Ten AI Tasks Worth Trying This Week
Most people stall on AI because they’re waiting for a big use case. The value usually starts small. Pick one of these, use it for a week, and see what it saves you. All of them work in Microsoft 365 Copilot, and most work in Claude or other assistants too.
One rule first
Use the tools your company has approved, with your work account. Don’t paste client data into a free consumer tool. If your business hasn’t decided what’s allowed yet, read the four decisions behind AI governance before you go further.
The ten
- Recap a meeting. Let AI capture the decisions and action items so you can actually pay attention. I did the math on whether that pays for itself.
- Turn the recap into a follow-up email. Ask for a short, plain version addressed to the people who need to act.
- Catch up on a long email thread. Ask what was decided, what’s still open, and what’s waiting on you.
- Summarize a long document. Contracts, proposals, insurance policies. Ask for the parts that affect you, then read those parts yourself.
- Get up to speed on a project. Copilot can pull from your email, chats, and files to brief you on something you’ve been out of the loop on.
- Find what someone said. “What did Mike say about the delivery date?” beats twenty minutes of searching.
- Draft a first pass. Agendas, job posts, client updates. You edit. It doesn’t send.
- Rewrite for a different reader. Turn a technical explanation into something a client can follow, or shorten a long email to three sentences.
- Translate a message. Useful for crews and clients who are more comfortable in another language. Have a fluent person check anything important.
- Plan your day. Paste your task list and calendar and ask what to do first and what can wait.
Check the output
AI gets things wrong in a confident tone. Treat everything it gives you as a draft from a fast, eager new hire. Read it before it goes anywhere, especially numbers, names, and dates.
Then go one step further
Once a few people are using these daily, you’ll start seeing the repeat work that could be automated end to end. That’s where the bigger savings are, and it’s what our AI managed services are built for. If you’re not sure where to start, the AI business assessment is a good first step.
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