Get ready for tomorrow in five minutes with the Daily Brief

The worst time to remember something about a person is when they are already in front of you. You shake hands, they ask whether you ever heard back, and you are trying to remember what you were waiting to hear.

The best time is the evening before. You are not rushed, and five minutes is enough to call up what you already know about everyone you will see tomorrow. The hard part was never the five minutes. It was finding what you knew, which used to be spread across old notes, email threads and your own memory.

Groupthink is a memory for the people in your life and work. The Daily Brief is the email that hands you that memory the night before you need it.

What arrives, and when

The Daily Brief is one email, sent at 5pm in your timezone on weekdays. The subject line reads Your Daily Overview for and then tomorrow’s date. You get one on any weekday when you have a meeting with other people on tomorrow’s calendar, or when Groupthink recapped a meeting of yours today. If you have neither, nothing is sent.

It has two parts. Tomorrow’s Interactions lists who you’re seeing, one prep card per person. Today’s Interaction Recaps gives a few lines on each meeting Groupthink recapped today, with a View Full Recap link.

Read the cards in this order

Say tomorrow you have a 10am with Ines Vargas, who you have worked with for two years, and a 2pm intro call with Desmond Yu, who you have never met. Ines’s card will be long. Desmond’s will be short. A card shows what is known and leaves out the rest, so the length of a card tells you something before you read a word of it.

For each person, read these first:

Last met. Near the top of the card, a line says when you last saw them, as in “Last met 3 weeks ago.” That one line sets the tone. Three weeks ago means you pick up a thread. A year ago means you start by catching up.

💡 Quick tip. One suggestion for the conversation, drawn from what you already know about this person. Treat it as a reminder of what they told you, not a line to recite.

🧵 Open threads. Things still in motion between you: the intro you offered, the question they were going to come back to you on. These are the easiest way to show someone you were listening, because you can simply ask how it turned out.

🔎 Recent details. Small things that came up lately. Ines mentioned her daughter started at a new school. You don’t have to bring it up, but now you won’t be caught flat if she does.

🗓️ Past interactions. A short summary of your history together. Skim it when a card is long and you want the arc rather than the details.

For someone like Desmond, the card may show little more than his name, or his email address if the invite didn’t carry a name. That is useful too. It tells you this is a first conversation, and the person to prepare is you.

Then look back at today

The recaps at the bottom work the other way. They are a last look at the conversations you had today, a few lines each. If one of them holds a promise to someone you’re also seeing tomorrow, that is the first thing to raise.

A few practical details

• The 5pm time is fixed. You can’t move the Daily Brief to another hour. For the morning itself, the Today page has a card for each meeting on that day’s calendar.
• Turning it off or on: open Settings, then Notifications, find the Daily Overview row, and switch its Email channel.
• Prep needs an active trial or a paid plan. Without one, the brief still lists tomorrow’s meetings and today’s recaps, and the prep cards are replaced by an Upgrade to see prep button.
• Cards get better as your record grows. Everything on a card comes from what is already in Groupthink about that person, mostly your past meetings with them. Someone you have seen ten times has more on their card than someone you met once.

The full reference is in the help center under Daily Brief Email.

Five minutes the night before is a small habit. It is the difference between asking “remind me what you do?” and asking how the new school is going.

If you already use Groupthink, check that the email is switched on under Settings, then Notifications. If you don’t have Groupthink yet, start your 30-day Pro trial at app.groupthink.com.