Boosting productivity: everyday tasks made easier with Copilot

You don’t need to be a developer, admin, or even especially tech-savvy to benefit from Microsoft 365 Copilot. That’s the beauty of it—it’s built for real people. The ones juggling meetings, documents, emails, approvals, and more—all before lunch.

Across Teams, Outlook, Word, and even OneNote, Copilot is starting to feel like the colleague who actually listens and gets stuff done. You don’t need to learn a new tool—you just need to learn how to talk to this one more clearly.

Why writing better prompts matters

A good prompt is like a good meeting request: clear, direct, and includes just enough context to help everyone do their job. With Copilot, vague prompts lead to vague results—but if you’re specific about your goals, your audience, and the format you want, the output improves dramatically.

Here are a few prompt-writing principles I’ve picked up from both the Microsoft documentation and my own use:

Be clear about what you want: Tell Copilot if you want a summary, a rewrite, or a draft.
Add context: Include who it’s for, what it’s about, and what tone you want.
Think format: Should it be a bullet list, an email, a paragraph? Say it.
Give examples: When in doubt, show Copilot how you’d like it to sound.

Prompting is a skill. The better you get, the more Copilot feels like magic.

Four real-world examples (with prompt tips)

Below are four everyday tasks I’ve used Copilot for, along with “Bad → Best” prompt examples that show how a little more intention can lead to much better results:

1. Summarizing a long meeting

Bad: Summarize this
Good: Summarize the meeting transcript
Better: Summarize the key discussion points and decisions from today’s 10am planning meeting
Best: Summarize the 10am planning meeting transcript by identifying who presented each topic, major decisions made, and any action items assigned—list those by owner

Tip: Use details like time, meeting title, or participants to guide Copilot’s focus.

2. Turning a bullet list into a polished email

Bad: Make this an email
Good: Write an email based on these notes
Better: Write a friendly email to my team based on these notes, using clear, conversational tone
Best: Draft a Monday update email for my team using the following bullets. Make it clear and motivating, with a short intro and a bulleted summary at the end. Audience: my direct reports.

Tip: Tell Copilot the tone, format, and audience. The more it knows, the more it nails your style.

3. Creating a follow-up task list from Teams chat

Bad: Make a task list
Good: Turn this chat into a task list
Better: Extract action items from this Teams conversation and list them with due dates if mentioned
Best: From this Teams conversation, create a task list organized by topic. Include who is responsible, any deadlines mentioned, and mark items that need follow-up confirmation

Tip: Use action words like “extract,” “organize,” or “mark.”

4. Reviewing tone before sending an email to leadership

Bad: Fix this
Good: Check the tone of this message
Better: Review this message to make sure it’s professional and appropriate for execs
Best: Analyze the tone of this email. Audience is senior leadership. Ensure it’s confident, respectful, and free of passive phrasing. Suggest edits only where necessary

Tip: Say what tone you want—confident, diplomatic, informal, etc.—and who it’s for.

More Resources for Better Prompting

Learning to write better prompts is the new productivity hack. Copilot doesn’t just save time—it makes the time you do spend way more valuable.

And of course, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t say it: Copilot unsucks your everyday work grind. Try it. Improve your prompts. Then tell someone else how you did it.