Same Garden, Bigger Harvest
My friend, Paul, asked me on our mastermind call this week how much time I think AI has saved me. My first answer was “a lot? probably?” which is kind of a funny answer from someone who lives in and builds systems for a living.
So I went and looked. I dumped all the cords out on the table and pulled everything since July from ClickUp and my calendar.
What the Numbers Say.
My week has been somewhere between 45 and 50 hours since August. What’s changed is how much comes out of it. In July, an hour of my time turned into about an hour and a quarter of output. By October it was closer to two.
So yeah, AI saves me time. What I keep coming back to, though, is that it’s the same garden. I didn’t plant more rows or work longer days. I’m just getting a bigger harvest out of the same plot, and every week seems to build on the one before it.
How I got Here.
I didn’t have a big plan for any of this. In July I was mostly using AI like a really good assistant for notes and first drafts, and I was still doing most of the heavy lifting myself. Then in August my business became my only business, and I started handing it whole pieces of work, like proposals and the tools on my website. That’s when my output started to move.
October is when I built my actual week around it. Every day now opens and closes the same way, and it all lives in one command center. I don’t go hunting for things anymore. They’re just there when I need them.
Where the harvest Went
I assumed meetings and email would be the big win, and they do help a lot. Most of the extra went into building the business itself, though.
My four client seats are full, so none of this went into taking on more client work. It went into the stuff I’ve been saying I’d get to someday, like finally launching my referral network. I’m even building software with a partner, which still feels a little wild to say out loud.
What I’d tell You.
For me it came down to tending what was already growing before planting anything new. Look at what you actually use before you add anything new, then design what comes next around that. That’s the Editor-Architect Framework, and it’s what I did for myself here.
If your week is full and you can’t figure out where the growth is supposed to come from, that’s usually a systems thing, and I love that kind of problem.
Want to start where I did? Grab The Daily Close. It’s the end-of-day routine my whole week runs on now.
Erin Peshoff is the Founder of Vivid Operational Advisors. She has spent thirty years inside nonprofit operations, helped raise over $100 million for institutional missions, and built Vivid around the operating discipline most strategic engagements skip.
