Are you smart but disorganized? Creative but terrible at detail work?
Grok
@bot can help! Some of my mutuals have asked me for examples of how I've been using it, and I'm going to give you my top ten.
You're going to want to bookmark this post!
Here's the deal: I have tons of ideas, but struggle with ADHD and ASD-related executive dysfunction. I don't always know how to translate concepts into necessary action. I get overwhelmed and I freeze.
Using
@bot has MASSIVELY helped me to break through executive paralysis and manage the tedious and detail-oriented tasks I'm bad at.
If there's something that needs doing but I know I won't get to it, I delegate it to a bot. If I have an idea storm -- this happens to me a lot -- I assign a bot to each branch and let them work simultaneously.
I even asked
@bot to go through my actual usage and to help me find the best examples to include in this post.
So here are 10 REAL USE CASES I've actually deployed my bots to help with:
1. Document management and important correspondence:
I had an "oh crap" moment yesterday when I realized I needed to give notice to exit my lease at the end of the year and I didn't know the deadline. I sent my bot searching through my email for the lease, had it find the clause, give me the info, draft the email to property management, and all I had to do was hit send.
I was actually late on the notice date, but the email worked, and the property manager responded today to let me know they accepted it anyway.
2. Inbox Triage:
I have three email inboxes to monitor -- one personal, one for my writing business, one for my podcast. I get an OVERWHELMING amount of stuff I don't necessarily want to unsubscribe from, but frequently delete. My bot went in, categorized and prioritized, helped me build a list of the only things I really wanted in my inbox, and built filters for everything else so I don't get overwhelmed every time I open my email.
3. Tedious Follow-up Tasks:
I'm pretty good at finishing primary projects. I'm terrible at everything that comes after. Each podcast I produce generates huge amounts of backend work. YouTube titles, descriptions, show notes, emails, promotional posts, etc. Bot is now doing most of that for me. All I have to do is make decisions and check the work.
I even use my bot to go through the transcript, pull me a dozen or so one-liners that would make good clips for a cold open, then use MCP connections to actually pull those clips for me and put them in a timeline in Davinci Resolve so I can edit them without having to spend hours locating and exporting segments. HUGE time savings.
4. Tracking Money & Analytics:
I have multiple streams of revenue from the different projects I work on. I don't always have a clear idea of what converts. I have a Substack Bot, an X Bot, a Podcast Bot, and each are looking at the backend, figuring out which things I'm doing are working, which aren't, and where I should spend more effort.
In particular, I have no idea how X Creator Rewards work -- nobody does -- so my X Bot is building a profile of my analytics vs. my payouts to try to establish a pattern that can provide insight and expectations on money I make from posting on X.
5. Monitoring...Everything
My Podcast Bot updates me regularly on stats for the last episode and sends my co-host and me a digest every Sunday of that info, plus episode-related tasks completed, AND sends us a list of potential topics to consider for the next episode based on what's working.
My Media Analysis Bot monitors stories I want to track and gives me updates at intervals of my choosing with the latest info.
My X Bot tells me each week which posts performed well with a list of metrics. I can see at a glance what I'm doing that's resonating with my followers.
My Podcast Bot is keeping an eye on that inbox, letting me know about people contacting the show with questions or ideas, and even managing replies to let people know they're being heard when I can't.
6. Procrastination Support
I had a subscription I upgraded to work on a project and I kept forgetting to downgrade it. Each month, I was getting charged for way more than I was using. I asked one of my bots to nag me every day so I'd remember to go in and review usage and downgrade.
I'd put it off for months. Those nags got me to take action, and that saved me money immediately.
7. Personal Assistant Tasks
I have an out-of-state move coming up in December. But I don't know where I'm going. My Personal Assistant Bot is now looking for rentals meeting specific criteria within a certain distance from the location I need to be close to. It's also pulling together my random income streams and last year's tax return to build an income letter for prospective landlords. I know for a fact I would have put this off until I was scrambling if I didn't have this help.
It does other, more mundane things, too. I was at the grocery store and sent it a photo of a product and asked for reviews. I was driving and asked it to find me a nearby place to grab a specific kind of cuisine for cheap. I send it documents that need to be cleaned up or files that need to be converted and it does that on the fly. If there's something I need to delegate, it picks up the slack.
8. Digital File Organization
I have decades of photos and videos and memes and documents on my computer. Over the years, any semblance of organization has been lost. I've begun working with my PC Organizer Bot to start creating a sensible organizational scheme, de-duping files, and moving things into the correct folders.
(This is a high-usage task, so test it out before giving it a big job to do.)
9. Research Assistance
I research for my show, for my Substack, and for general interest. I can hand research tasks to a bot and let it go hunting for more sources and deliver what it finds.
I still find ChatGPT better for certain tasks, like prepping outlines and briefings, but there's no reason anyone shouldn't be using each type of AI for its particular strengths and combining the results.
10. Video Editing
I mentioned video tasks in #3 above, but if you work with video at all, there's more it can do than just pulling clips. As I'm writing this, my Video Bot is putting together an edit to my specifications in DaVinci resolve. It's cropping, aligning, trimming, checking audio levels, and exporting all while I'm doing another task.
It's not ready to replace my judgment as an editor yet, but it can do basic tasks that save time and effort that slow down a project.
These are just the most common things I use it for. I also have it remind me about things I'd forget.
I use it to remote manage my PC. The other night I was out to dinner with my daughter when the rest of my family wanted to play Valheim in a game I host. Using just my phone, I had my PC Bot launch the dedicated server on my home PC, and I never had to leave my table.
I'm even using it to build small projects for me by giving it an application idea and letting it code it for me. The results have been really impressive. If something doesn't work, I just tell it what to fix, and it does. I then use those applications to generate media or other outputs that I can use in my other work.
I'm still a n00b at this, but the more I use it, the more productive I feel. So many balls I would have dropped are staying in the air because I have a small army of bots ready to help -- and they work quickly.
I can't overstate how impressive and fun this is. If you haven't tried
@bot yet, you should absolutely give it a try!