Why AI Can’t Build Your Task Management System (and What It Misses)

(Note: This is a formatted and slightly edited, AI-generated transcript to make it easier for you to read through. Please excuse any spelling, grammar errors and filler words – it’s just how I speak LOL)

I’ve spent months trying to get AI to build task management systems for me, for my clients, all of it, but honestly, it fails the same way every single time. And the problem is, if you’re not the person who builds these for a living, you might never know that it failed. It looks like a system, but it isn’t a usable one.

So in this episode, we’re covering what AI task management gets wrong every single time

Are you tired of competing priorities, a messy task list, and constantly feeling behind? Hey, I’m Lucy Reyes, and I help overwhelmed solopreneurs embrace faith-led productivity through simple systems for life, home, and business. So if you’re ready to clarify your priorities, honor your energy, and feel accomplished every single day, welcome to the Cheers to Better Systems podcast.

Hey, hey. Welcome, welcome back. Today I’m gonna be getting on a little soapbox here. It might be going against the grain a little bit because everyone is all about AI, AI, AI, and trust me, like, I love AI too, but if you have ever handed AI your to-do list and asked it to turn that into a system, this one’s for you, because I’m covering the five things that AI gets wrong every single time it tries to build a task management system.

And no, this is not me being anti-AI, because, like, I use it. I love it. I love how much it helps save me time, but it’s me being honest about what it can actually do and what it can’t when it comes to your task management systems. And listen, like, people have asked me all the time, like, why I haven’t created some magical GPT or skill that just spits out the systems for you, and the truth is that I have tried.

Like, I honestly have tried. Like, my goal is to help you create systems better, faster. Like, I love that. I want that for you genuinely, but I haven’t been able to because of the reasons that we’re getting into in this episode. Not to say it’ll never change, but at this point in time, these are my thoughts on using AI for your task management systems.

However, I will say that there are bits and pieces and parts of AI that can help with your systems. It can’t create the full system for you, but it can definitely help. So I did build an AI piece into Taskflow Magic. It’s the Taskflow Prioritizer GPT, which asks you a few questions to get some context on what’s going on, what your thoughts are, et cetera, and then tells you which three task flows it thinks you should start with.

But as far as AI goes inside of Taskflow Magic, that’s it, and that’s on purpose. So I know I’ve had some people ask me, like, whether I have AI in there or not, or they see that I do and then they’re like, “Nope, I don’t like AI, I’m not gonna get it,” but this is honestly it. This is it. This is the only part that I have currently in, in Taskflow Magic that’s AI, because I do believe that AI is great for pointing you in a direction, but the rest of the course is where you’ll build your task flows based on your actual life and your business and the way that your brain works following my Done framework, which is something that AI cannot replicate because AI is not you, AI does not have your business, AI does not have your brain.

So we are learning how to do it for ourselves. So to learn more, head to cheerstoproductivity.com/taskflow. The link is also in the show notes. So let’s get into this episode and why I went looking for this in the first place. Like I said before, if AI could build these from scratch and I could get clients set up in a fraction of the time of what it takes me now, like that would be amazing.

Like, who wouldn’t want that? I would want that for myself. I sometimes still do struggle with creating a system for myself or something that I need for a project that I haven’t done before. Like, I get it. So yeah, I want that too. That’s the goal. So I have tried, a lot. I’ve used different prompts. I’ve tried different tools.

I’ve just … You know, I’ve tried giving it more and more context, but it just felt like it was still taking longer than if I just knew how to create it and then, then created it from scratch myself. Like, and that’s what AI’s supposed to do, right? It’s supposed to help us save time. It’s supposed to help us with a task.

It’s supposed to speed it up because it now does it in a fraction of a time. And I’m sure that we’ll get there, and I’m s- sure that maybe someone has said that they have figured it out. I don’t know. But what I kept finding was that even though I’m giving it these prompts, I’m trying these tools, what I would get in return, it looked correct.

Like, it looked like a system. It gave me cards, it gave me lists, it gave me structure. Like, it would tell me what to do, all of the tasks involved for a certain project. Like, it looked like a system. But for me, the way that it gives it to me is just not usable. It’s not usable long term, and that’s the part that really concerns me because I only know it’s garbage because I do this for a living.

Like, this is my niche. This is what I do. But if you’re not a systems person, you might receive that output, look at it and be like, “Oh, this looks like a system. This looks like better than I would’ve created on my own,” and then you roll with it, and then a few weeks later you’re falling behind on it. It’s not really working for you.

You’re, like wondering, “Why do I have to check this thing every single time? Like, that doesn’t make sense.” And then you just go back to thinking like, “Yep, knew it. Systems are just not for me. I even tried it and it didn’t work.” That is the part that concerns me. You know? It’s the whole garbage in, garbage out, but you won’t know that it’s garbage because you don’t know what you don’t know.

