🧠 The 2-Part Rule My Team Runs On

Two people on my team got a one-line message from me this week. 

They sent back 🎉 (and kept on with their day 😅).

I sent back nothing, because I was busy realizing I’d just written down how I run my entire life.

That one sentence decides what I spend my days on, and what I hand off without a second thought.

Worth taking apart, because it says more about being human than about being efficient.

And if you're new here, it might surprise you that the AI guy is talking about being human. 

But that's why I do what I do. I want you to keep your favorite parts of being human.

🔍 The Rule, Taken Apart

Most people read that and hear “automate everything.” 

But that’s not it.

Read the second half again. 

“Or we exhaust all possibilities.”

That means manual work is still allowed for my team, but it’s the last thing we try instead of the first thing we reach for.

The one question we have to ask ourselves is this: could something else handle this? 

If the answer is no, we roll up our sleeves. 

But if the answer is yes, we hand it to AI. 

And if a task brings you joy, keep it. 

Protect it, even. 

I write these emails myself, take strategy calls, and still sit with hard problems and think about solutions.

I love those things. That’s why I keep them.

Everything else? Fair game.

I hand what bores me to AI.

Back in June, when I said I’d never fill out another Asana task from scratch, I meant it. 

And I've stuck by it.

If you're curious… 

Here’s where you can read that declaration. 

🧠 What It Means for You

For about twenty years, technology took things from us. 

Attention.
Eye contact.
Handwriting.

We handed over human abilities to systems that never promised us anything back.

And so far, AI is the first technology in my lifetime to return some of that humanity.

That’s what I want for my team, and for your team too.

That’s why the speed of AI might be the least interesting part of AI for business owners.

What matters is that AI owns the pieces of a job that don’t need a person, and leaves your team to handle the pieces that must have a human’s touch.

That means relationships. 

Judgment calls. 

The creative thing only that one person on your team could have thought of.

So call that a productivity gain if you want. But to me, it feels closer to what work is supposed to be.

👉 Worth Sitting With

Whatever you do for a living, these questions are worth considering:

• Which part of your week would you keep doing even if nobody paid you for it?
• Which parts of your tasks have you simply never questioned?
• When you do something by hand, is it because it needs you, or because you haven’t checked if AI can handle it lately?

✅ Try This, This Week

Pick the task you dread most.

Before you touch it, ask one question out loud.

Have I actually exhausted all possibilities here, or have I always just done it this way? Because finding out takes ten minutes, and it changes your whole month.

Then protect the one task you love. 

Put it on the calendar on purpose.