An Interactive Exercise: How AI Can Enhance Your Day-to-Day Tasks – A Mini Guide

With artificial intelligence transforming the way we work, integrating it into daily tasks can feel overwhelming. Many professionals struggle with time-consuming, repetitive activities that don’t require deep thinking—whether it’s summarizing meetings, generating reports, or managing emails. What if AI could help reclaim those hours so you can focus on more strategic, creative, or high-value work?

This interactive exercise will guide you through identifying tasks that could benefit from AI, matching them to the right tools, and estimating the potential time savings. By the end, you’ll have a personalized AI productivity plan tailored to your workflow. Whether you’re new to AI or already exploring its capabilities, this process will help you take actionable steps toward working smarter, not harder. Let’s dive in! 

Step 1: Identify Repetitive or Time-Consuming Tasks

Think about your daily and weekly responsibilities. What tasks take up too much of your time but don’t necessarily require deep thinking or creativity?

📝 Write down 3-5 tasks that:
✅ Are repetitive and routine (e.g., summarizing meetings, scheduling, data entry).
✅ Take significant time to complete.
✅ Could benefit from automation or AI assistance.

💡 Example: “I spend 30 minutes every morning summarizing industry news for my team.”

Step 2: Find the Right AI Tools for Your Needs

Now, let’s match those tasks to AI capabilities! Review your list and think about how AI could assist or automate each task.

🤖 AI-powered solutions to consider:
🔹 Copilot for Microsoft 365 → Drafts emails, generates reports, summarizes meetings.
🔹 Microsoft Designer → Creates visual content for presentations or marketing.
🔹 Power BI Smart Narratives → Generates instant data insights.
🔹 Microsoft Syntex → Automates document processing.
🔹 Azure AI Content Safety → Monitors workplace communication for compliance.

📌 Match your tasks to at least one AI tool that could help.

💡 Example: “Instead of manually summarizing news, I could use AI in Copilot or ChatGPT to generate a concise industry update in minutes.”

Step 3: Calculate Your Time Savings

If AI took over some of these tasks, how much time would you gain each week?

⏳ For each AI-assisted task, estimate:
🔹 Time currently spent per week
🔹 Time AI could save
🔹 What you could do with that extra time

💡 Example: “If AI summarizes news in 5 minutes instead of 30, that’s 2+ hours saved per week that I could use for strategy meetings.”

Step 4: Test & Implement AI into Your Workflow

Now, pick one task and commit to using AI to assist with it this week.

🎯 Your Action Plan:
1️⃣ Choose one AI-powered tool to explore.
2️⃣ Apply it to one of your repetitive tasks.
3️⃣ Track your results—did AI help? Was the output useful?
4️⃣ Reflect: What worked well? What adjustments do you need?

💡 Example: “This week, I’ll use Copilot to summarize meeting notes and see if it saves me time.”

Step 5: Share & Reflect Your Findings

Let’s take 2 minutes to discuss:
🗣 What’s one task you think AI could enhance in your role?
🔄 What AI tool do you want to try first?
📊 What’s one way you’ll track your AI-driven productivity improvements?

🔹 Bonus Challenge: Keep a log of your AI-powered enhancements over the next month and review the results!

Outcome: A Personalized AI Productivity Plan

By the end of this exercise, you’ll have:
✅ Identified tasks AI can assist with.
✅ Matched them to the right AI tools.
✅ Estimated your time savings.
✅ Committed to testing AI in your workflow.

💡 Final Thought: AI isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about reclaiming time for higher-value work. Start small, track your progress, and unlock AI’s full potential in your role! 🚀