Your AI plans are dead by 10am Monday

By ten o'clock on Monday morning, your AI plans are already dead.

An angry customer email lands, wages need running, a supplier lets you down. By Friday you can't remember what the plan was, never mind whether you moved it forward.

Most owners blame their own discipline, but I think the real problem is the size of the plan. A big goal for the year can't tell you what to do at ten on a Monday, so the inbox decides for you.

My plan fits on one page, and it sits on my desk where I see it every morning. It has four sections:

1. Where I want the business to be in a year, in a couple of sentences.
2. What has to be true by the end of this quarter to get there.
3. The two or three projects that get me there, each with one person responsible.
4. One number for each project that I can check in ten minutes every Monday.

AI only goes on that page as one of those projects, and it has to earn its place.

Say this quarter's target is every new customer onboarded within two days of saying yes. The AI project is drafting the welcome email and the booking link the minute a deal is agreed, ready for someone on the team to check and send. The Monday number is how many new customers waited longer than two days last week.

Any AI idea that doesn't serve this quarter's target comes off the page. It goes on a list for next quarter, and it stops eating your week.

Your inbox will still win most Monday mornings. The page makes sure you don't lose the quarter.