Find the Hours: Which Tasks Are Worth Handing to AI

All lessons Lesson 1 of 7 • about 15 minutes An electrician at a kitchen table in the evening sorts coloured sticky notes into three piles beside a calculator and a mug.
By the end of this lesson: Rank your business's repeated tasks by hours and dollars, choose the three that are safest and most worthwhile to hand to AI first, and record the baseline numbers you will measure against in Lesson 7.

In Statistics Canada's business conditions survey for the second quarter of 2026, 19.2% of businesses said they had used AI to produce goods or deliver services in the previous 12 months. That figure cannot tell you whether AI would pay in your shop. A count of your own week can.

This course assumes you can already use an AI chat assistant and write a clear prompt; the free AI for Beginners course covers that. Each of the seven lessons adds one page to a single folder or phone note called your AI playbook. Today's page is a ranked list of your repeated tasks and four baseline numbers you will come back to in Lesson 7.

Start with a count, not a tool

It is easy to misjudge where the hours go until you write them down. For one ordinary week, keep a tally on paper or in a phone note. Each time a task repeats, record who did it, how many times it came up and roughly how many minutes it took.

Include the small ones: answering the same question about hours or prices, confirming appointments, chasing an unpaid invoice, writing up a quote, replying to reviews. If you cannot wait a week, estimate from memory today and correct the numbers as the week goes on. Write task names only, with no customer or staff names.

Turn minutes into hours and dollars

One sum runs through the whole course:

minutes × times per week ÷ 60 = hours a week
× 52 = hours a year
× what that hour costs you = dollars a year

Example only; replace every number with your own. A 15-minute task that comes up 10 times a week takes 2.5 hours a week, or 130 hours a year. At an example cost of $30 an hour, that is $3,900 a year.

Then halve it, to $1,950. AI usually shortens a task instead of removing it, someone still has to check the result, and you have not measured anything yet.

What an hour costs you. For your own time, use what you would pay someone else to do that task. For staff, the wage is only part of it. A rough Ontario example for 2026, in Canadian dollars, using a $25 wage you should replace (the province's general minimum wage has been $17.95 an hour since 1 October 2026): the employer's Canada Pension Plan contribution of 5.95% ($1.49), the employer's Employment Insurance premium of 1.4 times the 1.63% employee rate ($0.57), minimum vacation pay of 4% ($1.00; 6% after five years of employment) and a Workplace Safety and Insurance Board premium that depends on your industry class and claims record (2026 class rates run from $0.18 to $3.55 per $100 of insurable payroll; at an example $1.23, about $0.31). That is roughly $28.37 an hour before benefits or public holiday pay; this course rounds to $30 in its examples. The estimate ignores exemptions, yearly maximums and any other payroll costs that apply to you, and other provinces have their own rules, so ask your payroll provider or accountant for your real figure. This is general information, not legal, tax or payroll advice.

The four-question fit test

Hours alone do not make a task a good candidate. Put each one through four questions:

  1. Does it follow a pattern? The same kind of request gets the same kind of answer most of the time.
  2. Is it mostly words or sorting? Drafting, summarizing, rewording and grouping are what a chat assistant does best.
  3. Can a person check the result in under a minute? If checking takes as long as doing, there is little to gain.
  4. What does a mistake cost? A clumsy sentence in a draft is cheap. A wrong price or a skipped safety step is not.

Then sort the tasks into three piles:

  • This week: first drafts of replies, summaries and posts.
  • This month, with checks: quotes, bookkeeping tidy-up and staff documents. Worth doing, with every figure and fact re-checked by a person.
  • People only: pricing and hiring decisions, complaints, safety and anything a regulator cares about. AI may help you prepare; a person decides.

Tick any task that involves customer or staff personal details. Those details stay out of AI tools; Lesson 2 sets the written rules.

Draft, check, send, and what it really costs

Every later lesson follows one rule: draft, check, send. AI prepares, a named person approves, and the business stays responsible for whatever goes out. An assistant can be wrong while sounding sure, so the check is part of the task.

Count the real cost before you start: the subscription, if any; set-up time; the time someone spends checking each result; and what one mistake would cost you with a customer. If checking takes nearly as long as the time saved, move the task down a pile or cross it off.

Frequency matters too. Example only: a 20-minute task done twice a month is 8 hours a year, or $240 at $30 an hour and $120 once halved. An hour or two of set-up uses up a good share of that, so rare tasks are seldom worth it. Some gains, such as a calmer Monday, never show up in dollars; note them, but do not count them.

Today's exercise needs only the free plan of the assistant you already use. Free plans limit how much you can use them, and vendors change the limits without notice (Google's Gemini limits page is one example), so if you hit one, finish on paper.

