Transcription
You got Claude because someone told you it was better than Chat GPT. You opened it, typed a question, got an answer, copied it into your work, and closed the tab. 10 minutes later, you're back, typing another question, and Claude has no idea who you are, what you're doing, or why any of it matters.
That's not Claude being bad at its job. That's Claude not being set up to do your job. It has taken me 20 years of teaching and countless hours of testing AI to realize that the problem isn't which AI tool you're using. It's that nobody ever showed you how to set it up. Most people get taught the tool, but rarely the system, and those are completely different things.
Claude has features built into it that most people never turn on. Not because they're hidden, but because nobody explained what they do >> [music] >> or why they matter. Without them, Claude is just another chatbot. In this video, I'm going to walk you through three things: how to connect Claude to your tools, load it with your contacts, and hand off the work you're tired of doing yourself. By the end of this video, Claude will feel like it was built for your specific job, not just any job.
First, you want to connect it using something called connectors. And once you understand what they do, the rest of this easily makes sense. Claude can connect directly to your email, your calendar, your files, but only if you tell it to. Think of like plugging a printer into your computer. Connectors do the same thing for Claude. At the top, just click customize, then connectors. Here's the one that saved me the most time every single week, the Gmail connector. Most of us spend at least an hour a day in email. I used to do all of that manually. Now, Claude helps me with most of it.
Here's how it works. I go into Claude and click customize at the top left. Then I click connectors. I click the plus button and search for Gmail and log in to Gmail. Now, Claude has access to my inbox. That means I can ask things like, "Find the last email about the contract renewal and tell me what's still unresolved." Claude searches my inbox, finds it, and gives me a summary. Or I can say, "Draft replies for anything that needs a human response." Claude writes the reply, I read it, make a few small adjustments if needed, and send it. The reason this works isn't because Claude is just guessing what my email say. It's actually reading them.
Now, I know some people hear that and immediately think, "Wait, is that safe? Is Claude reading all my emails?" Fair question. Here's the answer. Claude's security is handled by Anthropic, the company that built it. They don't store your emails on their servers. Claude reads what you ask it to read, and that's it. If you're worried about it, don't connect it. Honestly, I've had this connected for months and it's never given me a reason to second-guess it. You stay in control of what it reads and what it doesn't.
The second connector I use is Google Calendar. Same setup process. Go to connectors, choose Google Calendar, login. Now, Claude can see my schedule. So, instead of opening my calendar, scrolling through the week, and trying to figure out where I have breathing room, I just ask, "Find me an hour this week to work on my project but not bursting in the morning." Claude looks at my schedule and finds it. That's it.
But, here's the thing most people don't realize. Claude can also analyze how you are spending your time. I told Claude what actually matters to me right now. Then, I asked it to look at my calendar and to tell me if I was spending time on those things. The honest answer was no. I was filling my week with stuff that felt productive, but wasn't connected to anything that was actually a priority. Claude pointed that out.
Now, those two connectors, Gmail and Google Calendar, those are the ones I use most often. But, there are others. >> [music] >> Claude can connect to Slack if your team uses that for communication. It can connect to Google Drive so it can read and reference documents you've stored there. It can connect to Notion if that's where you keep your notes and project plans. The process is the same every time. Go to connectors, choose the service, login.
The second thing is to load it. And that's where Claude projects comes in. And I'll be straight with you. This isn't something I use day-to-day anymore because Claude co-work handles most of what projects can do. I'll show you co-work in just a moment. But, if you're spending most of your time in Claude chat or Claude AI, this is what matters. A project is basically a folder with a memory. You create one, give it a name, and load it with everything Claude would need to help you with that area of your work. All of it lives in one place. Setting it up takes about 2 minutes.
In the left sidebar, click new project. Give it a name, something like client reports or weekly newsletter. Then click project knowledge and upload whatever Claude needs to do that job. Finally, add a short instruction at the top telling Claude how you want it to behave inside this project. That's it. Next time you open it, all of that is already loaded. The problem it solves is this. Every time you open a regular Claude chat, you're pretty much starting from zero. Re-explaining who you are, re-pasting the background, re-describing what you need. A project means you do that once. After that, Claude knows and remembers that area of your work. This is perfect if you're on the free plan. But, I moved past this stage when I saw what co-work can do, which is something I'm going to show you in just a second. But, if you're not there yet, projects is the bridge. It's the first time Claude starts feeling like it actually knows you.
Third is the handoff, and that is Claude co-work. And honestly, this is the one that made the biggest difference in how I get things done and what things are actually possible. Before I get into it, I want to give you a quick picture of how Claude works across its three different modes because most people don't know all three even exist and it changes how you might think about what's possible. On the left is Claude Chat. That's what we've been using. Everything I've shown you so far, connectors [clears throat] and projects, all lives here. On the right is Claude Code and it's the most advanced. This is more for developers. If that's not you, and it probably isn't, you don't need it. I'm not a developer and I don't use it. In the middle is Claude Co-work and this is the one I want to spend time on because it's the most relevant for the professionals watching this. Let me make sure that landed. Chat is for questions, Co-work is for jobs. That distinction is everything.
Co-work lives inside the Claude desktop app. That's actually a separate program you download and install on your computer, but they're all connected. It gives Claude the ability to control your computer and do tasks for you while you step away. Let me be clear about what that means because it may seem more complicated than it actually is. You give Claude a task that involves clicking through different programs, maybe pulling a report from one app, putting the numbers into a spreadsheet, creating a chart, and sending it to your team. You describe the task and Claude does the clicking for you.
Here's a real example. Every week, I want to know what's happening in AI, but there is so much going on. I used to try to piece it all together, but it took at least 30 minutes, >> [music] >> and I still felt I was missing something. Now, I have Cospace schedule to do it for me. I wrote out the task once, search for AI developments across the topics that matter to my work, filter out the noise, and compile everything into a short brief. Now, that task runs every Tuesday and Friday at 3:00 a.m. When I wake up, the brief is already waiting in my inbox. Cospace isn't perfect. Sometimes it gets stuck. When it does, I just tell it what went wrong the same way I talk to someone sitting next to me. It adjusts and keeps going. None of this is hidden. Connectors, project, Cospace, [music] it's all right there. But, rarely do people explain what it's for. But, now you have the setup, and that changes what's possible.
Now, before my last piece of advice, if you found this video helpful so far, give it a like or leave a comment. It really does help this channel grow. Also, if you'd like to see more content just like this, click subscribe. Don't try to do everything at once. Pick the one connector that most obviously helps you with a daily frustration. One thing. See if it saves you time. If it does, add another. Now, you have the setup, connect it to your tools, load it with your context, hand off the work. But, most people do all of this and then still go straight back to typing questions like nothing changed. The setup is only half of it. The other half is knowing how to talk to Claude once it's running, because that's where most people leave real results on the table. Click this video here to see what to do about it.