“Text me just before ok?“
1. Productivity: The Lost Art of Planning Ahead
I’ve noticed something troubling over the past few years: people can’t seem to plan more than a few days ahead anymore.
Try making dinner plans with friends for three weeks from now.
You’ll get responses like, “Ask me the week before” or “I’ll let you know closer to the date.”
This isn’t just about social plans. Business people don’t want to commit to calls and meetings because they’re constantly reacting instead of strategising.
Part of this is FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). People want to keep their options open until the absolute last moment, maximising opportunities and keeping every door open. But the real culprit is the instant gratification culture created by apps — food delivery in 30 minutes, same-day shipping, immediate responses to messages.
Planning ahead has become a lost skill.
Older generations who grew up without phones and always-on Internet had to develop planning skills out of necessity. You couldn’t just fire off a quick text the day before. You had to commit, coordinate, and follow through.
One of my Canadian clients has a great story about making plans by postcard to meet his friend on the steps of the Sydney Opera House at 2pm on a sunny day in November 1978. And yes, they both showed up.
If you want to be productive and actually accomplish meaningful goals, you need to relearn that planning a couple of weeks to a month ahead is normal, not exceptional.
Start small. Plan one thing for next month and commit to it. Then build from there.
2. Ops: AI Operators Are Changing How Meetings Work
Here’s something that’s fundamentally changing how effective teams operate:
A human “AI operator” assigned to the role during meetings.
The concept is simple but powerful.
When someone in a meeting asks, “What’s our competitor’s market share?” or “What did we decide about this last quarter?” — an AI operator can immediately search and provide the data.
No more, “I think it’s around 30%… but let me check and get back to you.”
No more assumptions masquerading as facts.
This transforms discussions from assumption-based to fact-based in real-time. The meeting keeps moving forward instead of parking decisions for follow-up.
Want to see exactly how this works? I cover this in detail in my ChatGPT for Managers course.
3. Tech: Are We at the Limits of AI?
Earlier this year, AI orchestration and development looked incredibly promising.
Multiple AI agents working together, handling complex workflows, coordinating tasks like a well-oiled machine. It felt like we were on the cusp of something transformative.
But now… what if we’re actually at the limits of current AI models with no AGI along the way?
The launch of GPT-5 was heavily panned and Sonnet 4.5 felt more like a replacement for Opus 4.1.
It’s a genuine question. If that’s the case… we need to learn to do the best with what we have right now.
The engineering challenge then becomes making AI agents act more like human employees within today’s model constraints. Getting them to maintain context, handle handoffs properly, manage edge cases without breaking, and work reliably in production environments.
We’re not there yet. Not even close.
Yes, we have functional AI tools that are incredibly useful. ChatGPT, Claude, and others solve real problems daily. But the vision of true AI orchestration — where agents seamlessly collaborate on complex, multi-step business processes without constant human oversight — that’s still elusive.
The gap between “AI can help with this task” and “AI can reliably own this entire process” remains significant.
This doesn’t mean AI isn’t valuable. It just means we need clever engineering to bridge the gap, not breathless hype about capabilities that don’t exist yet.
If you’re interested in understanding what AI agents can actually do today (versus what the marketing promises), I walk through practical, real-world implementations in my AI Agents course. It’s designed for business people, not developers, and shows you what’s genuinely possible right now.
4. Courses
I have a range of online courses that teach business people what they need to know about productivity and AI:
1. Next Level Productivity
A practical, straightforward course that teaches you how to achieve elite-level personal productivity in today’s constantly interrupted world.
2. The AI Agents, Automations and Agentic Workflows Guide
This non-technical course shows business people and non-coders how they can build and use AI agents in ChatGPT and Zapier.
3. The Complete Claude, Claude Code & AI for Work Productivity
A comprehensive course taking you from beginner AI concepts like prompt and context engineering, to cutting-edge AI productivity using terminal-based AI tools like Claude Code for non-coding office work. Usable with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other current LLMs.
4. The AI Playbook
This is my longer premium course on how businesses can deploy AI tools and technology across their processes and teams.
5. ChatGPT for Managers
See how AI can solve complex management challenges in less than 30 seconds. Full prompt library and examples included.
That’s it for this week!
— Aaron