Welcome to the first official issue of AI at Work.

If you’re back at your desk, mostly rested and ready to move, this is the moment to kick 2026 into high gear.

I love this stretch of the year.

It feels like a clean slate. Energy is high and anything feels possible, but the real challenge is keeping that momentum alive when the calendar fills up and the year gets busy.

For me, that comes down to having a clear plan and a simple operating model. When I have clear goals, clean systems and clarify on how I want to run my days, I make better decisions and waste less energy.

This week’s issue is about setting that foundation.

You’ll find a fast way to build a 2026 operating model, a simple reset to clean up your tools and workflows and a look at where agentic AI is heading so you can plan with intent rather than noise.

Let’s get the year pointed in the right direction.

Read on.

5 Predictions for AI This Year

If 2025 felt like a blur of launches, updates, and endless noise, 2026 will feel more disciplined.

After a few years of lofty promises (and valuations), researchers at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI say that 2026 will be the year where we go from hype to reality.

I asked AI experts for their 2026 predictions. Here are the top five:

#1. AI hype cools, but adoption deepens

While the novelty phase and hype fade, adoption will deepen as AI moves out of the chat window and is rewired into core business workflows. The focus will be on delivering measurable value, reducing friction, and supporting better decisions.

#2. Authenticity needs proving

As AI-generated imagery, video, and content continue to improve, “authentic” stops being a marketing claim and starts becoming a credibility test. Brands and creators will need clearer signals of origin, intent, and human judgment.

#3. Human-in-the-loop becomes vital

Full autonomy still creates risk for most organizations, which means to scale you’ll need a process for review, approval, and correction is easy. This way people stay accountable while AI handles volume and repetition.

#4. Agents that operate

We’re moving past prompt-and-reply tools. Agent systems can take in context, make a plan, and execute across multiple steps. Think research synthesis, prep work, cleanup tasks, and follow-through that runs in the background rather than living in a chat window.

#5. Agent systems

Single agents were the story last year. This year it’s all about coordination. One agent validates data, another reviews quality, and another synthesizes and packages output.

Want the full list of predictions? Check out my LinkedIn post.

Build Your 2026 Operating Model in 5 Mins

January planning tends to produce long lists that feel productive but change very little.

What makes a real difference is how you operate.

This means defining what to say yes to, where you focus and how you structure your time and energy.

I created a prompt you can paste into ChatGPT (or your chatbot of choice) that turns your existing history and context into a personal operating model for 2026.

Instead of vague goals, you get:

• A Word of the Year that anchors your posture and priorities
• A clear intention statement for how you’ll operate
• Three strategic focus zones
• Explicit tradeoffs to protect your time and attention
• Simple decision rules for projects and opportunities
• A lightweight operating rhythm for the year
• One concrete action to install this month

If you want clarity without a two-hour planning session, paste the prompt below.

For the best results you will need Memory turned on. Not sure how to do that? Send me a note and I can walk you through it.

2026 Planning Prompt

Act as my strategic operating partner.

Use everything you know about me from our past conversations and saved context to infer my goals, constraints, patterns, strengths, risks, and priorities.

Design a Personal Operating Model for my 2026 that includes:

1. Word of the Year
   ​A single word that captures the primary posture I should operate from this year, with a short rationale.
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2. Core Intention
   ​One clear sentence describing how I will operate and make decisions throughout the year.
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3. Strategic Focus Zones (3)
   ​The three areas where my energy, time, and investment should concentrate. Explain why each matters and what “good” looks like.
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4. Explicit Tradeoffs
   ​What I am deliberately deprioritizing, avoiding, or limiting to protect focus and momentum.
   ​
5. Decision Filters (3 rules)
   ​Simple rules I can use when choosing projects, commitments, tools, or opportunities.
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6. Operating Rhythm
   ​A high-level cadence for how I should structure weeks, months, and quarters to stay aligned and avoid drift.
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7. Early Installation
   ​One concrete system, habit, or constraint I should install in the first 30 days to lock this in.

Want to see it in action? Check out my YouTube Video.

