Volume 01 · The Owner's Playbook · Entry No. 01
You finished the three chapters. You heard the math. You saw the two ledgers. Now we take everything you just learned and compress it into a single sentence you can ask yourself before you open Slack, before you hire the next role, before you sign the next invoice.
The Magic Question
Is this something AI can do before I hand it to a human?
Ask it about everything · No exceptions · For 30 days
Why it works
Most owners get stuck choosing between "go all in on AI" and "keep doing what works." This question doesn't ask you to choose. It asks you to sequence. AI first, human second — for everything, every time, until it becomes muscle memory. The decisions get smaller. The compounding gets bigger.
01 · COST
Every task is now priced against compute, not just headcount. The math runs in the background of every decision.
02 · TIME
Tuesdays don't refill. The question moves yours — and your team's — off work AI should be doing and back onto work only a human can.
03 · JUDGMENT
Not every task should leave a human's desk. The question forces you to say which ones — on purpose, in writing, instead of by default.
The Exercise · 10 minutes
Type them one at a time. After each one, mark AI FIRST if it's something AI could do before a human touches it, or HUMAN ONLY if it genuinely needs human judgment in the first pass. Be honest. Your list saves automatically — close the tab and come back later if you need to.
Enter a task and press Add. Then mark each one.
Updates as you mark each task.
0
AI First
0
Human Only
Your Playbook (copy this anywhere)
Your playbook is empty. Add a task to start.
Rules of Thumb
If a task is repeatable, written, or describable in a sentence, the answer is almost always yes. If it requires judgment about a person, a customer, or a relationship, the answer is almost always no. Everything else is where the work — and the reward — actually lives.
If you can describe it in a paragraph, AI can draft it. Memos, summaries, reports, first replies, FAQs.
If a spreadsheet would do the job, AI will do it faster. Pulling, joining, reconciling, formatting, charting.
If the answer is "it depends on the relationship," keep it human. Hires, fires, hard conversations, key accounts.
If you're about to hire for it, run the question once. Then write down what the human role becomes after AI takes the first pass.