The biggest confusion I see everywhere: people using AI like it's automation, then wondering why they're still drowning in work.
You know the feeling.
You spend 40 minutes crafting the perfect ChatGPT prompt to write your weekly newsletter. You get back something that sounds like it was written by a cheerful robot who's never had a bad day. So you spend another 30 minutes editing it until it sounds like you, then another 20 formatting it, then you realize you still need to schedule it and track opens and suddenly your "automated" newsletter took you 2 hours instead of the 1 hour it used to take you to just write the damn thing yourself.
This is AI as a very expensive, very chatty intern who needs constant supervision.
Real automation is different. Real automation is a robot that follows rules without asking questions.
Invoice gets paid? Mark it in the system and send a thank you.
New lead fills out your form? Create their record, tag them properly, add them to the right email sequence, notify your sales person.
Meeting ends? Transcript goes to the right folder, action items get extracted and assigned, follow-up emails schedule themselves.
You set it up once. It runs forever. You never think about it again.
I’ve learned a lot from watching hundreds of people try both approaches. AI makes you feel productive while adding more hats to wear. Real automation actually removes work from your plate.
The sweet spot is using them together, but know which is which. Let automation handle the predictable, rule-based stuff that happens the same way every time. Save AI for the judgment calls, the creative work, the places where you need something that can think.
Your weekly report generation? That's automation. The summary that makes the numbers make sense? That's where AI earns its keep.
Takeaway Stop asking AI to be your automation. Start asking automation to free you up for the work where AI actually helps.
Still explaining to ChatGPT why I don't want everything to be "game-changing,"
Jamie
P.S.
Imagine turning your report day into one hour. That's what we work toward in the AI Operator Bootcamp. Only 3 spots left for our January cohort.