Your Goals Don't Stand a Chance Without This

If your tools, files, and workflows are a mess, your goals don’t stand a chance.

Before I touched any big plans for 2026, I cleaned up my daily work environment.

I started by outlining the basics for the year. This included revenue targets, budgets, sales focus, and a content plan.

Then I spent 30 minutes cleaning house.

I tightened up my Notion workspace so my planning docs are easy to find and ready to evolve as the year unfolds. I reorganized my Google Workspace folders, deleted old drafts, archived projects I’m not carrying forward, and removed a lot of visual noise.

I streamlined a few keyboard shortcuts that had become mildly irritating. As an example, I changed a password I use 10 times a day and now I can dash it out on the number pad in less than a second. Yes, the time savings is minuscule, but the efficiency-happiness I get is priceless!

I know, I know. Who wants to start their year with unsexy admin stuff?

But I promise, if you spend the 60 minutes to run through my reset checklist below, your 2026 will be rockin’ and rollin’.

Your 60-Minute Reset Checklist

1. Lock in your planning foundation (10–15 minutes) ​
   Set your high-level goals for the year (you can use my prompt above) Make sure your planning docs live in an easy to access place (I stuck mine on the wall above my desk) Rename or archive anything you won’t actively use in 2026
2. Clean your workspace (15–20 minutes) ​
   Reorganize your project management tool so active projects are easy to scan Archive old projects and templates you no longer need Reduce visual clutter and update boards or pages
3. Tidy your files (10–15 minutes) ​
   Clean up your main folders in Drive or Dropbox Delete obvious junk Archive last year’s projects into one clean folder Simplify folder names and filing structure
4. Reduce tool friction (5–10 minutes) ​
   Cancel or pause any software you’re not actively using or getting value from Consolidate overlapping tools where possible Streamline shortcuts, bookmarks, or automations that slow you down
5. Do one small upgrade Fix one tiny annoyance that wastes time every week

One important note: You’re not aiming for perfection. There comes a point when your systems are good enough. If not, you risk falling into the forever-clean up mode, rather than doing the actual work.

Your Agentic Roadmap for 2026

The new frontier is agentic AI — intelligent systems that actively problem-solve, automate workflows, and operate on your behalf to achieve complex goals.

According to Writer, this shift from passive generation to proactive agency represents a huge opportunity for productivity, innovation, and competitive advantage.

Here’s how agentic systems work:

• Sense: The agent perceives its environment, taking in new information, user requests, and data from various systems.
• Reason: It processes this information, formulates a multi-step plan to achieve a goal, and adapts that plan as circumstances change.
• Act: It uses a variety of tools (APIs, databases, web browsers) to execute the steps of its plan in the digital world.

And here’s what you need to set it up:

1. The Large Language Model (LLM): This is the core reasoning engine or “brain.” It’s responsible for understanding goals, decomposing tasks, making decisions, and generating output.
2. Tools: These are the agent’s “hands.” They provide the ability to interact with the outside world and take action, such as searching a database, sending an email, reading knowledge docs or accessing a CRM.
3. Memory: An agent must have both short-term memory to manage the immediate task and long-term memory to learn from past interactions and improve over time.
4. Planning: The agent must be able to create a step-by-step plan to achieve a complex goal and modify that plan in response to new information or unexpected outcomes.

Think of deploying AI agents as hiring a new team of highly efficient, but very literal, digital employees. Just as you wouldn’t give a new hire the keys to every system on day one without supervision, you need to establish clear rules of engagement and a clear system for your agents.

Want to figure out exactly how? You can download the full guide at Writer.

Want to Level Up Your AI Game?

If your team is ready for a hands-on AI strategy session, my custom-designed workshops are built to uncover the workflows that can save you hours every week.

Prefer to start small? My YouTube channel is packed with quick, practical “how-to” videos that show you exactly how I use AI tools for marketing, content, and automation.

Planning an event or conference? I deliver high-energy AI sessions that engage audiences and leave them with actionable strategies they’ll talk about long after the event. Book me for your event here.​