The People Doing Less AI Are Getting Better Results. Here's Why.

Why you don't need to keep up with every AI tool to get your time back

Hey.

I’ve been quiet. And I want to tell you why.

After Hours went dark for a bit. Not because I ran out of things to say—but because I got pulled so deep into something that writing about it felt like coming up for air I couldn’t afford.

Here’s what happened: I stopped being impressed by AI tools and started getting obsessed with a problem no one was solving.

When I started this newsletter, I was already automating workflows, building systems, helping founders escape delivery loops. But somewhere along the way, I hit something that wouldn’t let go.

Every AI tool I tested felt... generic.

They’d transcribe your meetings. Summarize your notes. Generate your content. But they couldn’t do the one thing that actually mattered: tell you what was breaking in how you operate.

I kept seeing the same pattern with every client. Mountains of transcripts. Endless meeting notes. Recorded calls sitting in folders. And zero operational intelligence extracted from any of it.

The tools would tell you what was said. But they couldn’t tell you what was wrong.

So I stopped looking for better tools. And I started building something different.

I can’t share everything yet. But I’ve been testing an approach that looks at team conversations and finds the patterns most people miss—the alignment drift, the decision fog, the ownership gaps that compound into real problems before anyone notices.

And it’s working.

2026 is going to be interesting.

But right now, I wanted to get back to writing. Because while I’ve been in the weeds building this, something has become crystal clear:

The people getting the best results from AI aren’t the ones with the most complex setups.

They’re the ones who know exactly which problem they’re solving. They automate three specific things that genuinely hurt. They ignore everything else.

And that’s what I want to talk about today.

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The Overwhelm Is Real (And It’s Not Your Fault)

Let’s name what’s actually happening here first.

You open LinkedIn and see someone’s elaborate Notion template with 16 databases and custom automations. You watch a YouTube video where the creator casually mentions the five AI tools they “can’t live without.” You bookmark another tutorial about building workflows in Make.com—except now you’re not sure if you should learn Zapier instead because someone said it’s “better for beginners.”

And somewhere in all of this, you start feeling three things at once:

The fear of missing out. Everyone else seems to be figuring this out. What if you’re the only one who doesn’t get it?

The fear of becoming irrelevant. If you don’t learn this stuff now, will you even be employable in two years?

The complete inability to choose where to start. There are seventeen options and they all seem equally important and you have no idea which one is the right one.

So you do nothing. Because doing the wrong thing feels worse than doing nothing.

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Why Complex Isn’t Better

Here’s the trap: You see someone’s sophisticated setup and think, “That’s what success looks like. I need to build that.”

But here’s what you don’t see: that system is solving their problems. Not yours. Their workflows match their client structure, their team size, their daily rhythm. And often? They’re solving problems that other automations created.

You can’t copy and paste someone else’s automation any more than you can copy and paste their entire business.

What works for them might be completely wrong for you. Maybe they’re managing a team of ten and you’re solo. Maybe they’re processing 100 client inquiries a week and you’re processing five. Maybe they love Notion and you think in spreadsheets.

Software developer Kent Beck understood this when he was revolutionizing how we build technology. His principle:

“Do the simplest thing that could possibly work.”

Not the fanciest thing. Not the most impressive thing. Not what’s working for someone else.

The simplest thing.

This matters because you’re not trying to win an award for “most sophisticated automation.” You’re trying to get time back. And simple AI workflow systems that actually run will always beat complex systems that break.

Think about it like this: someone showing you their custom home gym with Olympic lifting platforms and specialized equipment when you’re just trying to figure out how to do ten pushups consistently.

The equipment isn’t the answer to your question.

Start where you actually are. Not where they are.

So where is that, exactly?

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How to Start with AI Automation Where You Actually Are

The best automation for beginners is the one that removes a pain you actually feel today.

Not the pain you think you should have but the pain that made you sigh this morning when you had to do that thing again.

