AI on the Payroll — Part 2
Last time, I told you about building systems with AI. And I know what some of you thought: that’s nice for her, but I don’t even know where to begin.
Fair. So let’s back all the way up, because getting AI working for you doesn’t start with a tool or a tutorial. It starts with a habit.
Always Be Asking: “How Could AI Help With This?”
The way you incorporate AI into what you need is by always thinking about how you can best utilize it.
That’s it. That’s the habit. Not downloading ten apps. Not taking a course. Just carrying one quiet question with you through your week: could AI make this faster, easier, or better?
Most people are waiting for AI to announce itself as useful. It won’t. You have to hold your actual life up next to it and look for the overlap — and once you start looking, you’ll be surprised how much overlap there is.
Start Where You Feel Comfortable
You don’t have to begin with anything ambitious. Start where you feel comfortable. Maybe that’s:
A spell, grammar, and readability check on your emails. Low stakes, instant payoff, and your Tuesday morning email to a client reads like you wrote it on your best day.
Organizing things. A messy list of notes, a pile of to-dos with no order, that folder situation you’ve been avoiding — AI is exceptional at taking chaos and handing it back to you with structure.
Or even better organization around spending time with your family. This one matters to me. Getting organized about your time isn’t cold — it’s how the people you love stop getting your leftovers.
None of those require expertise. They require five minutes and a little curiosity.
Then: Pick One Thing Hampering Your Time Every Week
Here’s your actual assignment. Just pick one thing hampering your time every week — one thing, not ten — and see how AI can help.
The thing you redo every Monday. The report you dread. The scheduling back-and-forth that eats a whole afternoon. You already know what it is; it came to mind before you finished this sentence.
Take that one thing to AI and ask for help with it. Not a perfect solution — just help. See what happens.
Small Wins Build the Muscle
Why one thing? Because the first win teaches you what AI is good at in your life, not in a headline. And once you’ve felt that — once Tuesday’s dreaded task takes twenty minutes instead of two hours — you won’t need me to convince you to find the second thing.
That’s when you’ll be ready to build the systems I talked about last time. But it starts small, comfortable, and with one honest look at where your week is leaking.
Now I want to hear from you: what’s the one thing hampering your time every week? Say it out loud in the comments — naming it is half the assignment.
And if you want more real talk on building a business that doesn’t run you into the ground, join The Playbook — my twice-weekly newsletter where we work hard on Mondays and play harder on Fridays.
Work hard. Play harder.
— Eleanor
