Look, I’m going to be straight with you. I’ve been doing research the stupid way for way too long.
Every morning, I’d spend at least an hour hunting down the latest AI news. Checking what OpenAI released. Seeing if Claude got any updates. Looking for new automation tools. Reading through tech blogs. Opening fifteen different tabs like some kind of digital hoarder.
Then I’d do it all again the next day. And the next. Like some kind of research Groundhog Day.
Last week, I discovered Perplexity has this feature called Tasks that basically does all this for me. Automatically. While I’m sleeping. I felt like an idiot for not finding it sooner, but also pretty excited about all the time I just got back.
Think of Tasks as your personal research assistant who never sleeps, never complains, and actually shows up every day. You tell it what you want to track, and it goes out and finds everything relevant from across the web. Then it packages it all up in a nice summary and delivers it to your inbox (or phone, or desktop) exactly when you want it.
No more manual searching. No more opening the same websites every morning. No more wondering if you missed something important.
Here’s exactly how to set this up. And before you ask, no, this isn’t complicated. If you can order coffee on an app, you can do this.
First, click on your profile picture in Perplexity. You’ll see “Tasks” in the menu. Click it. Revolutionary stuff, I know.
Now you get a simple text box. This is where you describe what you want to automate. Don’t overthink this part. Just write what you’d normally search for.
Yesterday I created one that says: “Give me a daily summary of the latest AI tools, with updates on Claude AI, OpenAI, and N8n automation platform.”
That’s it. That’s literally all I wrote.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Perplexity doesn’t just take your sloppy instructions and run with them. It actually optimizes your prompt into clear, specific instructions. It’s like having an editor for your thoughts, except this editor actually makes things better instead of just adding unnecessary commas.
After you hit enter, you’ll see your optimized prompt. Mine turned my casual request into something that actually specified what “latest” means, what kind of updates to prioritize, and how to structure the information. Pretty clever.
Now you get to play with settings. And by “play” I mean spend thirty seconds making a few simple choices.
Frequency: Daily or weekly. I went with daily because I’m impatient and hate missing things. If you’re more zen than me, weekly works fine.
Time: Pick when you want it delivered. I chose 9am because that’s when I pretend to start working.
Expiration: You can set an end date if you want. I didn’t because I plan to use this forever. Or at least until robots take over.
Delivery Method: Desktop, mobile, email, or all three. I’m greedy so I picked all three. Now I can ignore my research in multiple places.
Model Selection: This is important. Choose “Research” mode if you want comprehensive information. It digs deeper and pulls from more sources. The other modes work fine, but Research mode is like the difference between asking a friend for restaurant recommendations versus reading every review on the internet.
Source Type: Web, academic, news, etc. I stick with web for most things because that’s where the freshest information lives.
This is the part that sold me. Every morning at 9am sharp, I get a notification. When I click it, I see a complete summary based on 40+ sources. FORTY. Do you know how long it would take me to read forty sources? About as long as it takes my neighbor to tell me about his lawn care routine. Forever.
The summary isn’t just a bunch of copied text either. It’s actually synthesized information that makes sense. Like having a really smart friend who read everything and is telling you the important bits over coffee.
But here’s my favorite part: you can highlight any section and ask follow-up questions. Found something interesting about a new AI tool? Highlight it, ask for more details, and get an instant deep dive. It’s like having a conversation with your research.
Let me give you some real examples of how people are using this, because “AI tools updates” might not be your thing (though honestly, it should be).
For Content Creators: Set up daily summaries of trending topics in your niche. Stop scrambling for content ideas every morning.
For Investors: Track specific stocks, sectors, or market trends. Get daily digests of everything affecting your portfolio.
For Business Owners: Monitor your industry, competitors, and market changes. Know what’s happening before your competition does.
For Job Seekers: Track job postings, company news, and industry developments in your field.
For Newsletter Writers: Automate the research for your weekly roundups. Spend time writing instead of searching.
One friend uses it to track sustainable technology developments for her environmental blog. Another tracks local real estate trends for his investment business. My sister uses it to follow medical research in her specialty (she’s the smart one in the family).
Let’s do some quick math that’ll either motivate you or depress you.
If you spend just 30 minutes a day on research (and let’s be honest, it’s probably more), that’s 3.5 hours per week. Fifteen hours per month. That’s basically two full work days.
With Tasks, setting up takes 2 minutes. Reading the daily summary takes maybe 5 minutes. That’s 35 minutes per week instead of 3.5 hours. You just got 3 hours of your week back.
What would you do with an extra 3 hours every week? Learn something new? Start that side project? Actually eat lunch away from your desk? The possibilities are endless and slightly overwhelming.
After using this for a week, here are some things I’ve learned that aren’t in any tutorial:
Be specific with your prompts. “Tell me about tech” gets you garbage. “Daily summary of breakthrough AI developments, focusing on practical applications for small businesses” gets you gold.
You can run multiple tasks. I have three running right now. One for AI tools, one for content creation trends, and one that tracks whether anyone has figured out how to make printers actually work.
The email version includes a button that takes you straight to the full response. This is handy when you want to dive deeper without searching through your Perplexity history.
You can pause tasks without deleting them. Going on vacation? Pause your daily updates. Come back to them whenever you’re ready to feel overwhelmed by information again.
Look, I’ve tried a lot of productivity tools. Most of them are solutions looking for problems. This isn’t that.
If you do any kind of regular research, if you track anything consistently, if you find yourself checking the same sources repeatedly, then yes, this is worth it. It’s not going to change your life, but it’ll definitely change your mornings.
The time you save is real. The information quality is solid. The setup is painless. What more do you want?
Stop reading this and go set up your first task. Seriously. It’ll take less time than you spent reading this post. Pick something you research regularly, create a task for it, and see what happens tomorrow morning.
Then come back and tell me what you’re tracking. I’m genuinely curious what everyone else is automating. Plus, I need new ideas for my fourth task.
Because apparently three automated research assistants aren’t enough for me. But that’s a problem for another day.
