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A free guide by Mariah Brunner ↗ INSTAGRAM ↗ TIKTOK

Find Out What
AI Should Already Do

AI isn’t going to replace your whole job, but it should be taking over tasks inside it. Here’s the audit prompt that sorts your week into three buckets and ranks what to hand off first.

Salesforce surveyed 4,050 sales pros for its 2026 State of Sales report and found "the average seller spends 40% of their time selling." The rest goes to everything around the selling, and Salesforce names admin work like manual data entry as the biggest drag. (Salesforce, State of Sales 2026)

It’s not just sales. Most jobs are a thin layer of the work you were hired for, wrapped in a thick layer of busywork. The real question is which tasks inside your job AI should take today.

The 3 Buckets

Every task lands in one bucket, based on two questions. How much judgment does it need, and what does a mistake cost?

01

Fully automate

Admin, repetitive, low cost if it’s wrong. Formatting reports, sorting email, data entry, routine first drafts, scheduling. If a mistake is annoying but not damaging, AI can own it end to end.

02

AI assists

Needs a little of your judgment, but AI does the heavy lifting. It drafts and you approve. It researches and you decide. It preps the meeting brief and you run the meeting. Your part shrinks from an hour to five minutes.

03

You stay in control

Anything that changes a relationship or truly needs your judgment. Negotiations, performance conversations, final calls with real consequences. AI can brief you before these, but it doesn’t act in them.

The prompt is stricter than your gut on purpose. Most people put too much in bucket 3 out of habit, not necessity.

The Task Audit Prompt

You don’t need a tidy task list. The prompt interviews you first, then sorts. Paste it into Claude or ChatGPT when you have a few quiet minutes.

The AI Task Audit
You are my automation auditor. Your job: map every task in my work week, sort each one into one of three buckets, and hand me a ranked plan. Be decisive and a little aggressive about automation, because most people under-automate out of habit. Push back when I say something "needs me" without a real reason. STEP 1: INTERVIEW ME Ask me these one at a time, and wait for my answer before the next: 1. What's my job title, and what does a normal week look like, roughly hour by hour? 2. What do I do every single day, no matter what? 3. What do I do weekly or monthly (reports, reviews, planning, invoicing)? 4. Which tasks do I procrastinate on most? (These are usually automation gold.) 5. Where do I copy information from one place to another, in any form? 6. Which tasks involve another person's feelings, money or trust? 7. Which tools do I use every day (email, calendar, CRM, docs, spreadsheets, Slack)? STEP 2: SORT EVERY TASK INTO 3 BUCKETS For each task I named, assign exactly one bucket: - FULLY AUTOMATE: repetitive and low cost of error. AI does it end to end on a schedule or trigger, and I spot-check. - AI ASSISTS: needs some of my judgment. AI does the heavy lifting (draft, research, prep, summarize) and I review and approve. My time on it should drop by at least 70%. - I STAY IN CONTROL: changes a relationship or truly needs my judgment. AI may brief me beforehand but doesn't act. If I push a task into "I stay in control" without a relationship or judgment reason, challenge me once with the honest counterargument, then respect my call. STEP 3: DELIVER THE AUDIT 1. A table: every task, its bucket, the hours per week it costs me now, and a one-line "how" for the AI buckets (a saved prompt, a Claude skill, a scheduled task, a connector to my email, calendar or docs, or an agent). Only suggest tools I told you I use, or say clearly when I'd need a new one. 2. THE TOP 3 to automate first, ranked by hours saved times ease of setup. For each: the setup in plain steps I can do this week, plus the first prompt or automation instruction, written out and ready to use. 3. The honest total: hours per week I get back from just the top 3, and the Bucket 3 work I should reinvest that time into. 4. One task I probably think is automatable but isn't yet, and why, so I don't burn a weekend on it. Guardrails: keep anything that sends money, signs contracts or messages clients on my behalf in "AI assists" unless I say otherwise. Mark your hour estimates as estimates.

Re-Run It Twice A Year

The buckets aren’t permanent. Tasks move from AI assists to fully automate as tools improve and your trust grows.

Your First Week With The Results

01

Automate one thing first

You get a top 3, but week one is for #1 only. One automation that works beats three half-built ones.

02

Save your assist tasks as prompts

If "draft my weekly report" is an assist task, write the prompt once with your format, tone and data sources. Save it as a Claude skill or in a Project, and the task drops from an hour to a review pass.

03

Protect bucket 3 on your calendar

Spend the hours you get back on judgment work, like relationships, strategy and visible wins. If the saved time turns into more admin, the audit didn’t change anything.

Honest note: fully automating a task often means hooking an app up to Claude with a connector first. The audit tells you which setup each task needs, so you know if it’s a 5-minute saved prompt or a longer setup before you start.