color coded slices whatnot, if you just
Speaker 2: give the same kind of feedback Thatamantha had, but it's
Speaker 2: giving it on effective facts rather than reading a picture
Speaker 2: and things like that. The other thing is bring in
Speaker 2: your email. So I've got a meeting on Thursday? How
Speaker 2: do I prepare for this? Is there other things I
Speaker 2: need to do for this? I've got a deep work
Speaker 2: session in here? How do I best prioritize the deep
Speaker 2: work session? And be able to read the agenda or
Speaker 2: the tasks or the notes in your deep agenda and
Speaker 2: be able to say check emails and things like that,
Speaker 2: so it'll help you along the way. So really important
Speaker 2: to be able to get your email and your calendar
Speaker 2: with AI and then work as work with it as
Speaker 2: that assistant. As I said, there's also another superpower that
Speaker 2: particularly chatpt and Claude have, which is if you're in
Speaker 2: a system like say Monday dot Com or a SANA
Speaker 2: or things like that, and you're using these web applications
Speaker 2: for managing your tasks, you can bring those in as well,
Speaker 2: because sometimes it's not just about calendar management. Sometimes it's
Speaker 2: about my to do list or how I need to
Speaker 2: contribute to other people's tasks and things like that, So
Speaker 2: you can bring those into your AI and then get
Speaker 2: your AI to tell you about your tasks or what's
Speaker 2: do when they're due? And do I have a task
Speaker 2: that maybe I don't have scheduled in my calendar, so
Speaker 2: it's a way to cross reference against those two. So again,
Speaker 2: productivity assistant to be able to review all the things
Speaker 2: on your plate, help you chunk them down and be
Speaker 2: able to plan them accordingly.
Speaker 1: Awesome. So hopefully, if you have been listening, and maybe
Speaker 1: you started off feeling really overwhelmed at the start of
Speaker 1: this episode, you've now got some practical ways that you
Speaker 1: can use AI to help lessen your stress and get
Speaker 1: yourself organized for the week. And remember, if you've got
Speaker 1: a question for Neo or I, there is an email
Speaker 1: address in the show notes. We love hearing from you,
Speaker 1: and thank you for all the emails and feedback that
Speaker 1: you have been sending us so far. We will see
Speaker 1: you next Monday. If you found this useful, please help
Speaker 1: us spread the AI love and share it with someone
Speaker 1: who you think would benefit from knowing what you now know.
Speaker 1: And if you're ready to really start mastering AI, check
Speaker 1: out inventium dot ai. We help individuals, teams, and organizations
Speaker 1: turn Jenai into a real work superpower, saving ten plus
Speaker 1: hours a week and staying future ready without the jargon
Speaker 1: or overwhelmed. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see
Speaker 1: you next time on how i AI. How I AI
Speaker 1: was hosted by me Amantha Imber and Neo Applan. A
Speaker 1: big thank you to Martin Imber who does our sound editing,
Speaker 1: and Jim Rubio for production support, and thank you to
Speaker 1: John Kilby who composed the theme music