Summary: In this article I explore agentic AI, how it differs from chat-based AI, and why delegating to it rather than using it can help you earn more and reclaim time.
5 things you’ll learn in this article
- The key difference between chat-based and agentic AI. Most people are directing AI step by step. Agentic AI works differently: you give it an outcome and it figures out the process, much like delegating to a trusted person rather than micromanaging every move.
- A practical filter for deciding what to hand over. Any recurring task, anything involving multiple tabs or tools, and anything that doesn’t require knowledge only you possess are now prime candidates to delegate. This alone could reshape how you spend your days.
- What to keep for yourself, and why it matters. Writing your own articles, generating ideas, doing creative work. The benefit comes from the doing, not just the output. Knowing where to draw that line is just as important as knowing what to delegate.
- 13+ real examples of tasks being delegated right now. From content suites and podcast show notes to Canva assets, email campaigns, and data organisation. These are live examples from the past few weeks, not theoretical ones.
- Where the real opportunity lies. It’s not just about saving time. It’s about what you do with the time you get back. When the tasks that don’t require you are removed, what remains is the work that genuinely moves things forward.
How most people are currently using AI
At the moment, most people are using AI in what I’d call a chat-based way.
You open up something like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, you type in a prompt, and it gives you a response. Then you type another prompt, and it gives you another response. And so on.
It’s essentially a series of individual tasks. You are directing every step of the process. You are telling it what to do, one instruction at a time, and it is responding to each of those instructions.
There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s incredibly useful, and for a lot of people it’s already a big step forward from how they were working previously.
But it does have a limitation.
You are still doing the thinking around how to get to the outcome. You are still breaking the task down into steps. You are still effectively managing the process.
The shift to agentic AI
Agentic AI works differently.
Instead of giving it a series of steps, you give it an outcome.
You don’t say, ‘do this, then do this, then do this’. You say, ‘this is what I want done’, and it works out the steps required to get there.
The way I’ve found it easiest to think about is to compare it to working with another person.
If you were delegating a task to someone and you had to micromanage every step, telling them exactly what to do at each stage, that would feel very similar to using chat-based AI.
But if you were working with someone you trusted, you would simply give them the job and the desired outcome, and allow them to figure out the process themselves.
That’s much closer to what agentic AI is doing.
It’s not just responding to prompts. It’s completing tasks.
What this actually means in practice
Once you start thinking about it this way, the question becomes less about ‘what can AI help me with?’ and more about ‘what should I no longer be doing myself?’.
For me, a useful filter has been this:
Any repetitive or recurring task, any task that involves moving between multiple tabs or pieces of software, any task that doesn’t require knowledge that only exists in my brain, and generally anything that would take me somewhere between 30 minutes and a couple of hours, those are now candidates to be delegated.
What remains is the work that actually requires me. Thinking, decision-making, coming up with ideas, and doing the parts of the job that are inherently human.
A quick note on what I’m not outsourcing
This is important, because I think there’s a temptation to go too far with this.
I still write my own articles.
I still come up with my own ideas.
I still do the creative work.
Not because AI couldn’t do some of it, but because there’s value in the process itself. It’s a bit like journaling. You wouldn’t ask someone else to do your journaling for you, because the benefit comes from actually doing it.
So I’m not trying to remove myself from the work entirely. I’m trying to remove myself from the parts of the work that don’t require me.
How I’m currently using it
To make this a bit more concrete, here are a number of ways I’ve been using agentic AI over the last few weeks:
- Turning a single written article into a full content suite, including blog formatting, internal links, images, social media posts, email newsletters, and drafts across all platforms
- Preparing for mentoring calls by pulling previous Zoom transcripts and summarising key points before each session
- Drafting personalised outreach emails in bulk, each tailored slightly to the recipient but based on the same core message
- Running monthly checks across all websites by submitting test enquiries through every contact form and verifying they are received
- Researching and shortlisting options, such as reviewing hundreds of website templates and presenting a refined list based on a brief
- Renaming and reorganising large batches of files in Google Drive to follow consistent naming conventions
- Extracting key ideas or quotes from long documents and turning them into usable content
- Creating Canva assets, including carousels and visual posts, using pre-built templates
- Writing podcast titles, descriptions, and show notes based on existing content
- Drafting email campaigns in Campaign Monitor, including summaries and links to relevant content
- Scheduling and queuing content across platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Google Business, ready for approval
- Analysing and organising data into spreadsheets, pulling from multiple sources and structuring it for reporting
- Logging into different tools and platforms to complete multi-step tasks that would normally require switching between tabs manually
The real opportunity
I don’t think the opportunity here is just about saving time.
It’s about changing how you allocate your time.
If you remove the tasks that don’t require you, you are left with the tasks that do. And those tend to be the ones that actually move things forward.
Thinking more clearly. Making better decisions. Spending more time on the parts of the business that create value.
That’s where this becomes interesting.
A final thought
Most people are still using AI in a very step-by-step, prompt-and-response way.
And again, that’s fine. It’s useful. It’s a good place to start.
But the big change happens when you stop thinking of AI as something you use, and start thinking of it as something you delegate to.
Once you make that shift, it opens up a very different way of working, it certainly has for me.
Your action steps:
- Write a “stop doing” list. Identify the tasks you do regularly that are repetitive, multi-step, or don’t require knowledge that only you have. These are your best candidates to hand over.
- Start with one task. Pick the most time-consuming item from your list and experiment with delegating it to an agentic AI tool. You don’t need to overhaul everything at once.
- Protect the work that requires you. Be deliberate about what you continue doing yourself, particularly the creative, strategic, and relationship-based work that has real value precisely because it comes from you.
- Track what you get back. As you delegate more, note where the recovered time goes. If it flows into higher-value work, you’re using this well. If it disappears, you have a different problem to solve.
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