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Greet from the deep,

How many hours a week do you waste on tasks you don’t have to do?

By the end of this email, you’ll have an answer to that question.

See…

The world’s highest performers know that productivity doesn’t come from working more.

It comes from making more out of the time you work - by being effective.

You probably know that already.

But what you might not know is that you can increase your effectiveness & productivity in just a few minutes - using a ChatGPT prompt I made for you.

Today, we’ll dive into:

• How you can use ChatGPT to identify tasks that you can eliminate

• How to use ChatGPT to get help delegating tasks

• Why delegation should be your last resort

• How to create Standard Operating Procedures to delegate tasks

It’s the AI Solopreneur here - your digital dealer of hard-hitting ChatGPT prompts packaged with food selfies.

And we’re ready to squeeze ChatGPT for some tasty juicy…

Are you with me?

Understand the Principles: Elimination and Delegation

To use these time-saving tactics with AI, we first need to understand the essence of how they work.

Elimination - The most powerful productivity tactic

The fastest way to complete a task is to not do it at all.

That’s what my gym buddy used to tell me when he skipped leg day.

Elimination is the process of completely removing tasks that are not vital to your business or personal goals.

To eliminate, you need to be clear on your goals, and then identify any tasks that aren’t serving your purposes.

Delegation - Your last resort of productivity

Delegation means allowing someone else to perform the task for you.

While this may initially seem like a time-saver, it's important to remember that delegation is costly.

Hiring an assistant can be expensive, and even if you manage to find an affordable one, they will always be 5-100X more expensive than automating the same task.

(and 1 million times more expensive than eliminating it in the first place)

How to use ChatGPT to save time with elimination and delegation

Step 1: Identify your goals

Write down your current biggest business (or personal) objective, for example:

“Grow my newsletter to 50,000 subscribers”

or

“Reach $2,000 a month as a graphic designer”

Rank them based on the frequency with which you do them. Use ChatGPT to compare these tasks to your long-term goals and receive a score that tells you how aligned each task is with those goals. This exercise will help you identify which tasks can be eliminated or delegated.

Step 2: Identify your weekly tasks

List down all the tasks you perform in a week or on any given day.

For example:

• Writing and sending out weekly newsletters

• Scheduling social media posts for business promotion

• Spending time curating the perfect playlist for work

• Tweaking the design of your email signature

• Making pesto

• Browsing industry-related news without a specific purpose

Step 3: Use the Techno Time Master ChatGPT prompt to identify time-saving opportunities

The Techno Time Master prompt does 5 things:

1. Ranks your activities by importance - so you know what’s essential

2. Suggests activities you can eliminate

3. Suggests automation and delegation opportunities

4. Gives you a brief “clarity summary” of what to focus on

Here’s the prompt:

I want you to act as Techno Time Master, a masterful prioritisation, elimination and delegation practitioner. You're also a German DJ who frequently performs at Berghain.

Your task is to rank my tasks in terms of importance and then help me eliminate and delegate them.

My current business goal is [INSERT BUSINESS GOAL]

The activities that I'm doing are:

[INSERT TASKS]



Now, do the following:

1) Rank my activities in order from what you think is most important to least important. Assign each activity a score from 0 (not important) to 100 (extremely important)
2) Suggest activities I could eliminate because they have low- or no-impact on my current progress to my business goal
3) If any other low-leveraged activities remain, come up with a brief plan for me on how to automate them (ideally) or delegate the task to someone else.
4) If any of the remaining high impact tasks can be automated or delegated, let me know of this as well
5) Write a short, decisive, motivational explanation about what's important right now and what I should focus on

If you're missing sufficient information to prioritize, ask me for that information, and then update your assessment.

This is what the Techno Time Master told me about my priorities:

Continue the chat

Making pesto… 0 ?!

Me right now:

Anyway, what should you do with the output?

Eliminate the unnecessary tasks.

Simply stop doing them.

As for delegation, it takes a bit more:

Delegation 101

Again, I think delegation is overused.

It shouldn’t be your first option (elimination), and it shouldn’t be your second option either (automation).

But if you can’t eliminate or automate a task, you can use delegation as a last resort.

Here’s how to do that:

1) How to prepare for delegation

Before you delegate a task, it's essential to understand how to do it yourself.

This will give you a clear idea of what you expect from the person taking over, and you’ll be knowing:

• How to help them if they get stuck

• If they’re doing a good job

• How to explain it to someone else

Record a video of yourself performing the task and use screen capture software to record the technical steps involved. Make sure the instructions in the video are clear and leave no room for error.

2) Creating standard operation procedures

Standard operating procedures show your assistant how to do a given task.

For delegating tasks to my Virtual Assistant, I use two tools:

1) Loom to record a video of myself performing the task I want to delegate

2) Scribe to create a step-by-step guide of the process

Make sure the instructions in the video are clear and leave no room for error.

The delegate shouldn’t have to make any decisions by themeslves.

3) Set Up and track KPIs

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is a fancy word for setting up goals for a task (that help you measure the effectiveness of the delegation.)

For example, if you are delegating bookkeeping tasks, set up a KPI that measures the accuracy and timeliness of the bookkeeping.

Review the performance regularly, especially in the initial stages.

This gives you fast feedback loops.

Bonus: The Role of Automation

Before jumping to delegate a task, always consider if the task can be automated.

Automation is usually less expensive than delegation and also frees up your time without adding to your expenses.

For example, if your business spends 4 hours a week copying data from one Excel sheet to another, automating this process will save both time and money.

Wrap up

I’m back in Cyprus now.

I’m happy I can schedule posts (=automation) so I can eliminate bad vibes by chilling by the beautiful sea.

Keep diving,

Ole

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