Optimize Monthly (December 2024)
Welcome to Optimize Monthly!
Each edition shares bite-sized insights, useful tools, and thought-provoking ideas I've discovered while helping companies and teams work smarter.
These snippets are intended to spark ideas and highlight possibilities—reach out if you'd like more details about anything that catches your interest!
And to help kick-start your 2025, I'm including a complimentary pre-New Year audit with this edition.
Happy Optimizing!
Never Stop Optimizing: A Lesson Learned
Summary
Strategic automation of routine communications eliminates manual updates and creates clearer workflows.
More
Modern task platforms like ClickUp transform team communication through smart integrations with Slack and email. By automating status updates and centralizing information, teams spend less time updating each other and more time working. The magic happens when these tools work together—creating tasks from emails, sending automatic notifications, and providing instant progress visibility.
Context
I watched a client's team member juggling screenshots and manual updates across different tools. After implementing ClickUp's automated notifications and email integration, the team eliminated redundant check-ins and gained clear progress visibility. What once took hours now happens automatically.
Tool Tip: What I’m Excited About and Why
Summary
Zapier AI Actions unlocks new possibilities for Custom GPTs, making automation even more powerful.
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Combining AI and Zapier through Zapier AI Actions has been a game-changer. Setup requires just one page of documentation, and you can create unique actions for each Custom GPT. (Note: Custom GPTs require a paid GPT account.)
Context
I created a Custom GPT to extract "lessons learned" from my Fathom recordings for this newsletter. It knows what to look for and how to format and anonymize content. Previously, I manually copied insights to Coda—now with Zapier AI Actions, it's automatic. When processing three recent entries, it perfectly followed instructions, adding two relevant items and skipping the third.