Habits. A new year, new habits....

Habits. A new year, new habits is something many people have been thinking about lately. During your workday, you also have many habits; “that first cup of coffee before you open your laptop” or “always choosing the same desk”. All habits that have quietly slipped in over time.

Learning a new habit is far from easy. Or as the book ‘Veranderen voor luie mensen (Dutch Book)’ puts it: secretly, we’re all just a bit lazy and there’s not much we can do about that. Did you know, for example, that we have patterns and habits for a good (evolutionary) reason? They help us save energy.

Fortunately, our technology can help us learn or adjust habits. We’ll take you along in how you can build habits into your workday. You might be thinking: “we”? Yes, (2) Amelia Hernández [MVP, MCT] | LinkedIn and I regularly spar about habits and what technology can do for us. This blog is therefore written with a lot of inspiration from our conversations.

Building habits into your workday is not something you have to do alone. I’ll guide you through situations you encounter throughout your day and show you how to add a fresh habit to them.

An exploding inbox | Setting priorities

If you regularly think “Where do I even start?” when you open your laptop in the morning, then this new habit might be for you.

Let Copilot determine your priorities by having it scan your mailbox. You can do this by using a prompt like:“Hey Copilot, could you look through my mailbox and create a summary of everything that’s in there? Then please create a to-do list for me and assign the right priority to each item. Thank you.”

Can Copilot determine with 100% accuracy what’s important to you? Absolutely not.The foundation is there. And you might think; how do you turn this into a habit? Simple: schedule the prompt; https://www.evipoint.nl/post/een-goed-begin-is-het-halve-werk-geplande-prompt-in-copilot-om-je-dag-mee-te-beginnen

So what do you still need to do? Don’t let your inbox run your life.Start your day calmly, decide what you want to work on, make a list & let Copilot help you using the input from your mailbox.

Chaos in your notes

Do you also have notes everywhere; sticky notes, files, lists and loose notes? Then OneNote is probably familiar to you, or at least, it should be!

With OneNote, you can bring order to the chaos of your notes. How? Start with a strong foundation and make sure your OneNote notebook is well organized. I’ll write another blog about this later.

Using OneNote as a habit instead of all those loose notes? Let the program start automatically when you turn on your PC. This makes you much more likely to capture your notes there. Such an obvious tip; but it really works!

Configure Startup Applications in Windows - Microsoft Support

Sometimes, learning a new habit can start with the simplest things. And what role can Copilot play here? Let Copilot take care of the structure in your OneNote notebooks. For example ;

• Let Copilot search through all your notes for something specific

• Let Copilot bring structure to your chaotic notes

• Let Copilot create to-do lists

Need an assistant?

Build your own agent and turn writing into a habit, based on your own information.

You’ve already done so much work, all documented in emails, documents and other sources within the Microsoft 365 environment. Let yourself be helped by making use of your own work/information. You can do this by building an agent with your own sources.

Want to know more?Create and use an agent in OneDrive - Microsoft Support

And the habit? That’s something you need to teach yourself: first ask the agent a question, receive a draft based on your earlier work and then finalize it. How do you learn this? A simple memory aid on your desk can help; think of a colorful sticky note!

We’re not made for change, or for learning new habits. Fortunately, you can:

1. Trick yourself a little by understanding what happens in your brain when change or habit formation occurs

2. Make use of the tools available to you, such as your systems, automation, or Copilot

Want to learn more? Then I’ll refer back to one of my conversations with (2) Amelia Hernández [MVP, MCT] | LinkedIn once again: read the book “How to Change” by Katy Milkman!