November 9, 2026 · 2 min read

How to Find the Best Tasks to Automate With AI

The best first automation is usually boring. Here's a simple way to find it and check it's worth doing.

The best tasks to automate with AI first are frequent, repetitive, low-risk, and easy for a person to check, like drafting routine replies, summarizing calls, or sorting incoming requests. To find yours, list what your team re-types and copies by hand, score each task on how often it happens and what a mistake would cost, and start with the one that scores best.

Start by listing the repetition

Ask your team three questions: What do you copy and paste? What do you re-type from one system into another? What do you check by hand? Their answers are a better starting list than any vendor's feature page, because they come from the work as it really happens.

Watch for tasks people describe with a sigh. Those are often the ones that cost the most time and goodwill.

Score each candidate

For every task on the list, answer four questions:

How often does it happen? Daily beats monthly.
How long does it take each time?
What does it cost if the AI gets it wrong?
Can a person check the result quickly?

Pick frequent, low-risk, and checkable

Your best candidate happens often, doesn't do much harm when it's wrong, and is quick for a person to review. Drafting replies, summarizing meeting notes, pulling details out of forms, and sorting incoming emails often fit this description.

Leave high-stakes decisions, like approving payments or giving legal or medical advice, for later, and keep a person firmly in charge of them.

Common examples by team

Sales: drafting follow-up emails after calls and updating the CRM.
Customer service: suggesting replies to common questions for a person to approve.
Operations: extracting details from invoices, orders, or forms.
Marketing: turning one long piece into several short posts.
Leadership: summarizing reports and meeting notes into a weekly brief.

Write one sentence before you build

Describe the change in a single line: "When X happens, the system does Y, and a person checks Z." For example: "When a quote request arrives, AI drafts the quote from our price list, and the account manager approves it before it's sent." If you can't write that sentence, you aren't ready to build yet.

Our AI Fluency for Teams training

Questions people ask

01What should a small business automate first?

The task your team repeats most that's easy to check, such as drafting routine replies, summarizing notes, or extracting details from forms. Start there before anything high-stakes.

02What shouldn't be automated with AI?

Decisions where a mistake is costly or hard to undo, like payments, hiring decisions, or legal and medical advice. AI can help prepare information, but a person should decide.

03Do we need custom software to automate tasks?

Often not. Many tasks can be handled with AI features in tools you already pay for, or with an automation platform connecting your existing apps.