Keep an attention list instead of a priority list

How this helps you

Your Bots filter the noise against what you are really working on, not a list you wrote on Monday.

✦ Try it

Create an attention list: every hour, review my email, Slack, [meeting notes app] and calendar and keep a succinct set of the projects I'm focused on, their current state and what needs to happen next. Stay quiet unless something changes.

Fill in: [meeting notes app] is where your call notes live, such as Granola. Leave it out if you don't use one.

What they did

Brock Mesarich walks through the official Grok Bot guides, and picks the attention list from the PM guide as the idea that works for almost anyone. The guide's author, Kevin Niparko, says weekly priority lists go stale within a day. Instead, his chief of staff Bot follows his attention across Slack, email, meeting notes and calendar every hour and keeps a short list of the projects he is focused on, their state and what happens next. Two uses: other Bots apply the list as a filter (his archives Gmail threads that don't name him and don't map to the list), and you can compare what you said mattered with where your time really went.

Who it's for: People who juggle several projects and whose priority list is always out of date.

Before you start

A Bot with email, Slack and calendar connected (a chief of staff or main Bot is the natural home).
Meeting notes in a connected app, if you use one.

How to try it

Pick the Bot that already reads your inbox and calendar.
Paste the setup prompt below. Brock shows it is one sentence copied from the guide.
Check a routine appears on that Bot, set to hourly.
After a day, read the list and correct anything wrong, so it learns what counts as a project.
Then use it: ask the Bot to archive email that doesn't match the list, or ask where your week went.

What to expect

A short list of three to six live projects, each with a status and a next step, updated through the day. Follow-ups from the guide: "Review my attention list and archive any emails that are not relevant to my focus list" and "Where did I spend time this week that I can offload to an agent going forward?"

Common mistakes

Letting it archive mail on day one. Read the list for a few days first, then add the archive rule.
Running it hourly on a Bot with no new data to read. Every run uses usage, so slow it down if your day is quiet.

Related tips

Start with a chief of staff Bot: Talk to one coordinator Bot and let it hand work to your specialist Bots.
Start each day with an approvals prompt, end it with a night prompt: Two short daily questions that get your Bot to find work you forgot about.
Triage and reply to email from the chat: Ask for a brief of emails that need replies, then answer them in one line each.
Make routines cheaper: events, slow schedules, change checks: A 5-minute routine wakes 8,640 times a month. Use an event trigger, the slowest schedule that works, and a cheap change check.
Get a prep doc a few minutes before each meeting: A morning routine reads your calendar, pulls context from email and connected apps, and sends a prep doc just before each meeting starts.
A Bot that keeps your to-do list up to date: Tim Fairley's first-Bot pick: a routine that reads email and messages to update a cloud to-do list, plus quick adds from your phone.
Have a Bot update your CRM after every call: Your Bot reads call notes, email and Slack for an account and proposes the CRM updates; you approve them instead of typing them.