Day 11 – Tame Your Emails and Files – 30 Day AI Challenge 2024

Welcome to the 2024 Edition of the #30DayAIChallenge. This year, we’ll be focusing on making Generative AI more accessible for all. So follow along and give each challenge a try yourself, plus share your own thoughts and experiments with a community of like-minded learners and tinkerers!*

Week 2‘s theme is “The Fast and the Curious: AI Drift“, focused on productivity and designed to help speed up tasks, plus reduce time spent on the mundane, both at work and home.

Today’s Challenge: Take Control Of Your Emails & Files!

If you own a computer or have a job, chances are that you could do with some help taming your inbox and burgeoning repository of files. Today’s challenge, “Tame Your Emails and Files,” is all about reclaiming control, with some help from Generative AI.

How Beginners Can Approach the Challenge

For those just getting started, the journey to taming your emails and files with Generative AI starts with understanding what tools are available and how they can help. AI-powered email filters, for example, can automate the process of sorting emails into folders or marking them as important based on your past interactions and preferences. Similarly, AI document management systems can organize your files by type, relevance, or project, making them easier to find later.

Some Popular Tools You Can Try Out

I recently shared some practical tips on how to use AI to tame your email inbox, plus here are some tools you may want to give a look…

AI Life Hacks – Taming Email. Secret AI Productivity Tips You Can Actually Use

Email Management

• SaneBox: This veteran tool now adds AI to its arsenal. SaneBox excels at sorting your inbox, filtering low-priority emails, summarizing long messages, and providing intelligent reminders for follow-ups.
• Superhuman: Superhuman blends traditional email functionality with AI-powered writing assistance. Draft responses faster, employ keyboard shortcuts for quick actions, and schedule messages for optimal delivery.
• Shortwave: This Gmail-focused power tool understands the semantic content of your emails. Search naturally (like “emails from Sarah about project X”) and get instant summaries to cut through Inbox noise.
• Microsoft Outlook (with Copilot Pro): Microsoft is infusing strong AI features into its email software, aimed at improving drafting, suggesting relevant information, and automating basic tasks.
• Gmail (with AI features): Gmail uses a variety of features to help you save time managing your inbox. It can categorize emails, suggest replies, and even write drafts for you. Some of the specific features include Smart Compose, which suggests phrases as you type, and Smart Reply, which generates short responses to emails. Other features include tabbed inboxes to organize your mail, summary cards to quickly see important details of emails, and nudges to remind you to follow up on emails.

File Management and Organization

• Mem: A new breed of knowledge management tools, Mem uses AI to understand your notes, documents, and files. Find what you need using natural language questions and let Mem automatically tag, organize, and connect information throughout your workspace.
• Notion (with Notion AI Q&A): Notion is a highly popular ‘all-in-one’ workspace. Its new AI features enable you to ask questions about the content of your pages, get summaries, and even get Notion to automatically create drafts for different purposes.
• Dropbox / Google Drive (Enhanced Search): Major cloud storage providers are constantly upgrading their search with AI. You might not think of them directly, but the ability to find files by their content (e.g., “the PDF with a graph about sales data”) has significantly improved through AI-assisted search options.

I personally use Google Drive and the new Gen AI powered search is a huge productivity game-changer for me. Here’s a quick example (at the 00:43sec mark), where I was able to find something very specific without having to run many different searches:

General Productivity Tools (with Impact on Email & Files)

• Zapier: Create custom automations based on AI triggers and actions. Zapier could, for example, move an email attachment to the correct folder, add a task from an email to your task list, and more.
• Jasper: A well-known AI writing assistant, Jasper can compose whole emails, create subject lines, rephrase for clarity, and expand ideas into full paragraphs. Great for getting past a blank draft.

Important Considerations

• Cost: AI features are often on ‘premium’ or ‘business’ pricing tiers for these tools. Assess if the increased cost is justified by your needs.
• Privacy: Especially with tools that analyze your email content, be aware of data use and privacy policies.
• Integration: Think about how these tools might work alongside your existing workflow, email client, and cloud storage choices.

A Quick 10 Second Challenge (Test)

Here’s a quick challenge I tried out to see how these GenAI tools can help speed up workflow and impact.

I did a course a few years ago and would like to dig up a specific document from my file repository…I’d then like to simplify and summarize this in one short paragraph, so I can send off by email.

In the past, this would have taken a few different steps and some time to actually find this report, plus then summarize it…with Google Gemini Advanced, I was able to do the first couple of steps with just one prompt…what a huge time saver!

If you use Microsoft products at work, you can also leverage Copilot (if enabled by your organization) to do the same thing. Copilot in OneDrive, set to roll out in late-April 2024, is a great new feature for Microsoft 365 work and school customers with a Copilot license. It enables users to interact with files in OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint more efficiently by allowing them to retrieve information, summarize content, and create outlines or FAQs directly from their files using natural language prompts. The short video demo below shows how you can query your files for information directly…

Advanced User or Expert Approach

For those more advanced or looking for expert-level solutions, delve into custom AI setups. This could involve training your own AI model to recognize and categorize emails and files based on highly specific criteria relevant to your personal or professional life.

1. Leverage Natural Language Processing (NLP): Use NLP to analyze the content of your emails and files, enabling more nuanced sorting and searching capabilities.
2. Automate Workflow: Integrate AI tools with your workflow to automatically archive documents, schedule emails, or even draft responses based on the content of incoming messages.
3. Data Hygiene: Regularly review the AI’s performance and adjust its training to improve accuracy and efficiency.

Wrap Up

The challenge of taming your emails and files with Generative AI opens up fascinating possibilities for personal productivity and digital organization. As these technologies evolve, we can expect even more intuitive and seamless integration into our digital lives, freeing up our time for what truly matters. The journey from chaos to order in our digital spaces is not only about leveraging new tools but also about adopting a mindset of continual learning and adaptation.

If you give any of these tools a try, leave a comment and share your experience. If you’re using other platforms to post, please tag your Facebook, Twitter / X or LinkedIn post with #30DayAIChallenge so others can find it too.

Till tomorrow…

*Please note: Participation in the 30 Day AI Challenge is at your own discretion and responsibility. Always ensure that no sensitive personal information, confidential, or proprietary company data is shared. Adhere to all applicable local laws and company policies. Enjoy exploring AI responsibly!