Automate a Task You Hate Doing
Maps to: AI Application Builder · Operations Analyst · Solutions Engineer · Productivity Consultant · Chief of Staff
You're going to take a job you already do every week, one with several steps, and build something that does those steps for you on its own, without you sitting there doing each one by hand: on your own real stuff, like reading through your group chats and writing a short summary of what everyone said, taking one thing you wrote and turning it into several shorter posts without retyping it each time, or writing a short note each morning about what's on your calendar. Picture a row of dominoes: you set the first one off, and each step tips into the next one on its own. One of those steps is where an AI does the thinking instead of you, that's the step where you ask it a question and it writes the answer for you. The real skill is lining the steps up so the whole row still falls the right way, even when your own messy real stuff hits it. This is one of the most useful things to know how to do if you want to build things like this, apps that keep doing a job by themselves, week after week, with nobody sitting there running them. By the end, you'll have one of these running on your real life, every week, without you touching it.
You're done when: A chain of steps running on your own real stuff that you actually use every week, where you found the spot the AI gets wrong and put a limit on it. Making it hold up is the work: not 'it worked on a clean test,' but 'it survives my real messy stuff, and I fixed where the AI got it wrong.'
How this shows up on a resume or college app
I automated a real weekly task with AI, running on my own data and saving time every week, finding and fixing the spot where the AI step got things wrong. I learned that automation is half defining the problem and half connecting the tools, and that the value is in making the AI hold up on messy real data.
When you finish you have the thing itself, plus a Common App activity description Sidequest drafts from what you actually built.
Not sure yet? Play 5 minutes as an AI application builder first and see how the work feels.
See what this career pays and what it takes to get in.
The plan
- 1
Step 1
Pick a job you redo weekly, and draw the steps
Pick a job you redo every week that has several steps, but not sorting your email, since that one is its own separate project on this list. Draw out your steps in order, one after another: what starts things off, each step in between, the one step where you have the AI think it through instead of you, and what comes out at the end. That drawing is your plan, and it's also the map you'll use later if something breaks.
- 2
Steps 2-3
Connect your steps in order, then run the whole thing once, start to finish
Build your steps, connected one after another, using an automation builder: a website where you drag a box onto the screen for each step and draw a line joining it to the next one. One of those boxes is the step where a free AI thinks something through for you. Then run the whole thing once, start to finish: that first "it worked" moment is the best part, so get there before you try to make it handle anything tricky.
- 3
Step 3 (cont.)
Run it on your real stuff, then give it stricter rules wherever it gets something wrong
Run it on your own real stuff, not a tidy made-up example you use to test it. It'll work fine on that kind of neat practice run, then break on the real messy thing, and hunting down exactly what broke is the actual skill here. Find the spot where the AI gets it wrong, and give it stricter rules right there so it stops making that mistake.
- 4
Step 4
Set it running every week
Set it to run on its own, and actually use what it gives you for a real week. Steps you keep using, week after week, are the real proof it works, since most people show theirs off once, then never touch it again.