So that is what I want to fix today. So let me show you what to look for when and if you do try to use AI to help you with your task management system, and the mistakes that I see it do over and over and over again.

So the first mistake is that it builds a system for a business that isn’t yours. So we know that AI pulls from whatever is public and free, and it’s not narrowing down by who it’s pulling from, and it’s not narrowing down from…

It’s not pulling… What? Okay, let me, let me back up a little bit. I did not have this in my notes, but it just came up. So AI is pulling from whatever is public and free. We know, like, my paid content is not out on the internet for free. My Taskflow Magic course where I teach you step-by-step in detail how to create the task flows from scratch based on your brain, your life, your business, et cetera, that is not available on the internet for free, and neither is anyone else’s big signature course, neither is anyone’s templates.

They are not available for free, okay? So AI is pulling the public and free content only, which is typically limited in knowledge. Let me throw that out there. And it’s also not narrowing down by who it’s pulling from. Like, it’s just finding, like, what you’re saying you need, and it’s searching the entire internet.

Entire internet, which is a lot of people. I, when I work with someone, I create the system based on that specific person’s needs, right? I, I work with solopreneurs and sol- and service providers and digital product creators and small business owners and membership owners. Like, that is who I work with, so I customize it to them.

Just like you. If you yourself are creating the system for yourself, you’re creating it based on your specific needs. But AI doesn’t make that distinction. So sometimes it brings in a corporate process right alongside everything else, and then now you’re ending up with this enterprise sized workflow for a one-person business.

Like, it doesn’t know where to pull from, and it kind of pulls from everywhere, right? So this is one of the mistakes that it does. The second mistake is that it pads your list with work you don’t need. I saw a template another, uh, a while back, and I knew it had a lot of AI incorporated into it, and there were some tasks on there that it’s like we don’t actually need to do that every single time, right?

Like, we don’t need to do that. Like, you don’t need to check certain things every single time. You don’t need to, If you’re duplicating a checkout versus Creating one from scratch, there are certain steps that you don’t need to do, right? Because most of the settings already transferred over. But your AI, AI wouldn’t know that.

So the steps that it’s bringing in are steps from somebody else’s playbook for their business, not yours. Like, even my templates, like, even the steps that I have created in my Trello templates that I have in my shop for you, which are not AI generated, by the way . Um, but even those steps, like, if you have one of my Trello templates, you know that with every single template, I have a walkthrough video where I’m guiding you how to customize this for yourself.

I’m saying, “Hey, this is the template. However, go through it, customize it, make it for you.” That is what I say in every single walkthrough video, because those steps are still based on me and my business, and what I think could be for you too. But no one knows you and your business better than you. So customization is huge, and AI cannot do that for you.

And sometimes it just adds more to your list. Like, you know that you already have a very long to-do list. Well, using AI for task management is probably gonna make that list even longer, and with things that you don’t even need to do. Okay? Mistake number three is that it skips the small steps that you do need.

So the complete opposite of what I just said. In some cases, it gives you way more, but at the same time, it doesn’t break it down enough to the steps you actually need. So for example, if you’re setting up a new product for the first time in a course platform, I’m gonna use ThriveCart as an example. That has a ton of tiny steps, right?

But if you’ve never done it before, then those steps are what you need specifically spelled out. But AI can only pull from what’s in the help docs of these tools, of these platforms, and most of the time, they are very short help docs. Sometimes they have a video, but AI can’t pull from the video, at least not at the time of recording this, it can’t pull from the video.

So it’s only pulling from text that it can find on the internet, and it might show you, it might be like, “Oh, look, I found this video, here you go.” But either way, now you’re having to create all of those little steps, right? So AI skips a lot of the tiny steps that you actually need. And this is the part, this is one huge mistake that I think is so sneaky because it looks complete, So it’s going to say, “Create product in ThriveCart,” and it brings in a checklist, and it brings some of the most vague or broad little steps that include, like, five, five items on a checklist. So at a glance, it looks like, “Oh, look, it did it. It did a great job. It broke it down.” But in reality, it’s too vague.

It’s not generalized enough. It’s pulling from information it could find. We don’t even know if it pulled from the right help docs, to be honest. But you’re over here looking at it and being like, “Oh, look, it did it. I’m gonna use it.” Right? And then when you start realizing it’s not that good, then you just don’t wanna use systems altogether.

So that’s mistake number three. Mistake number four is that when you ask it to create a task management system for you, it starts from zero when you didn’t. So it doesn’t know what you already have, what systems you already have, what systems it’s going to be working alongside of. It doesn’t know what’s repetitive.

It doesn’t know who you work with, who’s on your team, who does what. So it gives you a list of everything, including the things that’s already done. For example, it might say on there, “Build a website,” every single time, and you already have the website. Or for a sales page, like, if you’re wanting to create a, a task flow or a task management system for a course that you always sell, you already have the sales page.

