The Gap Between AI Hype and Productivity Reality!

I wear many different hats, from CEO to travel agent, at my consulting firm. So I am always hunting for tools to reclaim my time.

Recently, after booking a not so complex trip, I stared at my inbox full of several confirmation emails and thought, “I’ll just ask Copilot to scan these and populate my calendar.”

𝗔𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗻𝗼𝘁!

It could summarize the emails perfectly. It could tell me my flight number and departure time. But it couldn’t put that time on my calendar without me handholding it through every step.

Naturally, I dug deeper. The solution was not a better prompt. Instead, it was to build a Power Automate flow.

And just like that I wasn’t an AI-empowered executive anymore! I was back to being an IT integrator, looking at options to just get a flight detail onto my Outlook calendar.

Here’s the lesson I took away: We need to be very mindful of the ‘𝗔𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹’ and not look at only the ‘𝗔𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲’. That’s because:

• The tools are great at creating content but still struggle with taking actions across applications, without breaking.
•  It’s not a productivity tool yet if saving 10 minutes requires 2 hours of technical setup.
• For now, humans are still the integrators between AI tools and actual workflows.

I continue to be bullish on the tech, but let’s be honest about the learning curve. We aren’t quite on autopilot yet.

Has anyone else hit this wall where the simple AI fix turned into a mini-development project?