Practical articles about running your business, leading a team, and making work easier.
“What really matters is what you know.”
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Before you correct the next decision, ask the person who made it what they were trying to accomplish. Give them enough time to explain. You may discover that they were working toward a different result from the one you had in mind.
Start with what remains after business costs. Then check what your available cash still needs to cover. Use the free worksheet to work through your own numbers.
A customer can be waiting for the estimate you promised while you answer messages from people whose requests could wait. You are responding to people. You are getting things done. And the work you sat down to finish is still open on your screen.
A week can pass between agreeing to do something and discovering that the people involved understood the agreement differently. By the next conversation, you need to remember what was said, find out what happened, and decide what to do with the time that remains.
You can pay for a new ordering form and still have customers placing orders the old way. The work someone created for you has to become something your business can use. Between those two points, there may be a decision or responsibility you have kept for yourself.
What did you have to go looking for the last time a piece of work stopped? A customer's decision? The instructions someone agreed to follow? The reason you were doing the work in the first place?
Imagine getting to your child's soccer game, sitting down, and receiving a message asking whether a customer can move an appointment. Time away becomes more dependable when someone else can handle routine decisions with the information and authority they need.
Before you turn an AI-generated plan into next week's work, put it beside the problem you wanted help with. Read the plan with that problem in mind. Which recommendations address it? Which ones would create another project you now have to manage?
Imagine sitting down in the afternoon with an hour between appointments, still going over a decision from the morning while you open the work you've been waiting to do. The calendar shows an available hour, while your attention is already occupied with work that began before it.
I had spent time thinking and planning what I wanted to build. I knew myself. I knew the work I could do. I had training modules and ideas for how to teach, and something kept feeling incomplete.
You open the report, see that sales went up, and feel some relief after a month of getting the work out the door. Revenue can rise while profit falls, when the costs of earning that revenue leave you with less money than before.
If one piece of work takes longer than you expected, where can the rest of it go? Look at the day you have planned. You may be able to move something into the afternoon. You may have room later in the week. Or you may discover that you have to decide what can wait.
A reminder to prepare for a class tells you that preparation needs to happen. It may leave you reconstructing what the preparation involves: where the materials are, which message participants need, what to check in the room, and what you learned the last time you taught it.
“I need someone who can take initiative” leaves a lot for another person to interpret. You may mean researching a question before bringing it to you, deciding the order of their work, or recognizing that a deadline is becoming unrealistic and telling you in time to respond.
Use small jobs, clear handoffs, and a human review step when you set up AI-assisted work.
