This Week’s Focus: Excel Formatting

Read Time: 3 minutes

How I stopped chasing project updates (and you can too)

Project chaos is real — deadlines slip, updates get lost, and suddenly everyone’s pretending the spreadsheet is “just about done.” These AI tools quietly handle the busywork that slows projects down.

What I Tried

Motion

What it is: AI project and calendar manager that automatically plans your day and schedules tasks based on priorities and deadlines.
How it helps: It reschedules meetings and tasks in real time when things shift — no more manual juggling.
Cost: Starts at $19/month
Effort to learn: Medium — takes about a week to really sync with your workflow.
Takeaway: If your calendar looks like a Tetris game, Motion will make it look like a well-planned spreadsheet instead.

What I Tried

Notion AI

What it is: AI assistant built inside Notion that helps summarize updates, write project recaps, and create task lists from meeting notes.
How it helps: Saves you from retyping or reformatting — your meeting notes become action plans automatically.
Cost: $8–10/month add-on
Effort to learn: Easy — if you already use Notion, you’re 90% there.
Takeaway: Turns messy meeting notes into a to-do list before the meeting even ends.

What I Tried

ClickUp Brain

What it is: AI built into ClickUp that generates task descriptions, status updates, and meeting summaries.
How it helps: Keeps your entire team aligned without extra check-ins.
Cost: Included with paid plans ($10/month and up)
Effort to learn: Easy — just activate and type “/brain” to start.
Takeaway: It’s like having a project manager who never forgets a single task.

Next Time

Takeaways

The right AI tools don’t just track your projects — they quietly keep everyone on schedule so you can spend less time managing work and more time doing it.

That’s it for this week.

Keep hacking your workday - I’ll be back next week!

The Hack The Workday Team

Here’s to saving time - and your sanity at work.