6interestingthingstostartyourweek

productivity 2.0: the AI era

ChatGPT has been a hot topic for a while but there have been some exciting announcements in productivity suites drawing on the same tech. For example, Google Workspace just announced they are introducing more generative AI into its capabilities. The technology is currently in testing and will start with Googe Docs and email. Some use cases are asking Google to help create things like a job description or project plan, or draft an email follow-up from a simple list of notes you took in a meeting.

Microsoft isn’t missing a trick either. Just last week they followed up with a similar announcement for Microsoft 365 suite, equally providing ways for people to ask the AI CoPilot to “write me a…” and save heaps of time on the first draft writing and sourcing information.

… and sleeker

These impressive smarts are also coupled with an interface change for Workspace. You’ll notice the top of docs looking a little sleeker these days. Because across Docs, Sheets, and Slides, there are now fewer things shown at the top, comments and chats are a little more integrated. In case you were wondering, no features have been removed a few just now live in the menu ribbon.

This Workspace interface update coincides with a general large overhaul of Material, Google’s open-source design system, which brings a new set of design systems and standards in the updated version called Material 3. The update to Material is sure to bring a tide of design improvements to digital products.

the Metaverse is dead

There’s no official announcement from Meta, but make no mistake that the Metaverse has been buried. Ahead of the times or foolhardy, who knows for sure, but the latest direction for Meta is in generative AI. Zuckerberg announced in late Feb a new team/product unit working on “creative and expressive tools” in the short term and more “AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways” in the longer term.

For those seeking VR headsets, no worries, the Oculus is still available.

4.9 work hours per week are lost

Asana also dropped their latest ‘Anatomy of Work Global Index’ report with 2023’s edition finding that we’re wasting time on “work about work”. What is that you ask? Well, that meeting ‘that could have been an email’, lack of processes resulting in extra conference calls or ‘hey, did you…?' questions.

Those work about work time sucks were some of the frustrations Asana’s research found when capturing the attitudes of 9,615 knowledge workers across the globe. The analysis shows that 4.9 hours per week, or 6 weeks of work per year, are lost due to needing to coordinate how to get work done.

It’s not all doom and gloom though, organisations with effective tools and processes in place and who are absolutely smashing collaborative work reported increased revenue growth of 55% - nearly double that of organisations with weak collaboration practises. Nice.