The useful question is not "what can AI do" but "what am I doing today that is pure overhead". Here is the list that survives contact with a real week.
Delegate immediately
- Commitment tracking — every "I'll send it by Friday" in either direction, captured without you logging anything.
- Daily digests — what needs you today, who is waiting on a reply, what is overdue.
- Inbox hygiene — labelling, muting, archiving and marking read in bulk, by rule rather than one chat at a time.
- Scheduling — checking availability, booking, moving, and the back-and-forth to find a slot across several people.
- Follow-up chasing — asking again on Monday when nobody replied on Friday, and telling you after the second miss.
- Filing — invoices to the right Drive folder with a consistent name, numbers appended to the right sheet.
- Lookups — reading the link someone sent, checking a price, comparing three options.
Delegate with a draft step
- Replies to clients and colleagues — let it write, you approve.
- Anything that sets an expectation with another person.
- Group announcements, where tone matters more than speed.
Do not delegate
- Price commitments, payment approvals, and binding promises. A good assistant refuses these even in autonomous mode.
- Bulk outreach. Beyond the spam risk to your number, it is the fastest way to damage a relationship at scale.
- Anything in a chat you would not want summarised. Block it — properly — rather than hoping.
A rule of thumb
If the work is remembering, formatting, filing, or chasing, hand it over. If the work is deciding, keep it — but let the assistant assemble everything you need to decide in one message.