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Hey {{first_name | there}},
You're wasting more than you think.
Not money. Not opportunity.
Time.
Studies show the average employee spends 51% of their workday on tasks of little to no value. That's basically half your day on things that could either be deleted or handed off to AI.
And yet here we are in 2026, still manually doing so many things, checking the same websites for updates, and compiling reports that AI can generate in seconds.
The frustrating part? Most people already know they should automate. But they get stuck at the same mental wall:
"I don't know how to code." “It’s too technical for me” “I don’t understand n8n”
That wall doesn't exist anymore. Let me show you why.
The Lie You've Been Told About AI Automations
When you hear "AI automation", you probably picture building complicated workflows in n8n, wiring APIs in Make, or debugging Zapier logic at midnight.
That image kept millions of non-techies from even trying.
But here's what's changed: You don't need to set up workflows anymore. You describe what you want, and the AI builds and runs it for you.
The barrier to automation in 2026 is no longer technical. It's clarity.
You’ll fail at automation not because you can't code, but because you can't clearly define what you want to automate.
That's what I want to fix today.
Step 1: Know Your R, T & O
Before you open any tool, you need to know three things:
R - The Repetitive task you keep doing every day (or every week)
T - The Tools or steps involved in completing that task
O - The Output you actually need at the end
This sounds obvious. But most people skip it and jump straight to tools, which is exactly why their automations never work or feel like overkill for simple problems.
Here's my personal RTO as an example:
R - Staying updated with AI news and building content ideas from it
T - Googling AI news, checking Reddit, X, newsletters, Telegram groups
O - All important updates in one place so I can sit down once and think about content
Now try it for yourself: What's a task you do every single day or week that follows the same pattern? Email responses? Collecting leads? Tracking competitors? Summarizing meeting notes? Staying on top of industry news?
Step 2: Turn Your RTO Into a Single Prompt
Once you know your RTO, write it as a single, clear instruction. Think of it as a job description for your AI.
For my example, my prompt looked something like this:
Notice what's in there: a time trigger, a source list, an action, a format, and a purpose. That's all you need.
Not sure how to write yours? Use ChatGPT or Claude to help. Just paste your RTO and say: "Write me a detailed automation prompt based on this." They're genuinely good at this.
Step 3: Pick the Right Tool and Run It
This is where most tutorials lose you. They throw 20 tool options at you and expect you to figure it out.
I'll keep it simple.
For beginners, there are exactly two tools worth starting with right now:
Option A: Codex Automations
Useful for: weekly reports, morning briefs, summarizing new files, project status updates, checking for missing data. You start by chatting with Codex to nail down exactly what you want, then convert that conversation into a scheduled automation. That's it.
Option B: Claude Routines
Claude Routines are saved configurations, a prompt, your connected tools, and a schedule, that run on Anthropic's cloud infrastructure without you needing to do anything. You define it once. It runs when you say, triggered by a schedule, an API call, or even a GitHub event.
For either tool, paste your prompt from Step 2, connect the tools it needs (they'll tell you which ones), and let it run. You'll know within the first run whether your RTO was specific enough.
I used Codex for this
It adds daily morning brief to my google sheet everyday
What This Actually Saves You
Over 40% of knowledge workers spend at least a quarter of their work week, roughly 10 hours, on manual, repetitive tasks. Ten hours a week is 520 hours a year. That's 65 working days you could get back.
Now imagine what you'd do with even 3 of those hours freed up every week.
This is not a productivity hack. This is a decision about how you want to spend your attention.
The people building leverage right now aren't doing more. They're doing less manually, by being extremely clear about what they want, writing it down in one prompt, and letting the machine repeat it forever.
Your first automation doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be built.
Start there.
— Aashish
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