Tools & Resources
AI Adoption for Experienced Workers
Workflow Audit: Understand Before You Automate
Why This Matters Most people approach AI the wrong way: they try it on whatever task is in front of them and judge the technology by whether that particular experiment succeeds.
A better approach is to step back first and look at the full shape of your work. Don’t ask “can AI help me with this task?” but “which parts of how I work still make sense, and which don’t?” This is the question experienced workers are uniquely equipped to answer. You know your workflows in depth. You know which steps add genuine value and which ones exist out of habit or historical necessity. That analysis, done by you and not by a consultant or an algorithm, is the most valuable thing you can bring to an AI adoption effort.
How To Do It:
Pick one task you do regularly, something recurring and time-consuming. Write down how it works from start to finish.
Then Sort Each Step Into One of Three Buckets:
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Judgment-required: This step needs my experience and context.
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Mechanical: This step is mostly information-gathering, formatting, or routine processing.
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Gray area: I’m not sure. It might be a mix of both.
Your mechanical and gray-area steps are your AI on-ramp.
Workflow Audit Prompt:
Copy the prompt below and enter it into your authorized AI tool. Then, describe a task you do regularly in 3–5 sentences. Include what you’re trying to accomplish, what the inputs are, and who uses the result.
Here is a task I do regularly:
Walk me through which parts of this could be done faster or better with your help, which parts I should stay in control of, and suggest one specific way we could work together on this right now.