Ask yourself one question: What task did I do today that I’ve already done ten times this week?

Be specific. Really specific.

Examples of specific pains:

• You copy client names from email into three different places every time you start a project

• You write the same project update in Slack, then again in email, then again in your notes

• You take meeting notes by hand, then type them up later because you can’t read your handwriting

• Your great ideas live on post-it notes that disappear by Friday

Now describe the simplest possible fix.

If you’re copying the same information into three places, maybe the fix is: copy it once, then paste it twice. That’s it. No automation required.

If you’re rewriting the same update three times, maybe the fix is: write it once in a doc, then copy the link everywhere. Still no automation.

If your post-it notes disappear, maybe the fix is: take a photo at the end of the day and ask ChatGPT to organize them.

Here’s what all these have in common:

This is the eliminate before automate principle. Before you automate anything, first ask if you can eliminate or simplify it.

Simple doesn’t mean “build a system.” Simple means “do less of the annoying thing.”

Sometimes that’s automation. Often it’s just doing the manual thing slightly smarter. And there’s a reason that approach actually works better.

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Build on What You’re Already Doing

James Clear calls this habit stacking—attaching new behaviors to existing ones. The idea: new routines stick when they piggyback on what you already do.

That’s the entire strategy for AI automation.

You don’t build new systems. You make your current system slightly less painful. One small improvement stacked on top of something you’re already doing.

This is why most people fail at automation. They try to jump from “chaotic manual process” to “sophisticated automated workflow” in one leap. But the brain doesn’t work that way. New behaviors need scaffolding. They need to attach to existing patterns. They need to feel like a small adjustment, not a complete overhaul.

Start with the tool or behavior you already have. Then add one small improvement.

That’s it. That’s the whole strategy.

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You Don’t Have to Keep Up

Here’s what I want you to hear:

You don’t have to keep up. You have to solve YOUR problems.

It’s okay to use basic AI tools if they work for you. It’s okay to automate just one thing and stop there. It’s okay to not have a “system”—just a few solutions to specific pains.

The goal isn’t to become an automation expert. The goal is to spend less time on repetitive nonsense and more time on work that matters.

If that means you only ever automate three things, you still win. You’re just not solving other people’s problems.

And that’s exactly how it should be.

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Your Next Step

Stuck on which task to start with? I built a 10-minute diagnostic that does the thinking for you.

Copy this prompt, paste it into ChatGPT, and it will:

• Ask you a few questions about your repetitive tasks

• Identify your top 3 candidates (ranked by impact and ease)

• Run your chosen task through “Eliminate → Simplify → Automate” logic

• Give you a specific 3-step experiment to try this week

No research. No tool shopping. Just one task, one fix, one step forward.

It takes about 10 minutes and you’ll leave with a 3-step experiment you can try this week.

Step 1: Paste this into ChatGPT or Claude

Help me find one repetitive task from my week and design a tiny experiment to make it less painful.

Step 1 – Ask me 5–7 questions to uncover tasks I repeat a lot or dread doing.
Step 2 – From my answers, pick the 3 best candidates and tell me:
- why each is painful  
- how often it happens  
- which one you recommend I start with and why.

Step 3 – For the task we choose, walk me through:
1) Can I eliminate this?
2) If not, can I simplify it manually?
3) Only then: suggest one very small automation using tools I already have.

Step 4 – Turn your recommendation into:
- one sentence describing the change  
- a 3-step checklist for this week  
- a simple way to tell if it helped.

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Want the detailed system prompt version for your team or your own customGPT? Grab it here.

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Here’s the secret nobody tells you:

The people with the simplest AI setups often get the best results.

They’re not optimizing. They’re operating. They’re not building infrastructure. They’re solving problems.

And the next time you see a “must-try” AI tool making the rounds?

Ask yourself: does this solve a problem I actually have today?

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What’s the ONE task you’d automate if you knew it would be simple? Hit reply and let me know—I read every response.

-Tam