This morning, I woke up and took a look at my emails - full of unread newsletters. Tech in Asia, JavaScript Weekly, some productivity stuff... you know the drill.
I really didn't want to read each newsletter one by one out of pure laziness (-_-)
Then it hit me: Claude can access my email now 💡
Here's my thought: Why not ask that guy to summarize all my emails by categories and give me a brief of the important stuff?
The conversation
What started as a simple "can you summarize my emails?" turned into this whole discussion with Claude about automation. We went from basic email extraction to building templates for daily digests, weekly strategy reports, and even figuring out how to make my phone read everything aloud.
Honestly, Claude kept suggesting improvements I hadn't even thought of. Smart filters, different digest formats, automation ideas and integration with different tools.
The lightbulb moment
During our chat, I realized I wanted this on my phone, not sitting at my laptop reading text. That's when we discovered text-to-speech tools for mobile phones.
Now I just listen to my "intelligence briefing" while getting ready in the morning. Much better than staring at screens first thing.
The tools we ended up using
Super simple setup:
- Claude: Gathers emails, categorizes them, summarizes everything into clean text
- Me: Copy the output, create a .txt file, paste it there
- @Voice Aloud Reader: Android app that reads the file out loud
Total cost: $0
My current routine
- Ask Claude to scan my emails
- Copy the digest to a text file
- Open @Voice Aloud Reader
- Listen while brushing teeth / walking / drinking water
Takes about 7 minutes total. Way better than my old 45-minute newsletter reading sessions.
Prompts you can copy-paste
Daily digest:
Search my Gmail for newsletters from the last 24 hours. Summarize by categories: urgent actions, tech updates, opportunities, corporate news. Keep it under 200 words, format for text-to-speech.
Weekly digest:
Analyze my newsletters from the past 7 days. Extract major trends, funding news, opportunities with deadlines, skills I should focus on. Max 400 words, strategic focus.
Monthly digest:
Review all sources from last 30 days. Identify patterns, strategic shifts, long-term opportunities, risks, and action plan for next month. Max 600 words.
Briefly
I went from email overwhelm to having my own personal news briefing. No complex setup, no expensive tools - just Claude, some copy-paste, and a cheap Android app.
Sometimes the best solutions are the simple ones.
Now, I am thinking, if it would be possible to do the same with Yahoo Mail.
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