From The Operator's Stack · free
The Tuesday Test.
Try this before you buy any AI tool. It takes a pen and about twenty minutes, plus a timer for three days.
Most people start with the tool. They open a chat window, ask it something clever, and a month later nothing in the business is different. Start with your week instead. The tool is the last decision, not the first.
Step 1: Write last Tuesday down
Pick a normal workday and write it as a list with times. Real steps, not categories. "Handled admin" doesn't count. What did your hands actually do?
8:00, read new inquiries and reply (25 min)
8:25, check that yesterday's jobs were invoiced (15 min)
8:40, copy this week's numbers into the sheet for Friday (30 min)
Keep going until the pattern shows. It usually shows by the tenth line.
Step 2: Ask four questions about every step
| Ask | What the answer looks like |
|---|---|
| Trigger: why does it start? | An email lands, a job closes, it's Friday |
| Input: where do you look? | The inbox, the job board, last week's sheet |
| Decision: what do you choose? | A price, a priority, yes or no. Or "nothing, I just copy it over" |
| Output: what comes out? | A reply, an invoice, a row, a report |
Circle every step where the decision is nothing. Those are the steps software can take. The ones where you make a judgment call stay with you.
Step 3: Tag each circled step
A step that moves none of the three stays manual, no matter how annoying it is.
Step 4: Count it, then time it
Multiply each circled step by how often it happens in a week. Then, for three days, put a timer on the top three and write down the real minutes. Don't estimate. One measured day beats a week of guesses.
Your sheet: Fill this in
| Time | Step | Trigger | Input | Decision | Output | T / C / R | Min |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
That last number, minutes a week on steps you can name, is what you are actually shopping for. It is also how you'll know later whether anything changed.
Do it yourself
The full course, The Operator's Stack, turns this list into working drafts in Claude Code, OpenAI Codex or Gemini. The lessons are being recorded now.
Go through it with me
I do free 20-minute calls on Fridays and Saturdays. Bring your list. I'll tell you which step is worth handing off first, and if none of them are, I'll say that too.
Book a free 20-min callBook at auctussystemsops.com/book
Nothing on this page is a client result. Auctus doesn't publish numbers it can't source. The only numbers here are the ones you write down. Questions: kenneth@auctussystemsops.com