You kinda just need to duplicate it, right? You don’t need to create a full sales page from scratch. But AI will tell you, “Oh, you need to create a full sales page from scratch,” every single time. But you know that you already have it, so when you create your system, if you were to create your system from scratch by yourself or even update it, you would know that you don’t need to do that.

Instead of saying, instead of your task card saying, “Create sales page,” it would say something like, “Duplicate sales page.” And then your checklist would have items that are like, “Oh, update the checkout buttons. Um, update the offer messaging. Publish the page,” or something, right? But AI doesn’t know that, and it would need a lot of context.

A lot of context of a lot of things, which is why, for me, in my opinion, it’s easier to create it yourself when you know how to do it. And then lastly, the fifth mistake, which is huge. It is huge. AI assumes you have unlimited capacity. AI will pull in as much as it can find because there’s no… Like, it doesn’t know when to stop.

It doesn’t know how much you need. It doesn’t know how detailed you need a system to be, and if it’s not detailed enough, then it pulls in more. Like, you are the only person who knows your bandwidth. You know whether you are posting on Instagram or not. You know whether you have a community or not. You know all of these things.

You know when you have to pick up your kids from school. You know when you have to get certain things done by. You know who’s working with you. You know that your VA only works, um, one day a week. Like, you know so much that AI cannot know, and especially, you know the emotional weight of certain tasks. AI will never ever know that.

AI doesn’t know which tasks you find the hardest to work on, which ones you find the hardest to do. AI doesn’t know which ones you find easy, the ones that you don’t really need all of the itty-bitty broken down steps for because you’ve got it locked in. AI doesn’t know that, so it assumes you have this unlimited capacity and unlimited bandwidth, and it gives you everything, and then you’re spending more time tweaking and going back and trying to fix it and trying to update it, and that, to me, takes a lot more than if you just learn how to create it yourself from scratch and did it and created it based on your capacity, based on your bandwidth, based on what you know, based on all of the things that we have talked about, right?

AI will never know those things. So these are the five different mistakes. They’re all mistakes that I have noticed every time I have tried to use AI to create a task management system, specifically from scratch. So AI doesn’t know you. It doesn’t know what you’ve already built, what platforms you’re on.

It doesn’t know how much energy you honestly have left for this project that you’re working on. It doesn’t know how badly you want it or how badly you don’t and how much you’re gonna prioritize and how much you’re not, or how detailed you want it, how much you don’t. Like- It just doesn’t know, and that’s okay.

And I’m not here to tell you to stay away from AI. Like I said, I use it. I love it. I use it a lot, actually. But there is still this conversation to be had about where it fits into building systems. Like, what can it actually help you with? And I’ll, and I’ll probably record another episode on what specifically it can help you with, but building your task management system from scratch is not it.

Unless you yourself are a systems expert and can really know, like, how to create it for you, your business based on all of the things that we’ve talked about and make it faster than if you were just to build it from scratch or have a template that has already been done in the way that you like it and duplicate the whole template.

And I just don’t think AI is there yet. It can’t know your setup, your capacity, your life, the emotional weight behind everything, and those are key elements to actually a system that works. A task management system only works when it’s built around the person, the team, or the business using it, and that’s not really something you can outsource to a tool that doesn’t know anything about you, your team, or your business.

And that is why Taskflow Magic exists. Because everything that AI got wrong in this episode, those are the things that we’re keeping in mind as we create your task management system It’s not a template that I hand you and wish you luck with or tell you to go customize on your own. Like, yes, that gives you a head start, and yes, I have some task flow lists that you can use as starting points or as checklists within your bigger task management system.

But this is a course that guides you through my DONE framework to help you build your own task flow for any real project in your business. So podcasting, blogging, course creation, memberships, offer creation, like you name it, whatever it is that you need to work on, it helps you create the task flow for it.

And by the end of the course, you’re not just gonna have a bunch of notes. Like, the course is set up to be a work in progress. Like, you watch module one and you have part of your task flow done. You watch module two and you have the next part of your task flow done. By the end of module three, which is narrowing down, you have a fully usable task flow.

You have a working system plus a template that you can now reuse for every single project after that, and that’s the difference. AI starts with what’s publicly available and free, and for someone else’s human business, AI is not human, but we start with you, your business, your life, your capabilities, your preferences.

So if that sounds like what you need, come build it with me inside of Taskflow Magic. The link is cheers to productivity.com/taskflow. The link is also in the show notes. And with that, I’m gonna wrap this up, and I’ll see you in the next one.

If this episode inspired you, challenged you, or gave you a fresh perspective, I want to encourage you to take one small action today. And if you want to go deeper and connect with other solopreneurs on a similar journey, come hang out with us inside of our free community. It’s where we keep the conversation going. And be sure to follow the podcast so you don’t miss what’s next. Talk soon, and cheers to more peace, faithful steps, and steady progress, one system at a time.