What would change if you stopped trying to impress your clients with how busy you are, and started impressing them with how much you actually get done?
I’ve spent the last few days tinkering with a few specific AI workflows, and I’m genuinely buzzing about the results. There is a specific kind of joy in watching a boring, repetitive task that usually takes forty minutes happen in about four seconds. It feels like getting away with something.
We’ve moved past the phase where AI is just a chatbot that writes mediocre poetry or hallucinated legal briefs. We are now in the era of genuine, invisible productivity.
If you spend ten minutes setting these up today, your "future self" on Wednesday afternoon is going to be very, very happy with you. Here is exactly how to use AI tools to make this week noticeably smoother.
Using AI Writing Assistants for Faster Client Communication
Most of us spend about 40% of our day playing digital ping-pong in our inbox. The problem isn't the writing itself, it's the cognitive load of deciding how to say something for the fourteenth time that day.
I’ve started using AI writing assistants not to write the emails for me, but to bridge the gap between my "rough brain dump" and a polished response.
Instead of staring at a blank screen, try this workflow today:
- Record a quick 30-second voice note on your phone.
- Pipe that transcript into an LLM with the prompt: "I am in a rush. Here is a brain dump of a client update. Turn this into a professional, polite, and brief email."
- Review, hit send, and get back to your actual job.
The magic here isn't the AI’s creative genius. It’s the fact that it removes the "blank page syndrome" that kills productivity. You can find more articles on AI that dive deeper into this kind of refined prompting.
Streamlining Meeting Notes with AI Transcription Tools
If you are still sitting in meetings today while frantically scribbling notes in a notebook or a Word doc, you are living in 2018. It’s a stressful way to live, and it means you aren't actually listening to the person speaking.
I’ve become a bit of an evangelist for AI meeting assistants. These tools sit in the call, record everything, and then—this is the best bit—give you a bulleted list of action items.
The real "pro move" for this week:
- Connect an AI note-taker to your calendar.
- After the meeting, ask the tool to "Identify any deadlines mentioned and format them as a table."
- Copy that table directly into your project management tool.
Suddenly, the post-meeting "admin hangover" is gone. You aren't just saving time; you're ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks, which is usually where the profit leaks out of a business. If you want to see how this fits into a broader commercial strategy, you can book a consultation to chat about it.
Automating Lead Research and Data Enrichment
Data entry is the silent killer of agency growth. If you or your team are manually looking up LinkedIn profiles or company descriptions to prep for a sales call, you're burning expensive calories on a cheap task.
You can now set up simple automations that trigger whenever a new lead hits your CRM or a spreadsheet. By using tools like Zapier or Make, you can tell an AI to:
- Visit the lead's website.
- Summarise their "About Us" page into three bullet points.
- Identify their main service offering.
- Write a one-sentence "conversation starter" based on their recent news.
When you sit down to do your outreach on Tuesday morning, you won't be starting from zero. You'll have a curated cheat sheet for every single person on your list.
Since it's Thursday, you should probably get the free book which covers more on how to bridge the gap between messy human processes and clean digital systems.
Building an AI-Powered Content Repurposing Workflow
If you create any kind of content—even just internal training videos or long-form LinkedIn posts—you are likely sitting on a goldmine of wasted material.
The most productive thing I’ve done recently is creating a "repurposing engine." Take one long video or a transcript of a podcast and feed it into an AI tool with a set of specific instructions: "Extract five interesting quotes, three 'how-to' tips, and one controversial opinion."
You’ve gone from one piece of content to nine pieces of social media ammunition in about three minutes. It's not about being "lazy," it's about being efficient with the ideas you've already had.
Why You Should Start Small This Week
The biggest mistake I see people make is trying to "pivot to AI" overnight. They buy six different subscriptions, get overwhelmed by the settings, and go back to their old, manual ways by Friday lunch.
Don't do that. Pick one.
Just one of these workflows—maybe the meeting notes or the email drafting—and commit to it for the next five days.
The goal isn't to become a robot. The goal is to use the robots to do the stuff you hate, so you can spend your time on the stuff that actually requires your uniquely human, slightly caffeinated, brilliant brain.
Enjoy the extra time. Use it to go for a walk, read a book, or finally clear that "misc" folder on your desktop. We both know it needs it.
Every Sunday I share practical AI tips to make your week easier at steventann.com. Come say hello.
About the Author
Steven Tann is an AI consultant, author of "You're Selling AI Wrong", and founder of SalesM8. He writes about AI, sales, and running a business from a narrowboat on the English canals. Connect with him at steventann.com.
