The Week Audit: Find Your Five Repeatables

Systems fail when they are built around the wrong tasks. Automate something rare and the workflow gathers dust; systematize something that needs your judgment and you spend more time fixing drafts than the drafts save. The week audit exists to point the system at the right targets before you build anything.

Step one: list what repeats

Over the next two working weeks, keep a running list of every task you do more than once. Not a time study, just a line per task as you notice it: "answered a quote request," "chased an unpaid invoice," "posted on Instagram," "wrote the crew schedule." Real weeks beat remembered weeks here; memory keeps the dramatic tasks and drops the routine ones, and routine is exactly what you are hunting.

If two weeks feels slow, reconstruct the last two from your sent folder, your calendar, and your messages. A sent folder is an honest witness.

Step two: score each task on four questions

For every line, score 1 to 3 on each of these:

1. Frequency. How often does it happen? Daily scores 3, weekly 2, monthly 1.
2. Time cost. How long does one round take you? Over 30 minutes scores 3, 10 to 30 scores 2, under 10 scores 1.
3. Sameness. Does it follow the same shape every time? A quote follows a pattern; a partnership negotiation does not. Same shape scores 3.
4. Judgment load. How much depends on reading the person or the situation? Score this one in reverse: low judgment scores 3, high judgment scores 1.

Add the four numbers. Anything scoring 10 or more is a strong candidate. Anything at 6 or below stays manual, and that is a feature of the audit, not a failure: knowing what you will not systematize protects you from building workflows that need babysitting.

Step three: pick five

From the candidates, pick five, and pick a deliberate mix: three where the output rarely needs changes (drafting quotes from a rate card, formatting the weekly schedule, first-reply emails to inquiries) and two where a human review step will stay in the loop permanently (customer follow-ups, anything involving money leaving the building). The mix matters because early wins fund your patience for the trickier builds.

Here is the audit from our HVAC company, abbreviated:

Supplier negotiation scores high on time cost and nothing else, so it stays with the owner. The top five became the company's workflow list, and you saw four of them running in the last lesson.

What the audit is really measuring

Each question maps to a way systems die. Low frequency means the workflow is forgotten between uses. Low time cost means the system saves less than it costs to maintain. Low sameness means every run needs a rewritten prompt, which is just improvising with extra steps. High judgment means the AI drafts will miss what matters, and you will quietly stop trusting them.

A task that scores well on all four is one where a skill with your context can produce a near-final draft on a schedule. That is the raw material of everything this course builds.

Try it now

Run the audit today using the reconstruction method: sent folder, calendar, messages, last two weeks. Score every repeating task, then write your five picks on one line each with their scores. These five are load-bearing for the rest of the course: the Business Brain in the next chapter gets written to serve them, and your first workflow in Chapter 3 will be whichever of the five scored highest.