Something weird happened on a client call last week. We were discussing their quarterly goals, and the founder spent twenty minutes complaining about "how much there is to do" before spending the next forty minutes manually copy-pasting data from a PDF into a spreadsheet.
He’s not alone. We’re currently living through a strange period where people are terrified that AI will steal their jobs, yet they refuse to let AI do the parts of their jobs they actually hate.
Everyone wants to talk about the "existential threat" of silicon-based life forms. Nobody wants to talk about how to stop manually formatting meeting notes.
If you’re looking to make your upcoming week slightly less soul-crushing, you don't need a "paradigm shift." You just need a few boring automations. Here is how to actually use AI for productivity without turning into a tech evangelist.
Use AI Writing Assistants for the First Draft Only
The biggest mistake people make with AI writing is asking it to "write a blog post" or "write an email." The result is always a beige, lukewarm bowl of corporate soup. It’s technically edible, but nobody actually wants it.
Instead, use your AI assistant as a specialized researcher and "structural engineer."
When you have a blank page staring at you, don't ask it to write. Ask it to outline based on a transcript of your own voice. Record a two-minute voice note on your phone while you’re making a coffee. Upload that to a tool like ChatGPT or Claude.
Ask it: "Here are my raw thoughts. Organize these into three logical sections and identify any gaps in my logic."
This keeps your voice at the centre of the work while the AI does the heavy lifting of organization. You’ll find you can produce a week's worth of content or internal reports in about an hour on a Sunday evening. It’s much easier to edit a mediocre draft than it is to conjure brilliance from a blinking cursor.
Automate Your Meeting Intelligence and Follow-ups
If you are still sitting in meetings and scribbling notes by hand, you are living in 2019. It’s a lovely place to visit, but we don't live there anymore.
The most practical AI workflow you can implement today is a centralized meeting intelligence system. Tools like Otter, Fireflies, or Microsoft Teams Premium don't just record what was said. They act as a filter for the nonsense.
Here is a simple workflow to try this week:
- Invite an AI note-taker to every external call.
- After the call, ask the AI for "The three specific commitments made by each party."
- Paste those commitments into your project management tool immediately.
The real magic isn't in the summary. The magic is in the search function. Six months from now, when a client says, "I never agreed to that pricing," you can search your entire meeting history for that specific keyword in seconds. It’s like having a photographic memory, but without the social awkwardness.
For those looking to go deeper into how these systems integrate with your current setup, you can book a consultation to talk through the specifics of your stack.
Streamline Scheduling with AI-Powered Calendars
We’ve all done the "calendar dance." It goes like this: "Are you free Tuesday at 2?" "No, but I can do Wednesday at 10." "Wednesday is bad. How about Friday?"
It’s a spectacular waste of human cognitive power.
AI scheduling tools like Reclaim.ai or Motion don't just offer a booking link. They actually look at your habits. If you consistently tackle deep work on Tuesday mornings, the AI will "protect" that time, moving low-priority tasks if a high-value meeting request comes in.
It treats your time like a game of Tetris, constantly shifting blocks to ensure the most important stuff actually gets done. Setting this up takes about twenty minutes. It will save you roughly two hours of email back-and-forth every single week.
If you enjoy reading about how to get more done with less fuss, you can find more articles on AI that avoid the usual tech-bro nonsense.
Build a Simple Automation for Lead Management
Most people treat their CRM like a digital graveyard. Leads go in, and they rarely come back out in a meaningful way.
You don't need a complex "AI-driven sales engine." You need a simple bridge between your inbox and your database. Using a tool like Zapier or Make, you can set up a workflow that triggers whenever a new lead hits your inbox.
- The tool "reads" the email.
- It extracts the name, company, and the specific pain point mentioned.
- It looks up the company on LinkedIn to see if they’ve recently hired for a specific role.
- It puts all that data into a draft reply for you.
You still hit "send." You still control the relationship. But you’ve removed the 15 minutes of "detective work" that usually precedes every sales email.
Since it’s Thursday, I highly recommend you get the free book which goes into much more detail on how to handle the human side of these interactions once the AI has done the grunt work.
Focus on the Friction, Not the Shiny Objects
The temptation this week will be to sign up for six different "AI-powered" apps that promise to change your life. Please don't do that. You’ll spend four hours watching tutorials and zero hours actually working.
Instead, look for the friction.
What is the task you do every day that makes you sigh? Is it categorizing expenses? Is it writing LinkedIn captions? Is it summarizing long industry reports?
Pick one. Just one.
Use this week to automate that single points of friction. If you can save yourself sixty minutes a day through a few clever prompts and a simple Zapier connection, you haven't just "leveraged AI." You’ve bought yourself an extra five hours of life a week.
That’s five hours you can spend growing your business, or more importantly, five hours you can spend not looking at a screen.
The goal of AI isn't to make us more like machines. It’s to handle the machine-like tasks so we can go back to being humans. Have a crack at it this week. The worst that happens is you spend ten minutes failing, which is still better than spending ten hours copy-pasting.
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.
