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Module 1Automation mindset 16 min

Lab: Your opportunity map

Turn your time audit into a scored opportunity map, pick your first three automations, and write the one-page brief for each — your roadmap for the rest of the course.

This lab converts your week of time-audit notes into the course's working roadmap. If your audit is still running, use it as far as it's gotten plus your best recall — then update the map when the week closes. (Riley's worked example runs alongside; use it as the reference shape, not the answer.)

  1. 1Consolidate the audit. Merge duplicate entries, total the weekly minutes per task. Expect 10–20 distinct tasks; expect the totals to surprise you.
  2. 2Score each task with the three questions (frequency / rules-vs-judgment / error cost) — the AI sorting prompt from 'What to automate' does the first pass; you adjudicate. Sort into automate-now / assist / leave-alone.
  3. 3Pick your first three from automate-now, ranked by weekly-minutes-saved ÷ estimated build effort. Constraint: your #1 must involve tools you already use daily (email, sheets, chat) — first workflows die on unfamiliar apps, not on logic.
  4. 4Write a one-page brief per pick: the trigger (what event starts it), the steps in plain sentences, the output, what 'working' means (a checkable sentence: 'every support email appears in the tracker within 1 minute, correctly categorized'), and the error cost honestly stated.
  5. 5Run the do-not-automate pass. Write down 2–3 tasks you're explicitly not automating and why. Riley's: the weekly 1:1 prep ('the thinking is the job') and anything touching payroll ('error cost, obviously').
Riley's opportunity map (worked example, abridged)text
TASK                        MIN/WK  FREQ  RULES?   ERR-COST  VERDICT
email -> ticket copying       200   high  yes      low       AUTOMATE #1
weekly ops report             120   med   mostly   low       AUTOMATE #2
review alerts -> managers      45   high  yes      low       AUTOMATE #3
invoice chasing                60   med   partly   medium    ASSIST (draft
                                                             reminders, Riley
                                                             approves sends)
supplier complaint replies     40   med   no       high      LEAVE ALONE
new-hire equipment setup   30/qtr   low   yes      medium    LEAVE (for now -
                                                             quarterly, low ROI)
Problem set 1

You get a fictional colleague's messy time audit (an office manager, 16 tasks, several traps: a high-minutes task that's secretly judgment, a tiny task with vicious error cost, a 'weekly' task that's actually someone else's broken process). Score it, sort it, pick their first three, and defend the do-not-automate list. Sorting someone else's work is how you find out whether the rubric — or your gut — is doing the scoring.

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