After a huge amount of thought and procrastination, I’ve taken on a new employee. The good news is that even our current Chancellor hasn’t found a way yet of charging National Insurance on this one. The other advantage is my new employee is cheap (less than £1 per day) and doesn’t want holiday pay, sick pay etc. In fact my new employee claims that they will work, uncomplainingly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They are employed to manage my diary and all of my projects. This new employee is called Motion. We have been working together now for just over a week and so maybe it’s too early to ask but, can AI effectively organise my day?
We are still in the probation period, but already I have discovered a great deal as result of taking on my new employee. Let’s have a look at what my AI Motion subscription is and what it isn’t.
Starting with what it isn’t. Anyone looking to this as a magic bullet is going to be very disappointed. It’s now nine days since I started using this facility in earnest and guess what? There are still 24 hours in a day and 168 hours in a week, nothing has changed there. In fact, outside of my relationship with AI nothing else in my life has changed. I used to use time blocking and Motion still organises everything using time booking. Those things that were disorganised have not been organised by Motion and will not be organised by AI, but it does help me to do it myself in a better and quicker way. The thing is an AI shambles is still a shambles, it just looks prettier. AI does not make disorganised people organised, in the same way that a vacuum does not make the dust go away. Just like the vacuum needing the human to show it where to go AI needs the human input. So have I wasted £325 as on the face of it nothing has changed?
Well, some things have changed. It has become so much easier to plan those silly jobs that take between 15 minutes and an hour. These are the ones that so often get kicked down the road until they become a much bigger job. Rearranging my day / week / month for something that comes along now takes seconds rather than minutes and nothing falls through the cracks. Perhaps the biggest difference is that Motion does not allow me to con myself. In the past I could agree to do something, only to find that I needed to reorganise something else, but the knock on effect would not be clear. Even if it was, I could work on the “I’ll sort it out later” principle and also persuade myself that I could get things done in a shorter period. Motion won’t stand for any of that. The moment any form of deadline is under threat it starts with the red messages and they won’t go away until I do something about it. I love this. Where I see this the best is on medium / long term projects. I have just taken on a new project and thought that a deadline of 31st March next year was realistic. That’s nearly eight months away and, whilst it is a big project, it’s only a few hours a week. Looking at the project in isolation 31st March looks easily achievable. Motion however, looked at everything else I am doing and very quickly disabused me of the idea that 31st March 2026 is a long way away. The truth was I would have to stop doing some of the things I am currently doing, and also turn away anything else new that came along. I was living in cloud cuckoo land. I know I have other interesting projects on the back burner and so I didn’t want to do jeopardise those. I now have an achievable deadline of 30th September 2026 agreed with the client, and a plan of how to get there which can be prioritised according to what Motion is learning about everything else. Brilliant. I have confidence in the deadline and, more importantly, the client does too. Sorting that out in advance is a win, win.
I must write my summary now, as according to my new employee I have just ten minutes to go before coffee time and then I must start on the next piece of work. So, here is the summary.
Is Motion efficient? – you bet, absolutely brilliant.
Is Motion productive? – I think so. Time will tell, but that’s not my main criteria.
Is Motion going to give me a good Return On Investment? yes but at the price it would not be difficult.
Is Motion effective? – the most important question of all. The jury is out here. My objective is not to do more, or to do things quicker. My objective is to move toward my ultimate goal as quickly and easily as possible and here, only time will tell. Watch this space. So far, so good.
I have however discovered one major omission from AI. It still means that I must make my own coffee. The positive is that at least Motion makes sure that I have time to do it.
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