Automating Repetitive Tasks with Simple AI Tools

by Stélio Inácio, Founder at Jon AI and AI Specialist

Project 5: Automating Repetitive Tasks with Simple AI Tools

Think about your typical workday. How much time do you spend on small, repetitive, and frankly, boring tasks? Things like transcribing meeting notes, summarizing long email chains, or manually copying information from one application to another. These little tasks are "productivity drains"—they don't require your unique creativity or intelligence, but they consume your time and mental energy.

In this project, we'll explore how to "hire" an AI assistant to be your personal intern, handling these tedious jobs for you. The goal is to automate the boring stuff so you can free up your mind to focus on the work that truly matters.

Concept Spotlight: Workflow Automation

A key concept in this area is "workflow automation." This means creating a system where your different software applications can "talk" to each other and trigger actions automatically, without you needing to do anything. Think of it like setting up a series of digital dominoes.

For example, you can set up a rule that says: "When I receive an email in Gmail that has the word 'invoice' in the subject line, automatically create a task in my to-do list app and send me a notification."

The established leader in this no-code automation space is a tool called Zapier, which can connect over 8,000 different web applications. It is evolving from simple "if-this-then-that" rules into a sophisticated AI orchestration platform that can manage complex workflows.

Common Tasks You Can Automate Away

Here are some real-world examples of repetitive tasks you can offload to an AI assistant today:

Automated Meeting Summaries: Instead of you or a colleague frantically typing notes, a tool like Otter.ai can join your meeting, provide a real-time transcription, and then generate a searchable, automated summary with key takeaways and action items.
Intelligent Document Summaries: Have a long report, article, or document you need to understand quickly? Instead of spending 30 minutes reading, you can use a tool like Notion AI to instantly summarize it or answer specific questions about its contents, right within your knowledge base.
Drafting Routine Emails: Do you find yourself writing the same kinds of emails over and over? You can give a chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude a simple prompt (e.g., "Draft a polite follow-up email to a client who hasn't responded to my proposal from last week") and get a first draft in seconds.
Connecting Your Apps: You can use a platform like Zapier to build simple automations that save you clicks and mental energy. For instance, you could automatically save any attachments from specific emails to a Google Drive folder or get a notification in a chat app whenever a customer fills out a form on your website.

Try This Now: The 5-Second Summary

Experience the magic of automation right now with this simple task.

Find a long email or a news article from today.
Copy the entire text.
Open your favorite AI chatbot (ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude).
Paste the text and type this simple prompt above it: "Summarize this for me in 3 bullet points."

Notice how you just condensed several minutes of reading into a few seconds of work. Now, imagine doing that for every long document you receive.

Quick Check

What is the primary purpose of a workflow automation tool like Zapier?

A) To write creative stories and poems.

B) To connect different software applications so they can automatically perform tasks for you based on triggers.

C) To generate realistic images from text descriptions.

Recap: Automating Repetitive Tasks

What we covered:

How AI can act as a digital assistant to handle small, repetitive tasks that drain your time.
The concept of workflow automation, which allows your different apps to work together automatically.
Real-world examples, like using Otter.ai for meeting summaries and Zapier for connecting apps.

Why it matters:

Automating the boring parts of your job doesn't just save you time; it saves your focus and creative energy for the complex problems that require your human intelligence. This is one of the most immediate ways to boost your daily productivity with AI.

Next up:

We'll venture into a more technical but incredibly powerful area in our next lesson: "For the Ambitious: A Gentle Introduction to AI in Coding."

Jon AI Services