Take a dated baseline before you change anything

Lesson 7 asks whether any of this paid off, and you can only answer if today's numbers are written down. Record the date and these four:

  1. Missed calls in the last seven days. On an iPhone with iOS 26 or later, open Phone, tap Calls (Recents in the Classic layout), tap the Filter button in the upper-right corner and choose Missed. In Google's Phone app on Android, the Home tab lists call history with an icon beside each missed call; other makers' phone apps differ. For a desk line or internet-phone system, ask your provider where its call log is.
  2. Time to first reply on your last ten enquiries. In your inbox, texts or direct messages, note the gap between each enquiry and your first answer.
  3. Hours a week on quotes, invoices and paperwork, taken from your tally.
  4. Unanswered reviews, counted on each review page you have.

If you have a Google Business Profile, its Performance report shows calls, website clicks and direction requests for a date range you set. The call figure counts clicks on the call button on your profile, so it shows interest, not whether anyone answered.

Try it: The one-page task audit (about 15 minutes, on paper or in a phone note)

  1. List ten tasks you or your staff repeat every week; if time is short, start with five and add the rest later. Write task names only, with no customer or staff names. No spreadsheet is needed.
  2. Beside each task, write times per week and minutes each. With a phone calculator, work out hours a year (minutes x times per week / 60 x 52) and dollars a year at your own hourly cost. Then halve the dollar figure.
  3. Mark each task's harm-if-wrong as low, medium or high, and tick any task that involves customer or staff personal details.
  4. Type the list, or dictate it with your phone keyboard's microphone, into the free plan of the AI assistant you already use, with the 'Sort my task list' prompt below. Read the list over first to be sure it holds no names or personal details. Overrule the assistant wherever you know better. If the app says you have reached a usage limit, finish the sort on paper with the four questions.
  5. Circle one 'this week' task, one 'this month, with checks' task and one 'people only' task.
  6. Write today's date and your four baseline numbers: missed calls in the last seven days, time to first reply on your last ten enquiries, hours a week on quotes, invoices and paperwork, and unanswered reviews. If one takes too long to count today, write your best estimate, mark it as an estimate and correct it this week. Save this as page 1 of your AI playbook; every later lesson adds one page.

Prompts you can copy

Tasks I may have missed

I run a [type of business] in [city or region] with [number] staff. Here are the repeated weekly tasks I have listed so far: [task names only]. Suggest up to eight other routine tasks that a business like mine often repeats each week and that I may have left out. Ask me whether each one applies to me; do not assume it does. Do not estimate any times for me and do not recommend any product.

Sort my task list

I run a [type of business] with [number] staff. Below is my list of repeated weekly tasks. Each line gives the task, times per week, minutes each, my harm-if-wrong rating (low, medium or high) and a Y if the task involves customer or staff personal details. The list contains no names or personal details. For each task, answer these four questions in a few words: 1) Does it follow a pattern? 2) Is it mostly words or sorting? 3) Can a person check the result in under a minute? 4) What does a mistake cost? Then put each task in one of three piles: "this week" (low-risk first drafts), "this month, with checks" (useful, but a person re-checks every figure and fact) or "people only" (pricing and hiring decisions, complaints, safety, anything a regulator cares about). Give one line of reasoning per task. If you are unsure, choose the more cautious pile and say why. Do not recommend any product or subscription. My list: [your tasks, one per line]

Challenge my numbers

Here are my estimates for the same tasks, one per line: [task, times per week, minutes each, hours a year, dollars a year]. My hourly cost figure is [dollar amount] an hour. Check my arithmetic using this formula: minutes x times per week / 60 = hours a week; x 52 = hours a year; x hourly cost = dollars a year. Show your working for each line so I can re-check it on a calculator. Then point out any estimate that looks too high or too low for a [type of business] and ask me one question about each. Do not change my numbers yourself.

What checking will involve

My first task to try is: [your 'this week' task]. Describe in two sentences what an AI first draft for this task would look like. Then list the three things a person in my business should check before the result is sent or used, and estimate the checking time in seconds. Finish with the details I should never put in the prompt, such as customer names, contact details or payment information. Keep the whole answer under 150 words.

Before you move on

Remember: Count your week before you choose a tool: the tasks worth handing to AI first are frequent, patterned, quick for a person to check and cheap to get wrong, and a dated baseline is the only way you will know later whether it paid.

Sources checked for this lesson: Nova Toronto: Free AI Course for Beginners: 7 Short Lessons to Use AI Confidently and Safely at Work • Statistics Canada: Analysis on artificial intelligence use by businesses in Canada, second quarter of 2026 • Canada Revenue Agency: CPP contribution rates, maximums and exemptions • Canada Revenue Agency: EI premium rates and maximums • Government of Ontario: Your guide to the Employment Standards Act - Vacation • Government of Ontario: Your guide to the Employment Standards Act - Minimum wage • Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB): 2026 premium rates • Apple Support: Use Unified layout in the Phone app on iPhone • Google Phone app Help: Manage call history & do a reverse phone number look up • Google Business Profile Help: Understand your Business Profile performance & insights • Google Gemini Apps Help: Gemini Apps limits & upgrades for Google AI subscribers • Google Gboard Help: Type with your voice

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