The How to series · Post 2
Which work can AI take off your desk, and which it shouldn't touch
For any UK owner past the solo stage: how to sort the week's work so AI takes the repeating half, a person keeps the judgement, and the hours stop leaking.
It's 4pm on a Tuesday. You're retyping the same job details from an email into the invoice, because the two tools don't pass numbers between themselves. Meanwhile a customer is waiting on a price that needs your judgement, not your typing. Two kinds of work on one desk, and only one of them should ever leave it.
That's the loop this post is about: the weekly sort. Every business past the solo stage is holding two piles at once. One pile repeats so exactly that a new starter could do it from a written page. The other needs a person, because the answer depends on the customer and the week. Hand over the wrong pile and you spend a year not trusting AI. Sort them properly and the week has hours in it again.
The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)
Take one thing from the repeatable pile and put minutes on it:
- 25 minutes a day retyping details between the inbox and the invoice, five days a week (a common shape, and a conservative guess)
- × 5 days = about 2 hours a week
- × £30 an hour (what that hour is worth to the business) = £60 a week
- × 46 working weeks = £2,760 a year. One loop, one person.
A team of five with a couple of loops like that? The number stops being a rounding error. And that's before you count the work that never gets done properly because nobody has the hour.
Score it: the three checks
Score the way we score everything: how much of the week the job eats, whether a new starter could follow it from one page, and how bad a single slip would be. 0 to 5 each, and a high risk score means a slip is recoverable, which makes the job safer to hand over.
The retype job above: Hours 4 (about two hours a week). Repeat 4 (which emails, which fields, where they land: all writable on one page). Risk-if-wrong 4 (a slip gets caught at the approval check, before anything sends). Verdict: hand it over.
The price that needs judgement: Hours 2. Repeat 1 (it depends on the customer and the conversation). Risk-if-wrong 1. Verdict: human-only, leave it alone.
Three checks at 4 or more, hand it over. Two, start narrow, one step. One or less, leave it with a person. Most desks hold both kinds; the trick is knowing which is which before the tool arrives, not after.
Try one thing this week (free)
Draw a line down a page. On the left, list everything you did more than once last week that a new starter could follow from a written page. On the right, everything that needed your judgement, the kind that can't be written as a rule. By Friday, put minutes on the left column and multiply by your hourly rate and 46 weeks. That column is your hand-over queue, in order of hours. The right column is the reason some work stays yours, and it should.
Where a person stays
Software prepares. A person decides. AI can draft the chase and move the numbers between the tools you already use, but the send button, the price and the awkward conversation stay with a named human. Nothing sends unchecked, and anything touching money, compliance or the law stays approval-only, always. Hand over the typing. Keep the judgement. That split is the whole trick, and it's the part the demos skip.
FAQ
The left column of your sort, scored with the three checks. Highest hours, fully writable, recoverable slip. Hand that one over narrow, watch it for a fortnight, then the next. One at a time beats a big-bang switch, which is how owners end up trusting none of it.
It can, which is why the approval check isn't optional. Software prepares, a named person approves, nothing sends unchecked. A wrong draft costs two minutes to catch. A wrong send costs a client.
Keep it. The gap this post is about sits between the tools you already use: the retyping and the copying that the tools don't do for each other. Any AI plugs in through one connection and works with what's there, so the tools stay and the shuffle goes.
That's the point of the sort. Every hand-over should put hours back on the judgement work: pricing, hiring, the customer who needs you. If the sort says a task is human-only, that's a result, not a failure.