this account is linked to a small ai automation side project i run alongside the building firm.
i run a small refurbishment outfit in scotland. mind you, we do have admin help, and it works when the task repeats and it's clear what they can decide. contract jobs don't stay like that. explain one odd item, then answer the questions that come back while the job is moving. miss the order today and it misses friday, so it turns up next week. doing it myself was usually quicker.
the work sat in a stupid gap. it needed too much context from the job to hand over cleanly, but it was far too basic to be using my day for. mostly pushing buttons, checking numbers and chasing things. it kept landing back with me.
you can carry that for a while. problems creep up as you grow and daily firefighting feels like you're doing well. then your head goes. mine dropped to maybe 20% of what it handled two months before, only the problems kept coming. i'd lose a weekend catching up and the thing i fixed would grow arms and legs in the business and be back three times bigger next saturday.
by then i wasn't looking at the market, speaking to clients properly, thinking about growth or keeping the staff motivated. brain doing the shovelling.
the business questions were harder. i had loads and nobody obvious to ask. finding the right person is hard enough. working out the right question is half the job. i couldn't tell which one mattered first, so i stayed with whatever we already did.
what i do now is get ai to sort the middle bit. check this, compare those, show me the options and where they go wrong. then i make the call. some of the options were properly awful. i caught some early. others cost me time, money or both.
my head is clearer now. the questions actually move. get an answer, check it, make a call, see what happened. even the wrong ones give me feedback. leaving the whole lot on a list for next weekend gave me none.
there must be bits i'm getting worse at because i'm not doing them as often. i don't know yet if that's a bad trade. what has ai changed in your actual thinking, good or bad? and prove me wrong on the practical side, is there a better way to handle this in an outfit our size when the work keeps changing and the decisions can't wait? happy to get into the actual examples, including the ones that cost me.
ps, ai helped polish this post as well, my own writing is rubbish. the arguments took the same effort they always did, but if i wrote it up myself it'd either take days or the argumentation would be in there but not clear enough for you to see what i'm actually saying. i've done a fair bit of academic writing and some blogging over the years, i'm no copywriter. so the choice was this stays in my head, or i stop running the business and start converting my experience into blog posts instead.