Hi there,

Everyone obsesses over the ROI of AI automations. But there's something way more important than time savings alone.

Today, in 10 minutes or less, you’ll learn:

• ⚡️ How a 19-year-old's data entry nightmare sparked a career-long mission against tedious work

• 🎯 The counterintuitive "energy drain" filter that beats traditional ROI calculations

• ⭐️ 3 proven workflows you can set up this week (with templates you can steal)

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⚡️ How to automate the energy-sucking parts of your job

When I was 19, I spent my summer painstakingly plugging numbers from tax forms into a giant spreadsheet - as an intern for a nonprofit consulting group.

To be clear, I did get to do exciting projects. But I absolutely dreaded this manual data entry task (at least I wasn’t fetching coffee).

After the summer ended, I promised myself I’d never take a job filled with corporate drudgery. No matter how much they paid me.

Last week, I saw this Linkedin post from Jay Singh, CEO of an AI product studio:

His view tracks closely with how I see work evolving over the next 5 years.

The priority for leaders and managers shouldn’t be about replacing humans (although this is certainly happening).

Instead, the priority should be:

Attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent.

Leaders have prioritized this strategy for centuries because it’s effective, and the 2020’s are no different. The tools have just changed.

A smart talent strategy sounds like leveraging AI and technology to automate away the tedious parts of jobs, so top talent can spend more time on energizing work.

And if you’re a solopreneur, then you are the management AND employee. You are the one in charge of designing work that gives you energy.

In this edition, I walk through exactly how I prioritize automations, what tools to use, and popular use cases you can apply to your work - whether you’re a professional, solopreneur, or business owner.

🏔️ Find your biggest obstacle

Before giddily jumping into automating everything, make sure you’re focused on the right-sized problem.

For example, I used to work on automating financial operations. The worst feeling was spending months automating a complex compliance requirement only to realize it didn’t need to exist in the first place!

💯 The counterintuitively simple way to prioritize

Now that you’ve picked a problem worthy of automation, generate your hypotheses and start ranking them using the factors from Jay’s post:

1. Repetitive

2. High-effort

3. Energy drain

I personally love how he weights low-creativity / energy-draining work.

This is a super underrated criteria.

I’ve worked with many leaders who cultivate a culture of grind for the sake of grinding. But the leadership style I admire and adopt is making work fun and energizing - because I strongly believe this enables people do their best work.

🧰 Your automation starter pack

If you’re just starting out, I recommend trying Relay and Make.

Why?

• Affordable options that you can quickly setup to justify ROI

• Relatively easy to use for non-technical users, especially Relay

• Extensive integrations list with most popular tools

• Both have a solid free plan for getting started

I use both in my work.

Here’s a quick hits list of what I’ve tried:

• Entry-level (non-technical):

  • Zapier - the OG automation tool

  • Relay - AI-native, user-friendly, free tier available

  • Lindy - similar to Relay but higher price point

• Mid-level:

  • Make - established automation with new AI modules, good customization, inexpensive

• Advanced:

  • N8n - very popular, requires API/JSON knowledge, has native AI agent capabilities

  • Vector Shift - enterprise-level, built for complex workflows/scale

🏆️ Quick wins (steal these templates)

Now that you have your tools, let’s show you a few quick wins.

Linkedin/X are filled with viral AI automation posts claiming “I automated my whole business with n8n!!!”

But how much of that is real?

That’s why I’m only sharing workflows I actually use (and any professional can use):

1. Weekly task review report

2. Newsletter summarizer

3. Voice note → content brief generator

1/ Weekly Task Review Report

Struggling to stay on top of your tasks?

I track all my team tasks in a Notion board, then ask GPT-4o mini to send a weekly task report to Slack that summarizes:

• Progress Last Week

• Plans This Week

• Problems/Issues

After reviewing this in Slack, I update my plans for the upcoming week.

👉️ Get the Make Template

2/ Newsletter summarizer

Every week, I spend some time digesting my 50+ newsletter subscriptions, so I can:

• Find interesting content to share in the Last Week’s Gems section

• Curate ideas of topics for future content

• Learn a new skill or knowledge

Obviously, going down this rabbit hole can get extremely time-consuming.

That’s why I took an out-of-the-box Relay template for generating newsletter summaries - and then lightly edited the GPT prompt to also extract insights for Portfolio Path readers/clients.

I highly encourage this technique.

Start with an existing automation template, then tweak it for your personal or business goal.

👉️ Get the Relay Template

3/ Voice note → Content brief generator

Every week, I write a newsletter - but I’m embarrassed to admit I save it to the last minute way too often.

I have been feeling a bit frustrated at myself because I’m proud of being “consistent” but at the same time I’m treading water!

To get ahead, I’ve started recording voice notes on my afternoon walks, then setup a Make automation to generate a Notion content brief.

I then use this brief to guide my writing.

Even if you don’t have a newsletter, we all write so much in knowledge work. Imagine if you can cut down your writing by talking podcast-style instead.

Wouldn’t that make things easier?

👉️ Get the Make Template

In summary

The AI opportunity isn't about replacing humans - it's about redesigning work to be more energizing.

No one I know wants to be grinding through repetitive tasks, but it’s just the proactive people I know who are systematically eliminating the energy-sucking parts of their work.

Here's what we covered:

• Start with your biggest obstacle - Don't automate everything, automate what’s a real problem

• Use the energy-drain filter - Prioritize repetitive, high-effort tasks that drain your creativity

• Begin with entry-level tools - Relay and Make offer the best ROI for most professionals IMO

• Steal proven workflows - Weekly task reviews, newsletter summaries, and voice-to-content generators

In spite of the doom-and-gloom news reports, I’m excited about what the future holds for folks who take charge of transforming their work for the better.

What energy-sucking task will you automate first?

The 19-year-old intern in you will thank you for it.

Thanks for reading! What automation are you most excited to try? Hit reply and let me know.

💎 Last Week’s Gems

😡 How One Big Private-Equity Fund Makes Its Numbers Incomprehensible (WSJ)

🤑 The Best Leading Indicator of Wealth (Nick Maggiulli)

🧠 No one knows anything about AI (Cal Newport)

💭 Doomprompting Is the New Doomscrolling (Anu)

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💌 Reader Notes