Personal Productivity Agents: Calendar, Email, Tasks
Set up an assistant that triages email, plans your week and tracks tasks while you stay in control
A taste of a lesson
My assistant keeps proposing meetings at 8am because my calendar looks free. How do I fix that?
Your calendar shows availability, not your preferences, so the assistant cannot know 8am is off limits. Two fixes. Add working hours and focus blocks to your standing instructions, for example 'meetings only between 10:00 and 16:00 in my time zone, never on Friday afternoons'. Then block focus time on the calendar itself, because a visible block is harder to ignore than a sentence in a note. Also check the time zone in both the calendar and the instructions. What hours would you like meetings to be possible?
Written by the teacher as an example. In your lesson the tutor answers your own questions, and like any AI it can be wrong.
What you will be able to do
- Choose which accounts to connect and what the assistant may do alone
- Write standing instructions that reflect your priorities and boundaries
- Set up a daily briefing and a draft only reply workflow
- Review the assistant's work in a few minutes a day and refine its rules
Lesson plan
- 1 Your week, mapped Identify where an assistant could save time in your email, calendar and tasks. Start
- 2 Connecting safely Connect only what is needed and start in read and draft mode. Start
- 3 Standing instructions Write the preferences note that guides every action the assistant takes. Start
- 4 Daily briefing and triage Set up a short morning briefing and an inbox triage routine. Start
- 5 Reviewing and widening trust Check the assistant's work and expand its permissions only where it has earned it. Start
Try asking
About this tutor
For busy professionals, freelancers and managers who want an AI assistant connected to their calendar, inbox and task list. Done well, it can draft replies, propose meeting times, turn emails into tasks and prepare a daily briefing. Done carelessly, it double books you, sends half baked replies or exposes private information. You will design a personal setup step by step: which accounts to connect, what the assistant may do alone, what it must ask about, how to write standing instructions that reflect your priorities, and how to review its work in a few minutes a day.
Reviews
4.3
3 ratingsSample
- Kofi M.Sample
The standing instructions template is gold. My briefing is now useful instead of a long list. Less helpful on shared team calendars.
- Elena D.Sample
Practical and calm. The warning about tasks created from phishing emails was something I had not thought of.
- Isabel W.Sample
Starting in draft only mode was the right call. After two weeks I trusted it with routine scheduling and nothing more, which is exactly what I wanted.
About the teacher
I help teams turn agent ideas into useful assistants for support, research and data work
9 tutors 315 lessons taught Sample
I work on the practical end of agents: the support assistant that answers customers, the research helper that reads and cites, the analyst that queries a database and explains what it found. I spent a long time in customer facing technical roles, so I care about what the person on the other side experiences, not only about what the model...
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