Personal Productivity System

Last verified: 14 February 2026 | Applies to: Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise

In 30 seconds

This isn’t about productivity hacks. It’s about building a consistent daily rhythm where Claude handles the operational overhead — triaging what matters, prepping you for meetings, tracking your commitments — so you spend your time on decisions and people, not on organising yourself. The setup takes about 30 minutes. The daily maintenance takes less than 10.

Prerequisites

• A paid plan (Pro or above)
• Claude Desktop with Cowork enabled
• The Productivity plugin installed (for task and memory management)
• Workplace Memory set up (Claude needs your context)

What it does

A personal productivity system in Claude has four daily touchpoints:

1. Morning triage (5 minutes) — review priorities, flag what’s changed overnight, set the day’s focus
2. Meeting prep (2 minutes per meeting) — briefings, agendas, context for each meeting
3. Task capture and prioritisation (ongoing) — dump tasks to Claude throughout the day, let it organise them
4. End-of-day summary (3 minutes) — what got done, what moved, what carries forward

The Productivity plugin manages your task list and memory. Claude reads your calendar (via Google Calendar connector), your messages (via Slack connector), and your task list to give you contextual, prioritised guidance — not generic advice.

How to set it up

1. Connect your calendar and messaging

   In Claude Desktop, install the Google Calendar and Slack connectors (if you use those tools). The more context Claude has about your day, the better the triage.

   Go to Cowork tab → Connectors → search and install.

   If you don’t want to connect these tools, the system still works — you just paste your calendar manually each morning.

2. Set up your morning triage prompt

   Create a skill or save this as a slash command (/morning):

   Run my morning triage:
   1. Check my calendar for today's meetings. For each one, give me a one-line summary of what it's about and who's attending.
   2. Review my task list (TASKS.md). Flag anything overdue or due today.
   3. Check Slack for any messages that need a response (unread DMs and mentions in my key channels).
   4. Based on all of the above, recommend my top 3 priorities for today. Explain why each one matters more than the others.
   5. Flag any conflicts — meetings that overlap with deep work time, or deadlines that conflict with today's meeting load.
   
   Keep it concise. I want to read this in under 2 minutes.

   The first time you run this, Claude may ask about your key Slack channels, your definition of “deep work time”, and how you prioritise. Answer those once and they get stored in memory.

3. Build meeting prep into your rhythm

   Before each meeting, run a quick prep. You can do this manually or set up a skill:

   Prep me for my next meeting. Pull context from:
   - My calendar (who's attending, what's the agenda)
   - My memory (what do I know about this person/project)
   - My task list (any open items related to this meeting)
   
   Give me:
   1. One-paragraph context (what this meeting is about, any background)
   2. My open items related to this topic
   3. Two things I should raise or ask about

   If you’ve set up Workplace Memory, Claude already knows your team, projects, and terminology. The prep will be specific, not generic.

4. Capture tasks throughout the day

   Whenever something comes up during the day, dump it to Claude:

   Add task: Follow up with Marcus on the Q1 close timeline by Thursday

   Add task: Review the draft proposal Sarah sent — high priority, needs to go out Friday

   Add task: Research options for replacing our expense management tool — low priority, next week is fine

   Claude adds these to TASKS.md with the priority and due date. You don’t need to organise them — Claude handles the sorting.

5. Run your end-of-day summary

   At the end of the day, run a close-out:

   Run my end-of-day summary:
   1. What tasks did I complete today? (Check TASKS.md for anything marked done)
   2. What's still open and due this week?
   3. What came up today that I need to remember for tomorrow?
   4. Draft a short update I can send my team: what I worked on, any blockers, what I need from them tomorrow.
   
   Also: move anything I said I'd do today but didn't to tomorrow, and flag it.

   This takes about 3 minutes to review. It also creates an audit trail — over weeks, you can see patterns in what’s getting done and what keeps slipping.

6. Build the weekly layer

   On Friday, add a weekly review:

   Run my weekly review:
   1. What did I accomplish this week? (Summarise from daily summaries)
   2. What carried over from last week that's still undone?
   3. What are my top priorities for next week?
   4. Any tasks I should delegate, defer, or drop?
   5. Update my memory with any new context from this week (new projects, changed priorities, new contacts).

How operators actually use it

What operators say

“The morning triage changed my relationship with my inbox. Instead of spending 30 minutes reacting to whatever came in overnight, I spend 5 minutes with Claude’s summary and start the day knowing what actually matters.”

“I was sceptical about the end-of-day summary. But after two weeks, I realised it was catching commitments I’d made in meetings that I would have otherwise forgotten. It’s like having a chief of staff who actually pays attention.”

A typical day for an operations leader using this system:

Time	Action	Time spent
8:00 AM	Run /morning — review triage, set priorities	5 min
8:30 AM	Run meeting prep before first meeting	2 min
Throughout day	Dump tasks via quick messages	30 sec each
10:30 AM	Prep for client call	2 min
2:00 PM	Quick task review — reprioritise based on morning outcomes	2 min
5:30 PM	Run end-of-day summary	3 min
Total Claude time		~15 min

What changes after a week: You stop forgetting things. Meetings feel more prepared. Your team notices you’re more responsive to commitments. The compounding effect is real — Claude’s context gets richer each day, so the triage gets more relevant.

What changes after a month: You have a searchable record of what you worked on, what decisions you made, and what’s been deferred. When someone asks “where are we on X?”, you don’t have to reconstruct from memory.

What to watch out for

• This requires discipline, not just setup. The system only works if you actually run the prompts. The first week feels like extra work. By week three, it’s muscle memory. Push through the initial friction.
• Cowork usage accumulates. Running 3-4 Cowork sessions per day uses meaningful plan capacity. On Pro, you might notice usage limits by late in the week if you’re also using Claude for other work. Max gives substantially more headroom.
• Calendar and Slack access means Claude sees a lot. Consider what’s in your calendar descriptions and Slack channels before connecting. If you have sensitive conversations in Slack DMs, think about whether you want Claude reading those.
• Claude’s prioritisation reflects your stated priorities. If your Workplace Memory says “Q1 close is the top priority” but you keep adding unrelated tasks, Claude will still anchor on Q1 close. Update your memory when priorities genuinely shift.
• Not a replacement for a real chief of staff. Claude is excellent at organising, summarising, and prepping. It doesn’t read team dynamics, sense political undercurrents, or make judgement calls about people. The human layer still matters.

Related

• Workplace Memory — set up the persistent context this system depends on
• Meeting Prep & Follow-up — deeper guide on meeting briefings and action items
• Inbox Triage — handling email specifically
• Email & Communications — drafting messages and updates
• Weekly Reporting — turning your daily data into weekly team reports

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