AI Saves Me Time. Why Am I Still Overwhelmed? Raising the Barr Weekly Memo: Issue 720

AI has saved me time. It has also given me more possibilities than I can pursue at once. That is how I found myself doing better work while feeling overwhelmed by everything I wanted to do.

Some tasks now take a fraction of the time they once required. Others take about the same time, but the quality of my work has improved significantly. Meanwhile, developing Skills, building applications, and putting working solutions into use have opened directions in my business and personal life that I would never have dreamed of pursuing.

The work I wanted to do had expanded along with my ability to do it. Ideas were floating inside my head, taking up premium real estate. Some never reached execution, and I felt I had missed deadlines while trying to keep track of everything.

The digital trash bin was getting crowded

After years of trying and abandoning task apps, to-do list programs, and similar tools, I recognized a pattern. The ones I tried left too much of the thinking and organizing to me. I could enter tasks and check them off, but seeing the overall direction, connecting those tasks to my goals, and deciding what deserved attention remained my responsibility.

I could have done much of that with a piece of paper. A growing digital laundry list was becoming another source of overwhelm. Checking off an item told me I had completed something, without telling me whether it deserved my time.

That’s why I decided to develop my own app with ChatGPT: Task Compass. I had already explored AI questioning my task list in Stop Starting From Zero. Now I wanted that thinking connected to my goals, incoming ideas, and the work that deserved my attention each day.

AI helped me recognize my own goals

One of the most revealing prompts I gave ChatGPT was: “Based on everything we discussed in the past several months, what would you say are my top five goals?”

The accuracy was mind-boggling. Four of the five felt like the very goals I would have selected myself. Three were business goals and one was personal. ChatGPT expressed and pinpointed them better and faster than I could.

Those recommendations felt like a natural extension of my thinking, and I judged them against what mattered to me. Task Compass distinguishes between work that advances my goals and other responsibilities that must get done. It helps me give both the right priority each day.

That distinction matters when another appealing idea arrives. It can have a good home without demanding my attention today. I can capture it, keep it organized for later, and concentrate on the work that currently deserves my focus.

Wednesday’s newsletter is one example among many. Publishing Raising the Barr® is my weekly commitment to my clients, and Task Compass recognizes it as the highest priority every Wednesday. It keeps other commitments organized while making clear what deserves my attention today.

In I Asked AI to Challenge Two Decisions. Here’s What Happened., I described examining the next AI Insider Lab group. That decision testing process has also helped reveal the plan step by step. Task Compass gives those steps an organized home as I work toward launching the next group in early 2027.

A useful process can become a working solution

Task Compass began with a workflow I developed last year. That workflow became a Skill and then a web app I can access on my desktop, laptop, and iPhone. I’m also considering making Task Compass available publicly so others can put it to work in their own businesses and lives.

That progression shows why developing Skills and apps has become so powerful in my work. You can preserve a useful way of thinking, refine it through actual use, and develop it into an application that serves your own business and life.

You should be putting AI to work as a thinking partner on your goals and priorities. A practical place to begin is to examine these together:

• The goals reflected in your conversations and whether they still represent what you want to achieve.
• The work that deserves attention today because it advances those goals or fulfills an important commitment.
• The ideas worth preserving for later, where they can wait without continually competing for your attention.

Give AI enough context to make useful recommendations, insist that it explain its reasoning, and challenge it back. AI helped me express my goals; I still had to judge whether they fit the direction I wanted my life and business to take.

Task Compass has given me back premium real estate in my head. Ideas that once competed for my attention now have an organized home. My best ideas can wait their turn without getting lost. My most important goals can get the attention they deserve.

The overwhelm has not disappeared. Task Compass has significantly reduced it. I have a daily, weekly, and monthly plan, a target in sight, and the feeling that I am finally seeing the light.

A day full of checkmarks can still leave your most important goals untouched. The opportunity with AI is far bigger: a thinking partner that challenges your assumptions, clarifies your goals, and helps turn them into a plan you can execute. That gives you the potential to achieve your most important goals and dreams sooner than you thought possible.

These are exactly the kinds of discussions we have inside the AI Insider Lab, where we explore how to turn ideas into practical Skills and apps.

Register your interest in the next group.

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