Which task should I automate first?

You already know AI could help inside your business, but where do you start? Well, start with something you don’t like to do.

In my opinion a restaurant manager should be 100% focused on the guests and the team, not on planning shifts, entering supplier orders by hand or spending days finding out why 2 bottles of wine and 30 coffees don’t match the inventory list. Same goes for HR, where the job is finding good people, not paperwork.

How do you spot a task worth automating?

Look at your week and find what you do all the time and don’t like doing.

• For one week, write down every task you do, even quick ones like checking yesterday’s sales.
• Mark the ones that come back every week and follow the same steps.
• Mark the ones you don’t like or that often go wrong.
• A task with both marks is a good first one.

Then count how often it happens and how long it takes each time. If it’s more than 2 hours a week, it’s worth having a look.

What should you leave for later?

Leave the conversations with customers and the judgement calls to people. Leave a messy process for later too, because it should be fixed before you automate it. Automating a messy process will make everything messier.

Before building anything, ask your AI what your tools can already do and if they solve your problem. They probably already have reminders or simple rules that will help you out.

A prompt to find your first task

Paste this into your AI, fill in your own tasks and leave out customer names and details.

Here are the tasks I do every week, with how often and how long each one takes:
[your list]

Rank them from best to worst first task to automate.
Pick the one that repeats, follows the same steps and goes wrong most often or that I like the least.
Ask me questions if something is unclear.
Don't suggest anything that talks to my customers for me.
Only give me the order, no long action plan.

If Tesla can make a car do a flip, you can make AI solve a problem for you. Dream big, but start with the things you don’t like to do.

Common questions