Zero busy work

Originally published at betterthangood.xyz on September 09, 2025

AI has given us a lot of things. When used incorrectly, your brain turns to mush. When used correctly, it frees you to be original, strategic and creative.

Something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is the idea of zero busy work. This isn’t just about productivity, but about reclaiming human potential and a newfound ability to do more brain work and less hands work.

AI’s value isn’t in replacing human creativity, but in creating space for you to do what you actually do.

Here’s a simple concept to put this into practice:

1. Map out any start to finish process and highlight the human steps where you can provide a more memorable, high value experience and result if you have more time to do it.
2. Now take everything else and automate it with the use of AI-enabled technology. You’ll find that there are loads of legacy steps in your day to day work that are no longer relevant to you.

This is especially obvious with the boring and repetitive tasks nobody wants to do.

The goal is to double down on your unique value and let AI multiply your capacity. In the long run the human jobs don’t necessarily go away, but the outputs become more valuable.

This has been the same since the beginning of time.

In the beginning, if you wanted to build a house you started by making an axe and cutting down a tree, and so on. Over time, all those steps became entire industries and the hard parts became so common that you don’t even think about them anymore.

That’s what’s happening with AI. We used to make our own tools before we could build anything. Now we just buy what we need and focus on the building. AI is doing the same thing, but with thinking instead of hammering.

• An administrator can focus on building relationships and solving complex problems that require human judgment.
• A designer can focus on crafting user experiences and solving big design problems that require creative intuition.
• A project manager can focus on aligning stakeholders and navigating the human dynamics that make or break projects.
• A web developer can focus on architecting solutions and solving big technical challenges that require creative problem-solving.

Common questions

Won’t automation make my service feel less personal?

Not if you do it right. The goal is to automate the administrative tasks that clients don’t care about so you have more time for the work that requires your unique perspective and judgment.

What tools should I use for automation?

It depends on your specific workflows, but the principle is the same: find the repetitive tasks that don’t require human decision-making and let AI handle them. Start with one process and expand from there.

How do I know what to automate first?

Map your start-to-finish process. Identify where you provide the most value (strategy, creative problem-solving, relationship building). Everything else is a candidate for automation.