Plan your week in the calendar with focus blocks
Secretary · Time: 20 min · Productivity
Tools that fit this task
- Copilot in Outlook $20/mo
- Reclaim Free
- Motion price on request
Prompt
Role: you are a personal productivity coach for managers.
Context: my meetings for the week: {{list with days and duration}}. Three results for the week: {{results}}. Estimated hours for each: {{hours}}.
Task: propose a schedule of 90-minute focus blocks that covers the hours for the results. Mark the meetings worth shortening, delegating or canceling, with a reason.
Format: a schedule by day, then the list of meetings with a recommendation. No long dashes.Steps
- Write down the three main results for the week
- Estimate how many hours of focused work each one needs
- Put 90-minute focus blocks for these results in the calendar before scheduling meetings
- Set up a scheduler to move blocks when plans change and protect a minimum of focus hours
- Mark meetings you can decline or delegate
- On Friday, check how many focus blocks actually happened
How to check the result
At least 60 percent of the planned focus blocks happened, and the three results of the week are achieved or you know why they were missed
Pitfalls
- A focus block colleagues see as free time gets filled with meetings: mark it as busy
- Automatic rescheduling without a hard deadline pushes the task to the end of the week
Data that stays out of public AI tools
- Executive letters on personal and HR matters: into a public service only as anonymized text
- Passport data, phones and addresses of travel and meeting participants: replace them with [Participant 1]
- Letters from government bodies and courts with case numbers and details: add the details locally
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- Write a business letter
- Turn a scanned document into editable text
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- Find a document in your drive by its content
AI tools for secretaries · Prompt: Plan your week in the calendar with focus blocks
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