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I realized I was doing work that didn't matter when I saw this stat: employees spend 60% of their time on 'work about work.'

Not customer work. Not revenue work. Admin overhead.

It got me thinking: what can I do to change?

The Productivity Trap

Here's the thing - I'm probably more productive than most people.

We often become accustomed to doing things in a certain way.

Rewiring how you approach solving problems is where you begin to remove busywork from your day.

My goal is to create the same productive day, every day:

1. Write/Think/Read 2 to 4 hours daily

2. Do hard things between 10 am and noon

But this goal can only become a reality if I'm not tied down to admin tasks.

Most busywork comes from research, analysis, summarizing, and information gathering - all the stuff you do to get to the thing you want to do.

Busywork is created by two forces:

1. Overthinking

2. Doing the same thing the same way

Entrepreneurs especially suffer from this. You overthink something you read about instead of taking action.

The Success Mindset Shift

The super successful people I've met do three things differently:

1. They make decisions fast

2. They act on decisions immediately

3. They don't reminisce about it once it's done

Whatever the outcome, they live with the results.

They live in 'doing' instead of 'thinking about doing.'

Successful people value their time.

If I gave you the choice to sell 1,000 products to one company or sell a product to 1,000 different companies, which would you choose?

The successful person picks option 1.

Busywork person picks option 2.

Here's what a real estate mentor (a billionaire) told someone: "It's the same work to sell $1 million homes as $200,000 homes."

How do you get outsized results in the least amount of time?

Strategic Prompts as Digital Employees

The breakthrough came when I simplified what Strategic Prompts are:

Strategic Prompts are a tool to eliminate work and take action faster.

Instead of arbitrary writing prompts, you write prompts to create a digital employee that accelerates productivity in ways you couldn't do without it.

Here's the power: they utilize tools you already have, incorporating things you already do, and integrating your data, knowledge, and processes.

What takes me 10 hours to do manually, I can now do in 10-20 minutes.

I'm leveraging strategic thinking in combination with prompting to eliminate busywork, as most busywork is tied to activities and decision-making tasks.

If you tie everything in prompting to taking action, it changes how you use AI.

Because now it's tied to actions. And those actions are tied to outcomes.

The Digital Employee Framework

Here's how I use strategic prompts to cut, kill, build, and delegate work:

Step 1: CUT - Decision-making busywork

Instead of: Spending 30 minutes figuring out priorities

Strategic Prompt: "Using my calendar data and deep work goals, decide which meetings I should attend this week and create decline responses for the others."

Digital Employee Result: Cut meeting time from 12 hours to 4 hours weekly.

Step 2: KILL - Analysis paralysis

Instead of: "Analyze all our options"

Strategic Prompt: "Which option gets us to revenue fastest with our current resources? Give me the 3-step execution plan."

Digital Employee Result: Killed six recurring tasks that added zero value.

Step 3: BUILD - Process automation

Instead of: Manual client follow-ups disrupting focus time

Strategic Prompt: "Create a workflow using my existing tools that handles client follow-ups automatically, keeping my 10am-noon focus time protected."

Digital Employee Result: Built a system that responds faster than I ever could manually.

Step 4: DELEGATE - Knowledge transfer

Instead of Doing complex work only, I can do

Strategic Prompt: "Package my decision-making process for [specific task] into instructions someone else can follow perfectly."

Digital Employee Result: Delegated complex work while maintaining quality.

The shift: Every prompt forces you to think like the successful person, not the busywork person.

The Results Are Clear

Now we have all these principles wrapped around strategic thinking, personalized to your work, and applied to your actual business processes.

There's no question about return on investment.

You can see it. You know it. There's no ambiguity on 'Am I using AI right? Is this helpful?'

You can see the benefit because you experience it every day.

When I started using this framework:

• My 4-hour deep work goal went from 2 days a week to 6 days a week

• My 10am-noon 'hard things' time became protected - no interruptions

• I eliminated 12 hours of weekly busywork and turned it into revenue work

That's not a maybe. That's not a pilot program. That's a daily, measurable impact.

The ROI isn't theoretical - it's your time back, your focus protected, your energy on what matters.

Your Turn

Start with this exercise: Write down everything that takes 20 minutes or more that you do repetitively every day and every week that you hate doing.

Then segment those things by impact: high, medium, or low.

Now you have a list to start from.

Use strategic prompts to eliminate high-impact, time-consuming tasks first. Create digital employees for the tasks that drain your energy but need to get done.

Whatever your dream day looks like, that's your benchmark as you eliminate the busywork.

For me, it's 4 hours of deep work and 2 hours tackling hard problems.

What's yours?

In 30 days, you'll know exactly whether this works - because you'll see the results daily.

Marvin

PS: Three ways you can cut manual work with our strategic prompting framework and tools:

1. THINK Email Course - Eliminate your manual work with a strategic approach to problem-solving. Take our 5-day THINK email course.
   

2. Apply to Join THINK Academy - Free Up Your Time for less than the cost of hiring. Get a dedicated THINK Advisor to work with you to integrate THINK, AI strategies, and automations over 12 months—only 13 Academy Spots Remaining in 2025.
   

3. Strategic Prompting Service - Free 10+ Hours A Week - Get 4 Strategic Prompts Delivered In 14 Days To Automate Work Towards a Business Goal. Limited: 10 spots/month. Not ready for the service? Join the strategic prompt course waitlist here.