Vic Sol · Decision DeskOne-page sheet · 5 min to use
Your job is not a task list: the two-column agenda
For experienced professionals who feel AI is "taking" their work and want to see, in their own calendar, what they are actually paid for.
When to use it
You see AI already producing the summaries and drafts that used to take your whole morning, and you do not know what to make of it.
You end the week exhausted and cannot say what you decided.
You are about to talk to your boss about your role and want to show up with data from your week, not a complaint.
The sheet
First, the exercise from the video. Think about the last serious problem you solved and fill in three lines:
What I saw that did not add up: ____________________________
What I decided to do about it, and what would have happened if it went wrong: ____________________________
Which part of all that (the summary, the report, the draft) an AI could have done: ____________________________
Nobody paid you for the summary. They paid you for the first two lines. Now look at your week:
Day
Task (summarize, sort, first draft, search)
Decision (choose, prioritize, answer for it if it goes wrong)
Moves to AI
Monday
[ ]
[ ]
[yes / partly / no]
Tuesday
[ ]
[ ]
Wednesday
[ ]
[ ]
Thursday
[ ]
[ ]
Friday
[ ]
[ ]
Illustrative
Draft of the monthly report, 3 h
Decide whether the supplier stays, 1 h
Draft: yes. Decision: no.
Decision hours this week: ______ (one, five or more than ten?) Task hours that could move to AI next week: ______
How to fill it in 5 minutes
Do it on Friday, with the real calendar in front of you. Not the one you planned: the one that happened.
Each block goes in one column only. If in doubt, ask: could someone else have done this without me answering for it? If yes, it is a task.
In the "Moves to AI" column, mark only what you would actually do next week, not what is possible in theory.
Add up the decision hours. The number is usually lower than you think, and that is not bad news: it is the margin you have.
The most common mistake: putting "meeting" in the decision column. A meeting where you decided nothing is a task, even if it lasted two hours.
The line that is almost always missing
The total row. Almost everyone fills the columns and never adds them up. The question that matters is not whether AI will replace you, but how many tasks you hand it to get more decision hours. Without the total, the sheet is a diagnosis; with the total, it is a plan for next week.
Vic Sol · Decision Desk · vicsol.org/resources/ · Free to use with attribution. This sheet structures a conversation; it is not legal, financial or audit advice.
Open the .docx in Word (or the .xlsx in Excel) or print it before the meeting.
Fill the fields with the team; leave the blanks visible, they are the discussion.
Close with one owner, one date and one next action. Nothing else.
Prompt
Generate this sheet for your case
Paste this prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini together with your proposal, process or policy. It reproduces the sheet with your data and flags what is missing.
Act as a career mentor with 20 years leading operations teams, who helps experienced professionals see what they are really paid for and which part of their week can move to an AI without losing what makes them valuable.
Context I am giving you:
- My role and my area: [ ]
- My calendar from last week, block by block, with hours: [paste]
- The last serious problem I solved: what I saw that did not add up and what I decided: [ ]
- AI tools I already use or have approved: [ ]
What I need: classify my week into two columns and produce the sheet with exactly this structure:
1. A table by day with the columns Task (summarize, sort, first draft, search) · Decision (choose, prioritize, answer for it if it goes wrong) · Moves to AI (yes / partly / no), with the hours of each block.
2. Total decision hours and total task hours that could move to AI next week.
3. Three concrete blocks I could hand to AI next week, with the exact request I would give the tool.
4. One line about my last serious problem: which part an AI could have done and which part it could not.
Output format: the table, the two totals, the list of three blocks and the final line. Maximum 400 words. No introduction.
Rules:
- A meeting where nothing was decided goes in the Task column, however long it was.
- If a block is ambiguous, ask: could someone else have done it without me answering for it? If yes, it is a Task. Mark those cases as assumptions.
- Do not invent blocks or hours. If data is missing, write [DATA PENDING].
- Do not give general career advice; stick to my calendar.
- If critical information is missing, ask me at most 3 questions before answering.
- Answer in plain, direct business English, with no sales adjectives.
What to check in the answer:
Were the meetings classified properly, or did it put them all under Decision out of habit?
Are the three AI blocks for next week, or theoretical possibilities?
Does the decision-hours total surprise you? If it is lower than you thought, that is the useful number on the sheet.
Vic Sol