I haven’t had a full week in the office since Labor Day.
A trip to DC to see friends and spend a couple of days with my dad. A trail race in Duluth. A conference. My wife’s backyard ultra. And right now I’m writing this from a work trip that runs through next weekend.
Between family, travel, and shoots for Why Run Today, the normal weekly routine hasn’t been very normal.
But some things haven’t missed a beat.
For Hedge Heads, Jon and I still need to show up and record. AI can help us work through the transcript afterward, but the conversation requires us to be there. We have ways to record remotely, and we have a process for getting each episode out once we’re done.
Through all of this, we kept the weekly podcast going and recorded two bonus episodes. We knew what needed to happen, how to do it from wherever we were, and what happened next. There was a system.
This newsletter didn’t have that same structure.
Writing it has always been part of how I think. It’s where I work through what we’re actually using AI for in the business, why it’s working or not, and what I’d tell a client to do with it. Some weeks it’s a client example. Some weeks it’s our own. Most weeks I understand something better by the time I finish writing.
That takes room in the week, and I hadn’t protected it.
The conference added another layer. I came home with more ideas than I knew what to do with. Every good idea needed some thought: Does this fit our business? What would it take? Who would do it? What would we need to move aside?
Those are useful questions. But without time set aside to answer them, the ideas keep piling up while the daily work keeps moving.
The work nobody is waiting for
When a customer needs something, there’s a reason to act. The job gets scheduled. The order goes out. The problem gets solved. Someone is waiting, and we need to take care of them.
But some of the most important work for growing a business has nobody waiting for it.
A future customer isn’t asking you to follow up. They might not know you exist yet. Nobody is calling to request a clearer website or a better explanation of what you offer. They’re trying to solve their own problem, and you haven’t helped them see how you fit.
The same thing happens inside the business. Your team may have worked around an awkward process for so long that nobody thinks to question it. You don’t know how much more efficient you could be because you haven’t had time to step back and look.
That work can change what the business is capable of. It can bring in next year’s customers, free up hours every week, or make room for an opportunity you couldn’t handle today.
And it’s remarkably easy to postpone, because today’s work comes with someone waiting for an answer.
I see this in businesses I work with, and I see it in my own. We have ideas. We can see things we’d like to improve. What we often lack is a way to give that work a place in the week and keep it moving when the week gets crowded.
That’s where I want to take more of these issues. We’ll use AI to help think through the opportunities, decide what deserves our attention, and build a process for getting it done alongside the work our customers already count on us to do.
Put It to Work
Pick one thing in your business that matters but has nobody waiting for it. Maybe it’s following up with past customers, explaining a service more clearly, or fixing a process your team keeps working around.
Use AI to work through it in three steps. Keep these in the same conversation, and give yourself time to question the answers.
1. Understand what’s worth fixing.
Start here:
I run [type of business] with [number of people]. Something I keep meaning to work on is [describe the idea, problem, or recurring frustration].
Help me understand whether this deserves my attention. Ask me up to five questions about how we handle it now, who it affects, what it costs us in time or missed business, and why we haven’t addressed it.
Wait for my answers. Then help me separate what we know from what we’re assuming. Explain what could improve if we addressed it, and whether there’s a more important underlying problem. Don’t build a plan yet.
Be specific about what happens today. “Our follow-up could be better” gives AI very little to work with. “We send estimates, get busy, and usually don’t contact people again unless they call us” gives it something useful.
2. Decide what fits your actual week.
Once you’ve worked through the problem, continue:
Here’s what is already on my plate: [main commitments]. I can realistically give this [time] over the next two weeks. My available budget is [amount], and these people could help: [people and their roles].
Give me two or three reasonable ways to address this, including a simple improvement using what we already have. Compare the likely benefit, effort, ongoing upkeep, and what we’d need to postpone to make room.
Recommend where to start and explain why. If this should wait, tell me what would make it worth revisiting. Let me respond before creating a plan.
Read the recommendation against your experience. Did it underestimate the time? Assume an employee has room to help? Recommend software before understanding your current process? Correct those things before moving on.
3. Give it a first step and a way to keep moving.
Once you’ve chosen an approach, use:
Build a small, practical test of the approach we agreed on. Define what we’ll do, who owns it, what “finished” means, and what result would justify continuing.
Give me a first work session that fits the time I have available. Be specific about what I should have completed by the end.
Then help me decide what will trigger the next action, how we’ll keep track of it, and when we’ll review what happened. Keep the process simple enough to use during a busy week.
That last part matters. If you’re testing estimate follow-ups, writing a better email is only one piece. You also need to decide when it gets sent, who sends it, and how they know which estimates still need attention.
That’s how an idea starts becoming a system.
Put the first work session on your calendar. After the test, bring what happened back into the same AI conversation. Explain what got done, what got in the way, and what you learned. Use that to decide the next step.
What’s one piece of work nobody is waiting for in your business? Hit reply and tell me what it is and why it keeps getting pushed aside. I’d like to work through a reader example in an upcoming issue.