AI Is Moving Into Your Inbox. Here's 5 Prompts to Get Ahead of It.

EILIF AI — Issue [3]
The AI newsletter for people who don't speak AI.

Every issue, we break down what's happening in AI, give you something to actually use this week, and throw in something fun. No jargon, no pressure to "keep up." Just one thing you can try before next issue.

Microsoft Just Put an AI Assistant Inside Your Email and Spreadsheets

Microsoft is rolling AI agents directly into Microsoft 365 — the same Outlook, Excel, and Teams most small businesses already use every day. No extra software, no separate sign-up. It's just going to be there.

Think of it like this: imagine your email inbox suddenly had a quiet assistant sitting next to it, one who could draft a reply for you, summarize a long email thread in two lines, or pull numbers out of a spreadsheet without you building a formula. That's basically what's showing up.

Why should you care? If you use Microsoft 365 for your business — and a lot of small businesses do — this is coming to your software whether you ask for it or not. Worth knowing it's there before it shows up one morning and you're wondering what changed.

Since Microsoft's about to put an AI agent in your inbox, here are five more prompts to get the rest of your business in order while you're at it. In whichever AI you use — Claude, ChatGPT, whatever's open — just copy, paste, fill in the brackets, and give it to the AI. It will produce useful, actionable items for you.

1. Office Declutter
"Build me an office decluttering system using the Four-Box Method: Keep, Archive/Move, Trash/Recycle, Relocate to another room. Give me a start-small trigger (one drawer or one shelf first, not the whole office at once), a rule for fighting decision fatigue when I'm not sure about something, and a 'move once, decide once' rule. Give me a 5-day plan, one zone per day. My office is [size] and I have [hours] this week."

2. Office Organization System
"Design a 5-step organization loop for my office: Purge → Categorize → Containerize → Optimize Storage → Establish Routines. Apply a rule where anything within 2 feet of my desk needs a defined home or it gets purged. Include a rule that if I touch a piece of paper twice without acting on it, I need to make a decision right then. Give me a daily reset checklist and a weekly audit template. My worst zones are [list]."

3. Weekly Maintenance Schedule
"Build me a 3-tier maintenance schedule: a daily 10-minute tidy, a weekly 30-60 minute reset, and a seasonal deep refresh. Give me clear standards for what 'done' looks like in each tier — not vague tasks. Assign what belongs in each tier for a [type of business]. Give me an evening reset routine I can run before I leave."

4. Business Asset Tracker
"Build me a business inventory system tracking equipment, warranties, service contracts, and key vendors — who to call, what they handle, when they were last used. Set it up as a Google Sheets template with columns, and tell me how to use filters so I can find any item in 10 seconds. My business has [list of major equipment/assets]."

5. Team Routine System
"Design a visible team routine system with clear task ownership, a daily opening checklist, a daily closing checklist, and a weekly review. Build in a way to surface work that quietly falls on one person because no one assigned it. Give me a template I can post somewhere visible. My team has [number] people doing [roles]."

OpenAI's newest model is government-gated for now. OpenAI released its next-generation model family, but at the request of the U.S. government, it's only available to a small group of approved partners for the moment — not the general public.

Can you ignore it? Yes, for now. This is a behind-the-scenes story about how powerful AI models get released, not something that changes what's available to you today. Broader access is expected in the coming weeks. Nothing to act on.

This week's fun one: turn a photo into a vintage concert poster.

Take any photo — your team, your storefront, your dog, yourself — and paste it into an AI(ChatGPT is superior for this kind of fun) image tool with this prompt:

"Turn this photo into a 1970s psychedelic concert poster, with grain, a sunburst background, and hand-lettered text."

Here's what it did with a photo of yours truly, looking as confused as ever:

People are doing this with band photos and getting wild, shareable results. Try it on something from your business and see what happens.

That's it for this issue. One thing to try before next time: pick just one of the five organization prompts above and actually run it. Don't try all five.