Five small habits that made Claude my everyday tool.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that Claude went from "thing I occasionally opened" to "tab that's always there." A few of you replied to the newsletter asking how. The honest answer is: not through any grand strategy. It happened because of five small habits I fell into, mostly by accident.

1. Start with whatever's on your mind

I used to open Claude only when I had a specific task. Draft this email. Summarise that document. Now I often open it first thing and just type whatever I'm thinking about. Sometimes it's "I have a busy day, help me prioritise." Sometimes it's "I read something interesting about interest rates and I want to understand it better."

There's no wrong way to start. The habit isn't "use Claude every morning." The habit is: when something's on your mind, type it. Claude is patient.

2. Use it for the thing you've been avoiding

Everyone has a task they've been putting off. An email, a form, a difficult conversation they need to prepare for. Open Claude and say:

I need to [thing]. I keep putting it off because [reason]. Can you help me start?

Nine times out of ten, the thing you were avoiding takes about three minutes once Claude gives you a first draft to react to. The resistance was the hard part, not the task itself.

3. Talk back to it

This is the habit that changed everything for me. When Claude gives you something and it's not quite right, don't delete it and start over. Just reply.

"Warmer." "Shorter." "That second paragraph sounds corporate, can you make it sound like me?" "Actually, forget that bit, I want to focus on this instead."

The more you push back, the better it gets. And the more you do it, the less it feels like a tool and the more it feels like a proper back-and-forth. This is Claude at its best.

4. Keep the conversation going

One of the biggest things people miss early on: you don't have to start a new conversation every time. If you asked Claude to draft an email this morning, you can come back to that same conversation this afternoon and say "actually, they replied, here's what they said, can you help me respond?"

Claude remembers everything in the conversation. Use that. It saves you from repeating the background every time, and it means Claude's suggestions get better as the conversation gets longer.

5. Use it for the boring stuff first

The flashy stuff, writing essays, analysing data, building plans, that all comes later. Start with the boring admin. The email you need to write. The thing you need to summarise. The message you need to word carefully.

Once you see how much time Claude saves on the dull stuff, you'll naturally start reaching for it when the interesting stuff comes up too.

The pattern

These five habits have something in common: they all lower the bar for opening Claude. The goal isn't to become an "AI expert." The goal is to make Claude as natural to reach for as a search engine. You don't think about using Google. You just open it. Claude gets there too. It just takes a little practice.

If you're reading this and you've only used Claude once or twice, pick one of these habits and try it this week. Just one. See what happens. And if you get stuck, reply to the newsletter and tell me what happened. I read all of them.